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The purpose of this study is to investigate the concept of knowledge management (KM) readiness using intention to be involved in the KM processes concept. These processes comprised of socialisation, externalisation, combination, and internalisation (SECI processes). The research also attempts to measure and validate the concept using data collected from the Sri Lankan telecommunication industry.

Based on the established KM SECI process measures adopted and adapted, instruments were administered using a survey research methodology approach on 313 executives working in the selected organizations in the Sri Lankan telecommunication industry. A confirmatory factor analysis technique was performed to verify and validate the measurement model of the intention to be involved in KM processes model. Based on the revised measurement model, the level of intention to be involved in the KM SECI processes within the industry was then reported.

The research finding provides the revised measurement model for employees' intention to be involved in KM SECI processes. All four variables of the intention to be involved in KM SECI processes emerged as significant and reliable measures for KM readiness. The finding also indicates the positive level of intention among the employees in the Sri Lankan telecommunication industry to be involved in KM processes.

The research provides a unique perspective of KM readiness, which is not much covered in the KM literature. The measurement produced can be used as a research tool for more exploratory and explanatory research in KM and, as an evaluative tool for employee readiness in ensuring the success of KM initiatives in organizations. The confirmed and validated set of measurement items can be used to measure the extent to which employees are ready to be involved with KM processes. Through the validated tool, more research can be conducted to explore the antecedents of such readiness perception.

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.

This paper aims to propose a new knowledge creation model called Grey SECI (G-SECI), study the knowledge creation mechanism and the relationship between knowledge creation models and innovation performance during complex product systems (CoPSs) development. Research and development of CoPSs relies heavily on knowledge creation. However, most scholars have studied CoPS innovation stages from the view of design process of system products, focussing on functional management and project management during the R&D process for CoPS. Attention is lacking with regards to the key and essence of creating a complex technology: the creation of knowledge.

Modified from the classic SECI model’s spiral process of knowledge creation, a grey-SECI (G-SECI) knowledge creation model is here proposed vis-à-vis three knowledge categories: explicit knowledge, grey knowledge and tacit knowledge. Then, this paper further analyzes the effects of knowledge creation from the perspective of individual and the view of organization. Besides, an empirical study is conducted.

Statistical analysis indicates that there are three main paths of knowledge creation: individual experience knowledge acquisition, individual communication and reflection and organizational knowledge learning. Results further suggest that knowledge internalization by practice (KIP) is the key mode of knowledge creation, as well as the most important step for high-quality CoPS performance. Moreover, individual innovation performance is influenced by knowledge internalization by reflection and KIP; and organization innovation performance is influenced by knowledge combination and knowledge systematization.

The coverage of geographical distribution is limited. Therefore, there are no data from foreign enterprises. The impact of different geographical cultures on CoPS knowledge creation model could be further investigated; in addition, the statistical analysis results of this study need to be further verified in other industries.

This paper provides a series of insights for CoPS project leaders. The results may also provide practical guidance for the related management personnel in the fields of human resource training, project planning, project quality and technology R&D in CoPS R&D management.

The paper’s main contribution is to modify classic SECI knowledge conversion model by introducing grey knowledge and build a new G-SECI knowledge creation model. Besides, the paper adds empirical evidence on the knowledge creation paths in CoPS and reveals that internalization by practice is the key mode of knowledge creation.

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.

This paper intends to propose an “ontological shift SECI model” as a tool to diagnose organizations in the context of knowledge creation, and thereby support the management of knowledge creation‐related projects.

This research's hypothesis is based on existing knowledge creation theories and is tested using a case study methodology. The authors first examine the model in a completed project in order to test its validity and second, apply it in Company A's software project to demonstrate its feasibility and usefulness.

In any given project, knowledge creation activities occur in various ontological entities – individual, group, organization or social‐network. The diagnosis tool, which proved to be useful in this paper, traces such ontological shifts and makes visible all key activities of a knowledge creation project. These activities form an “ontological shift model” and trace an “activity map” which exposes underlying enablers and barriers, and provides viable solutions for improvement.

To carry out the analysis, the key activities identified in the knowledge creation‐related project have to be described in detail according to their ontological and epistemological dimensions. However, such description is complex and requires specialized expertise in knowledge creation and rich knowledge of the ongoing project.

The tool proved useful for supporting project managers in diagnosing their project's knowledge creation shortcomings. When knowledge creation breakdowns occur in a project, the tool can act as a navigator and uncover alternatives to continue the knowledge‐creating spiral.

Knowledge creation process is difficult to manage because of its cause ambiguity and intangibility. What is a knowledge creation activity? And why? This model makes explicit experienced managers' tacit solutions to knowledge creation problems. It can make organizational knowledge creation activities visible and therefore manageable for junior staff, outside consultants and even future software modeling.

