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Designing the right context for organizational knowledge creation

Written by

Sachi

in

,

In the last blog we began understanding the concept of organizational innovation pretty closely – it also involved a very good commentary from one of our readers which enables us gain a significant insight into the way organizations foster innovation. In today’s blog, we look at the “context” of knowledge creation, how this functions and in the next blog, we look at what are the essential ingredients that would have to be taken note of to get this context to be working for an organization.
In this blog we significantly refer to one – Nonaka – a management theorist who has done some significant work in the area of organizational knowledge creation. It is important to acknowledge that “tacit” knowledge is the origin of all human knowledge, and organizational knowledge creation essentially the process of mobilizing individual tacit knowledge and fostering its interaction to the explicit knowledge base of the firm.
Nonaka, also illustrates the importance of a context for knowledge creation called “Ba”, this context provides the shared social and mental space for the Interpretation of Information, interaction and emerging relationships that serve as a foundation of knowledge creation.
“Ba” is very similar to another concept “community of practice” that suggests that organizational members construct their shared identities and perspectives through “practice” that is shared work experience. This practice enables the sharing of practices and cognitive repertoires to facilitate knowledge sharing and transfer. 
Hence a group placed at the intersection of the vertical and horizontal flow of knowledge within an organization, serves as the bridge between the individual and organization in the knowledge creation process. Thus even a semi-autonomous project team play an extremely crucial role in knowledge creation. 

Comments

2 responses to “Designing the right context for organizational knowledge creation”

  1. Sreeni Avatar
    Sreeni

    Dear sir,

    I also wish to know how the organisation has to tackle the problems that encounter in knowledge sharing as most of the employees tend to retain the knowledge among themselves than sharing, as it always brings an edge for personnel growth temporarily.

    Reply
  2. Sachidananda Benegal Avatar
    Sachidananda Benegal

    Dear Srini, an interesting point you noted. There are a host of ways in which these could be fecilitated by the organization.
    1. There could be formal structures such as explicity meetings where these could be tacitly brought out.
    2. As discussed in a later blog, the knowledge creation requires both internal and external touch points.

    As to the point where individual employees being unwilling to share their knowledge – special incentives could be designed to ensure that the tacit knowledge or expertise the individual has acquired could be shared with others.
    Each organization would have to design its own mechanism, there is hardly a standard process for ensuring this would be effectively handled.

    Reply

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