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The purpose of this paper is to examine employees’ knowledge creation processes by leveraging a conceptual framework based on the socialisation, externalisation, combination and internalisation (SECI) model introduced by Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995). Given that many employees work within teams, in the current study, the authors examine the impact that team-level trust and intrinsic motivation have on an employee’s SECI model and, in turn, the relationship between SECI model and individual creativity. As such, this work represents one of the first works to examine team-level factors that shape individual knowledge creation and creativity. Additionally, building on and extending previous SECI research, the authors develop a scale to measure SECI models that uses peer-rated assessments.

Data were collected from 431 employees who worked in 59 teams drawn from 51 companies in a variety of industry sectors, both SME’s and corporate. To minimise common method bias, the SECI model questionnaire was adapted to the individual level through peer ratings instead of self-ratings (each employee rated three peers). To assess the hypotheses, hierarchical linear models using IBM SPSS were applied. The questionnaires were completed using both paper and online versions.

Results showed that SECI mediates the relationships between individual-level creativity and both team-level intrinsic motivation and trust. Furthermore, findings suggest that the scale developed is a reliable measure of SECI.

Knowledge creation and sharing practices should take into account both, a team’s trust and its intrinsic motivation, which would result in creativity.

This paper examines the impact that team-level factors (i.e. team trust and team intrinsic motivation) have on individual SECI and creativity across a variety of industries. As such, this work is one of the first to examine the impact of team-level factors in shaping individual knowledge creation and creativity. Given the support that the study found for this hypothesis, this work demonstrates that team trust and intrinsic motivation are salient factors in shaping individual employee knowledge creation and creativity. Given the novelty of this work, the authors hope is that this study will be the foundation upon future cross-level studies of individual-level SECI and individual creativity can be built so as to improve SECI models.

Taking Nonaka’s SECI model as the main reference, this paper aims to offer reflections on the virtual evolution of ba, the places for knowledge creation. Indeed, looking at the current scenario, widening the knowledge spiral to the inter-organizational epistemological level is inevitable. To this aim, information technology tools and virtual communities can establish effective interactions to exchange knowledge, making ba evolve congruently.

The paper takes the exemplary case of a platform developed during a European research project called “BIVEE: Business Innovation in Virtual Enterprise Environments”. The investigative approach chosen is participatory action research (PAR), with two researchers conducting PAR in real time, and two others involved ex post.

The paper shows that the virtual evolution of ba can lead the SECI model towards an inter-organizational level. Moreover, through a learning history, it describes how all the phases of the SECI process, even the Socialization one, can take place or be supported in virtual spaces.

Taking into account just one single exemplary case study provides a rich, contextualized understanding of phenomena, while allowing only some theoretical generalizations.

This paper contextualizes the SECI model within a Web platform for open innovation, to investigate whether the knowledge creation process can take place entirely within a virtual environment linking subjects from different organizations. In so doing, it applies the SECI model to the phases of the innovation process, called waves.

Bearing in mind reviews of the existing corporate management leadership theory, this chapter presents a theoretical framework of holistic leadership for top and middle management as well as the staff for strategically promoting knowledge creation activities in companies in industries with rapidly changing competitive environments. “Holistic leadership” here refers to leadership with characteristics that allow for the coexistence of centralized leadership, distributed leadership, and dialectical leadership and their dynamic application according to circumstances by practitioners at each management level (top management, middle management, and staff) of the three practice layers, that is, the formal organizational layer, the psychological boundary layer, and the informal organizational layer. This new theoretical concept of leadership has been derived a posteriori from existing theory and cumulative fieldwork by the author to date.

