A Dynamic Environment to Create and Share Tacit Knowledge

Using ‘Ba’ as a platform for knowledge exchange, it serves as a basis for knowledge creation, which is a continuous task. Nonaka and Teece (2001) developed the SECI model to further understand the way knowledge moves across and is created by organizations. The model represents a spiral of knowledge creation, allowing to be repeated infinitively, enabling

knowledge to be expanded horizontally as well as vertically across an organisation (Nonaka and Teece, 2001). However, for the spiral to work in many cases, actors need to share space and time, ‘Ba’, in order to efficiently create a spiral of knowledge exchange. Supporting the idea of a meeting being ‘Ba’, the knowledge spiral, especially socialization and externalization, is the most efficient when teams come together. To further examine and understand the model, first an explanation of the four paradigms is needed.

One definition of knowledge is that it is a shared space wherein

relationships emerge (Nonaka and Teece, 2009). It is not really tangible, but spiralling knowledge which is constantly changing and building result in new levels of tacit knowledge. It is a self-transcending and ever-spiralling

evolution. Knowledge is internalized via socialization and experience. It is most commonly tacit knowledge. Then knowledge is externalized and

combines with other externalized forms of knowledge, interaction with others and the environment, and the spiralling process proceeds anew (Nonaka and Konno 1998). Knowledge is thus not a set of facts and Figures, it is not a set of statistics or applied conceits, but a “space”, which Nonaka and Konno identify as ‘Ba’, a mental flexibility and ongoing dynamic process, that allows for new insight to be constantly generated. If one embraces the concept of ‘Ba’, as expressed by Nonaka and Konno (1998), then one essentially is

arguing for a learning culture in which processes are constantly iterative, marked by close communication, marked by modelling, by mentoring, and by incessant experiential inputs that lead to outputs which bolster and build knowledge. Knowledge is really a process and not a terminal result. Nonaka and Teece differentiate between four different elements of ‘Ba’.

Originating ‘Ba’ are the individual and face-to-face interactions, which create the basis of originating ‘Ba’. Experience, emotions, feelings, and mental models are shared, hence the full range of physical senses and psycho-emotional reactions are grasped. These include care, love, trust, and commitment which are at the centre of human coming occasion. This allows tacit knowledge to be shared, in that context of socialization.

Dialoguing ‘Ba’ our collective and face-to-face interactions, which enable mental models and skills to be communicated to others. This

supports the theory of externalization, producing articulated concepts, which can then be used by the receiver to self-reflect. A mix of specific knowledge and capability to manage the received knowledge is essential to consciously construct, rather than to originate new knowledge.

Collective and virtual interactions are in focus when discussing systemising ‘Ba’. Offering a visual, written, context for the combination of existing explicit knowledge, online networks, groupware, documentation or databanks, knowledge can easily be transmitted to a large number of people.

Finally, exercising ‘Ba’ allows individual and virtual interaction, which is often communicated through virtual media, written manuals or simulation programs. Nonaka and Teece (2001) state, “exercising ‘Ba’ synthesized the transcendence and reflection that come in action, while dialoguing ‘Ba’ achieves this via thought. “

‘Ba’ often acts as an autonomous, self-sufficient unite that can be connected with other ‘Ba’ to expand knowledge, it seems to work in a similar way as a modular system or organization, in which independently designed modules are assembled and integrated to work as a whole system (Nonaka and Teece, 2001). Seeing ‘Ba’ in a work, software development context, and

enhanced and built upon. All four stages of can be found in a meeting, from originating, to dialoguing and systematic to exercising ‘Ba’.

2.3.5 Channels for the Exchange and Sharing of Tacit Knowledge

There are several channels which allow tacit knowledge to form into explicit knowledge. Nonaka and Teece (2001) show the SECI as a way to analyse tacit knowledge with an environment of ‘Ba’. These allow a

categorization of different ways in which tacit knowledge to be shown. To begin, the process of socialization is the conversion of tacit to tacit through shared experiences. Found in apprenticeships, learning by doing is at the core rather than a theoretical approach. Self-transcendence is vital for socialization to work, since it can only be shared through direct experiences. Interaction with customers is therefore at the forefront for companies to take advantage of tacit knowledge transfer. Following, externalization is the process of converting tacit to explicit knowledge, where a person articulates knowledge and shares it with others in order to create a basis of new

knowledge for a group. A successful conversion of tacit to explicit knowledge greatly depends on cohesive metaphors, analogies or models to be

understood by a group of people committed to understand and internalize knowledge. The explicit to explicit conversion is called combination, where explicit knowledge is set into more complex explicit knowledge. Gathering explicit knowledge from in- or outside of the organization, editing or

processing allows new, more complex, knowledge to be created, which can then be transferred to co-workers. Finally, the process of internalization is integrating explicit knowledge to make it one’s own tacit knowledge. It is the counter part of socialization but from the apprentice point of view. This internal knowledge base in a person can set off a new spiral of knowledge, where tacit knowledge can be converted to tacit, explicit and combined with more complex knowledge.

Using the four paradigms of the SECI model demonstrated in Figure 1 below, a spiral of knowledge creation is found where internal tacit knowledge is the basis for socialization, externalization and combination to create more