“Therefore, the knowledge-creating process is necessarily context-specific in terms of time, space, and relationship with others. Knowledge cannot be created in vacuum, and needs a place where information is given meaning through interpretation to become knowledge. The importance of place in human cognition and action has been discussed by many philosophers. Plato called a place for a genesis of existence as Chora. Aristotels called a place for a thing to physically exist as Topos. Heidegger called a place for human existence as Ort.Building on the concept that was originally proposed by the Japanese philosopher Kitaro Nishida (1921, 1970), we define ”Ba as a shared context in motion, in which knowledge is shared, created, and utilized.” “Ba provides the energy, quality, and places to perform the individual knowledge conversions and to move along the knowledge spiral. In other words, Ba is a phenomenological time and space where knowledge, as ‘a stream of meaning’ emerges (Bohm, 1996). New knowledge is created out of existing knowledge through the change of meanings and contexts.”“Although it is easier to consider Ba as a physical space such as a meeting room, Ba should be understood as a multiple interacting mechanism explaining tendencies for interactions that occur at a specific time and space.Ba can emerge in individuals, working groups, project teams, informal circles, temporary meetings, virtual space such as e-mail groups, and at the front-line contact with the customer. Ba is an existential place where participants share their contexts and create new meanings through interactions. Participants of Ba bring in their own contexts, and through interactions with others and the environment, the contexts of Ba, participants, and the environment change.”“Ba is a way of organizing that is based on the meaning it creates, rather than a form of organization such as hierarchy or network. A firm can be viewed as an organic configuration of various BA, where people interact with each other and the environment based on the knowledge they have and the meaning they create. When we see a firm as an organic configuration of Ba instead of an organizational structure, we can see what kind of knowledge should and can be created, who are the ‘right people’ with embedded knowledge, and what kind of interactions are needed among them to create knowledge without being restricted by the existing organization structure.”Knowledge Management Research & Practice (2003) 1, 2–10 & 2003 Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. , Nonaka I. & Toyama R., The Knowledge-Creating Theory Revisited: Knowledge Creation as a Synthesizing Process
Posted on: Fri, 04 Apr 2014 03:40:17 +0000
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