In current business management, knowledge is considered to be a strategic resource that can strengthen an organization’s competitiveness. Today, under the process of continuous globalization, almost all companies are rapidly exposed to global competition regardless of their scale or type of business. However, multinational management is very complicated and uncertain and it is hard for multinationals to effectively coordinate and manage their global value chains. In light of this, the utility of multinational management based on knowledge is increased. The present study examines multinational firms’ knowledge management systems, knowledge creation processes and global supply chain performance and attempts to reveal any significant linkages between these latent variables. For this research interest, we proposed 18 items to measure four types of knowledge creation processes (SECI) designed by Nonaka (1994) and revised by authors considering the global business environment, in particular involving the global supply chain management concept. Utilizing the confirmed SECI model, 128 sample companies were classified into four groups according to the levels of their knowledge creation processes. The empirical results of this study reveal important linkages between a multinational firm’s knowledge management system and knowledge creation process, as well as between its knowledge creation process and global supply chain management performance. In particular, the current work suggests that the creation and conversion of tacit knowledge as well as explicit knowledge can be effectively supported by information and communication technology.

Previous research has investigated knowledge transfer and the external consultant's role in it, during enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementation. In this study, the authors explore the processes through which knowledge creation happens during ERP implementation and how external consultants help operationalize the same.

The authors engaged the SECI model of the theory of organizational knowledge creation and conducted an interpretive study that interviewed 14 ERP implementation experts in India. The interviews were transcribed and then analyzed using the ATLAS.ti package.

The findings reveal fine insights into how knowledge creation takes place during ERP implementation through the four modes of knowledge conversion – socialization (S), externalization (E), combination (C) and internalization (I). The external consultants aid in operationalizing this knowledge creation process through five types of knowledge-related activities: (I) importing external knowledge, (D) discovering internal knowledge, (E) extricating confined knowledge, (A) activating flows of knowledge and (S) solving problems using knowledge. These activities can be represented by the acronym, I-D-E-A-S.

The study makes two overarching contributions: (1) offering an interpretation and description of ERP implementation as a knowledge creation process and (2) extending the understanding of the external consultants' role during ERP implementation to include new knowledge creation.

The primary purposes of this paper are to understand perceptions regarding ICT use to support knowledge management (KM) and to identify suitable ICTs to support such initiatives. The aim is to study these objectives from the theoretical perspectives of the SECI model (i.e. socialization, externalization, combination and internalization).

A total of 100 working professionals who had prior KM implementation experiences participated in an online survey.

The authors found that survey respondents held positive attitudes towards the use of ICT to support different phases of the SECI model. It was also found that single ICT as well as varied combinations of ICTs were frequently used to facilitate the different phases of the SECI model.

The nature of this study may reduce the generalizability of its findings to other tasks or economic and cultural environments. Replication of this study in other contexts (e.g. other industries) would be extremely useful.

Understanding individuals' perceptions of ICT use as well as use of ICTs to support KM practices is important as it may affect the outcome of KM initiatives. Further, since spending on KM software and services are predicted to increase in the coming years, this research is therefore very timely.

This study systematically examines the use of single ICT as well as combinations of ICTs to facilitate different phases of the SECI model. This will contribute to an understanding of how ICT can be used to support KM initiatives in organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to propose propose a practical framework for the design and measure of active ba and assess whether workplace reformation initiatives actively contribute to promoting knowledge creation by activating ba.

The workplace reformation is first segmented into virtual and physical environments. Then, using the SECI knowledge‐creation process, the effects of each environment as well as their mutual interactions on active ba are analyzed. Next, the case studies of two workplace reformations are introduced, the first using a qualitative analysis and the second the results of a questionnaire survey carried out at three different stages of the implementation.

The effective implementation of workplace reformation in two separate entities enabled the creation of active ba. The influence of the physical and virtual environments on the creation of active ba were significantly different, thus justifying the assumption of the division of such environmental factors. The main factor of active ba generated by a complete workplace reformation was shown to be direct communication.

The two firms studied here belong to the same group of companies, and both departments' workplace reformations were conducted by the same person, whose widely known track record may be seen as a self‐fulfilling prophecy.

