Knowledge Sharing in Organization

 “In a world where markets, products, technologies, competitors, regulations and even societies change rapidly, continuous innovation and the knowledge that enables such innovation have become important sources of sustainable competitive advantage.”

                                                                                                                    Nonaka, et al. (2000)

The term of organizational knowledge or philosophy of knowledge has inherited from the work done by many philosophers, among them Michael Polanyi has defined knowledge in personal domain and Nonaka & Takeuchi extended Polenyie’s work and they have come out with the philosophy of corporate or organizational knowledge. 

Further, Nonaka and Takeuchi have introduced knowledge management model with four core processes, called, socialization, externalization, combination and internalization known as SECI below model  and they have further defined knowledge into two categories called explicit and tacit knowledge (Grant, 2007). 

                                                                 The SECI Model

                                                    Source: Nonaka & Takeuchi (2001)

According to the Nonaka & Takeuchi SECI model, four core processes can be defined as follows;

• ·         Socialization (Tacit to tacit) process is used to transfer tacit to tacit on through community of practices, guidance, observation etc.
• ·         Externalization (Tacit to Explicit) is phase where tacit knowledge will convert in to codify mode such as documents, manuals etc.
• ·         Combination (Explicit to Explicit) is phase used to create new knowledge by combining codified knowledge.
• ·         Internalization (Explicit to tacit) in this process existing codified knowledge is used to modify the existing tacit knowledge of user’s.