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.

This paper aims to show that systems intelligence (SI) can be a useful perspective in knowledge management, particularly in the context of the socialization, externalization, combination and internalization (SECI) model. SI is a recently developed systemic concept, a certain kind of human intelligence based on a systems thinking perspective.

This paper first provides an overview of the related literature, and then conceptually discusses the role of SI in organizational knowledge creations.

SI can work as a powerful momentum in each stage as well as the whole process of SECI.

This paper is the first application of SI to the field of knowledge management. It provides us with a new perspective to touch human factors in knowledge management processes, which are considered to be essential in the SECI model.

The purpose of this paper is to develop and validate a measurement tool for assessing organizational knowledge creation practices based on the socialization, externalization, combination, and internalization (SECI) processes of the knowledge creation theory.

Data were collected from a sample of 455 knowledge workers from four Korean for‐profit organizations, utilizing a systematic procedure, which includes: initial item and domain development based on a comprehensive literature review, reliability assessment and item deduction, and construct validity and psychometric property assessment.

Results show that 17 items related to individual and team members' practices of acquiring and sharing knowledge in organizational contexts measure the four domains of SECI knowledge creation practices.

Although samples from Korean business settings indicate a limited generalizability, this study's theory‐grounded item specification and systematic procedure of scale development (i.e. descriptive statistics, reliability and inter‐correlation analysis, exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis using the random split method) can be replicated in future similar studies or scale development research.

Scores at the individual, group, or firm level can be utilized for comparison or development purposes to promote the collaborative knowledge creation practices in organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to try to assess the applicability of the SECI model (Nonaka and Takeuchi) to the processes of external knowledge acquisition for firms located on knowledge‐intensive clusters. The paper's intended contribution lies in improving our understanding about the different mechanisms that organizations can use to learn from this kind of environment.

The paper uses survey data obtained from a sample of knowledge‐intensive firms from Boston's Route 128, with custom tailored measurement scales. It applies a quantitative method based on questionnaire answers.

Findings show that external knowledge acquisition takes place through three different processes that raise important differences and similarities with the SECI model.

Conclusions can only be generalized to firms located in knowledge‐intensive clusters. Nevertheless, some implications for management practice can be derived. Tacit knowledge from the environment requires different mechanisms in order to be successfully incorporated into the organization, whereas explicit knowledge acquisition can be managed more smoothly. Managers should pay special attention when designing channels for acquiring external tacit knowledge.

The SECI model reveals itself to be a powerful guide for starting research about external knowledge acquisition. Nevertheless, context specific variables can show industry or country preferred ways for learning in practice, so highly focused empirical research may be required to disentangle the peculiarities of tacit knowledge.

In the field of external knowledge acquisition by organizations, empirical works about testing widely spread theoretical models are very scarce. This paper takes the theoretical processes of the SECI model and extends them for external knowledge acquisition.

The purpose of this paper is to study the obstacles to knowledge transfer between organizations belonging to different cultures by making use of the socialization–externalization – combination – internalization (SECI) model. The contribution made by this paper is in the use of the SECI model for studying this type of issue. Although it recognizes the epistemological duality between tacit and explicit knowledge, the traditional literature had not adopted this theoretical structure. The explanation for this is an excessively simplistic interpretation of the SECI model in its 1995 version together with a lack of knowledge about Nonaka’s more recent works – Nonaka et al. (2008).

The authors use a comparative case study opposing a failure and a success, and rely on Latour controversies to account for the context and contradictions. One of the authors worked for five years as a mediator in these projects and adopted the reflective practitioner posture of Schön.

Using the SECI model is relevant for studying this question. The results obtained converge with the literature and mark the SECI’s first stage – socialization – as an operation of major importance. The authors show that the failure in knowledge transfer is due to a deficit of socialization, as the lack of prolonged situations of co-presence of the actors, i.e. the lack of shared context, impedes knowledge conversion.

To go further, conditions of the socialization context must be better specified and developed. Second, cases in other areas than the health sector to observe the circulation of knowledge could be developed.

The findings suggest ways for managers to fight against knowledge transfer barriers in multicultural contexts, relying on the socialization process.

Accounting for the problem of knowledge transfer in a multicultural context through the SECI model, which focusses on the interaction between tacit and explicit knowledge, opens a fruitful line of reflexion. It would organize trips for French managers in China with a strong intercultural dimension.

Accounting for the problem of knowledge transfer in a multi culural context through the SECI model, which focusses on the interaction between tacit and explicit knowledge, opens a fruitful line of reflexion.