Because these two types of workplace reformation reversely impact the emergence of direct communication, and therefore the type of active ba, practitioners could avoid the co‐existence of groups organized under different configurations by simultaneously implementing a workplace reformation across both virtual and physical environments.

This research shows how workplace reformation – achieved with the same people, all things being equal, relatively immediately and inexpensively – can raise knowledge productivity.

Looking at the practical experience of organizations pursuing knowledge management, it is found that their efforts are primarily focused on creating the conditions and the context that will enable knowledge creation. This need for developing enabling conditions and contexts was identified more than a decade ago when Nonaka and associates introduced the concept of “ba.” This paper aims to map the development of the concept of “ba” in a number of disciplines in order to understand its theoretical evolution and practical application.

A comprehensive search and evaluation of the literature resulted in a database of 135 papers, four dissertations and four books. Using content analysis, citation analysis, and concept mapping, four categories of research findings are identified that in turn suggest four groups of conditions for enabling knowledge creation.

The paper discusses each of these conditions (the social/behavioral, cognitive/epistemic, information systems/management, and strategy/structural), and introduces a framework that relates these conditions to the type of knowledge process and the level of interaction that characterize a knowledge management activity in the organization.

It is concluded that managing knowledge in organizations is fundamentally about creating an environment in the organization that is conducive to and encourages knowledge creation, sharing and use. Organizations interested in pursuing knowledge management and innovation may wish to be guided by the enabling conditions presented here that have been discovered over ten years of research. These conditions and the frameworks of which they are part can help managers to analyze, discuss, and introduce specific combinations of enabling factors that are tailored according to the type of knowledge process and level of interaction needed to address a particular knowledge problem or vision.

This study aims to identify if an integration between knowledge strategy and knowledge management (KM) processes leads to organizational creativity and performance.

Quantitative strategy and cross-sectional survey method were used to collect data. In all, 219 randomly selected respondents from 173 listed companies provided feedback through self-administered questionnaire. Factor analysis and multiple regression techniques were used to test multiple hypotheses.

Results revealed the significant positive impact of system-oriented KM systems strategy on KM process capabilities, creativity and organizational performance. No significant impact has been found of human-oriented KM strategy on different KM processes and organizational performance. However, it interestingly has a significant negative relationship with organizational creativity. KM processes have significant impact on organizational creativity and performance. Organizational creativity has also been identified as having a strong significant impact on organizational performance.

This paper fills the knowledge gap by undertaking a study which has not been conducted before.

This study aims to develop and empirically test a “stocks and flows”-based model of intellectual capital (IC) that examines how human-embodied knowledge (i.e., human capital) can be transformed into organisational non-embodied knowledge (i.e., organisational capital) through the mediating roles of social capital and the knowledge management (KM) process of knowledge transfer.

A structural model was developed and empirically tested using a survey data set of 295 questionnaires collected from the “knowledge-intensive” pharmaceutical manufacturing industry in Jordan.

Empirical results revealed that each of human capital, social capital and knowledge transfer has a positive and significant effect on organizational capital. In particular, knowledge transfer emerged as having the strongest effect. Social capital, on the other hand, emerged as having a positive and significant effect on knowledge transfer. Mediation analysis revealed that while human capital significantly affects organizational capital, such an effect is partially and significantly mediated by each of social capital as well as knowledge transfer.

This study provides senior managers in pharmaceutical manufacturing firms with valuable insights pertaining to the development of their IC, in terms of how to exploit their knowledge stocks (i.e. human-embodied knowledge and organizational non-embodied knowledge) through managing knowledge flows between them. This was shown to be significantly leveraged by the mediating roles of social capital as well as knowledge transfer.

This study provides important theoretical and empirical contributions to the extant literature in a number of ways. It provides better understanding of the intricate linkages among IC dimensions, and how these play complementary roles in organizational capital development. It has also provided important empirical evidence highlighting the vital mediating roles of social capital and knowledge transfer in facilitating knowledge flows, which aid in transforming human-embodied knowledge stocks into organizational-embodied ones.