Los conceptos de hábitat, territorio y lugar

In their book ‘The knowledge creating company’ Nonaka & Takeuchi (1995) brought the concept of an integrated whole world view of knowledge and expressed its building blocks from a foundation of a Japanese philosophical concept by Kitaro Nishida (1958) known as ‘Ba’. Ba’s key themes are centered on those interactions that support and encourage the sharing of knowledge (Jones et al., 2003). Clarke (2010) suggested that the concepts related to current day knowledge sharing in four key areas, the first ‘originating’ which is the initial knowledge sharing act that occurs through face to face interaction facilitating tacit knowledge and ideas sharing. The second ‘interacting’ is the place where the knowledge sharing occurs and in the context of this study both ‘originating’ and ‘interacting’ are occurring in the CoP environment or place. ‘Ba’ can translate to ‘place’. Cyber Ba is the place where tacit and explicit knowledge combine creating a new and enhanced form of the knowledge and exercising Ba is the place where explicit knowledge is transformed into tacit knowledge often associated with practice or learning through training.

Nonaka & Takeuchi (1995) took these building blocks and developed their seminal theory for knowledge creation and the process for knowledge Conversion. Importantly this theoretical framework was developed into a process for describing ‘knowledge conversion’ from tacit to explicit, which it was suggested was critical to allow organisations to exploit the deep understanding when tacit and explicit knowledge combine to describe an enhanced or entirely new idea (Nonaka, Toyama, & Konno, 2000). Nonaka & Takeuchi (1995) went on to describe the process for combining tacit and explicit knowledge as occurring through Socialisation (tacit to tacit), Externalisation (tacit to explicit), Combination (explicit to explicit), and Internalisation (explicit to tacit) and adopted the acronym SECI.

Socialisation describes the sharing of knowledge through practitioners demonstrating how to do a task. This task may have a manual that informs the order of things to be done but it is the tacit knowledge transfer that develops the skills and the whole picture for the learner. A CoP example is one such as the SPO Infrastructure Group passing on practitioner information to junior network engineers. This is fundamentally a tacit to tacit knowledge sharing process based on shared experiences. It is the transfer of emotional and situational context that allows for the embedding of one person’s experience into the mind of another. (Polanyi 1966; Goffin & Konners 2011; Chugh 2015)

Externalisation crystallises knowledge by making tacit knowledge explicit through sharing experiences and telling the story of those experiences to consider how a process or task might be improved. This is fundamentally a knowledge creation process that makes tacit knowledge explicit through analogies, metaphors or conceptual models. The SPO Information CoP annually identifies the top ten concerns of the sector and then through storytelling and rich discussion arrive at mitigation or solutions to address the real world concerns of its membership.

Combination can be described as the bringing together of different bodies of work and combining them to deliver enhanced knowledge. SPO as a sector organisation often combines versions of approaches to information security, as an example, to create a sector approach or model that can be considered and adopted across all its membership.

Internalisation is the transfer of explicit knowledge to tacit and closely relates to ‘learning by doing’. This is not simply documenting someone’s experiences, although these can be internalised by individuals and become their own. Rather it is the stories and combination of experiences such as customer complaints or feedback that enhance the knowledge and support the transfer and embedding of this knowledge in others. SPO’s support services CoP, as an example, documented customer feedback from databases from their call centres and combined it with the experiences

41 of their customer service teams in order to inform how systems or processes might be improved.

Nonaka & Konno (1998) combined the Ba and SECI models in what they described as a spiral for knowledge creation. The cyclical nature of the process suggests an evolving knowledge process that not only ensures tacit knowledge transfer and therefore retention within organisations but also delivers knowledge creation or new knowledge and ideas. The foundation for this new conceptual model grew out of Nonaka’s early work on ‘the knowledge organisation’ and fundamental to his approach was the understanding of the combining of Japanese and western epistemologies (Nonaka, 1991). Nonaka & Konno (1998) argued that their new ‘theory of organisational knowledge creation’ would require a new ontology that could underpin and help explain knowledge innovation, the ‘cornerstone’ of which is the distinction between tacit and explicit knowledge. The ontology being those features defined as knowledge creating elements such as individuals, groups, organisations, and cooperating sectors.

2.14 The tacit debate and the challenge to the SECI process

Gourlay (2006) was critical of Nonaka’s theories suggesting that there was little evidence for the four modes of knowledge creation through the interaction of tacit and explicit knowledge. Gourlay (2006) went on to argue that Nonaka proposed only two modes of knowledge conversion, tacit to explicit (externalisation) and explicit to tacit (internalisation) suggesting that the other two ‘socialisation’ and ‘combination’ were in fact modes of knowledge transfer. Importantly two schools of thought began to emerge because of this work; the first, that tacit knowledge can be converted into explicit (Nonaka, 1995, Spencer 1996, Torff (1999), Boiral 2002) and the second that the tacit to explicit conversion needs a more complex and significantly deeper synthesis for this to occur (Collins 2001; Ambrosini & Bowman, 2002; Chisholm, Holifield & Davis, 2005).

The debate continues over whether tacit can in fact be made explicit and those proposing it can appear to currently hold sway. However, it is also argued that not all tacit knowledge can be made explicit as it is rooted in our deep anthropological history and evolutionary social practices (Collins, 2001). Tacit knowledge therefore can at best be described as how we position ourselves in the world and in particular how it is described (Stone, 2013). CoPs it could be argued present Higher Education IT with opportunities to create competitive opportunities and contribute new learning for their institutions (Palmer et al., 2012).

Tacit knowledge and the complexity surrounding its use and value remains a key feature in Knowledge Management research (Garavan, O’Brien & Murphy, 2007). Organisations that understand the value of the concepts of tacit knowledge and its ability to release and to share that knowledge within the organisation, are likely to be able to leverage opportunities from knowledge and to react to the ever changing threat landscape proliferated by disruptive digital technologies and challenging business environments (Clarke, Holifield, & Chisholm, 2004). However, the absence of consensus on the definition of tacit knowledge, along with the earlier indicated challenges in codifying and storing it, would suggest that consideration should be given to what factors in CoPs can affect its stickiness or leveraging to advance shared knowledge (Castillo, 2002; Ray 2009; McIver et al., 2012). However, it is argued that when exploring the stickiness of tacit knowledge in the context of sharing and creating in CoPs this knowledge can only be achieved indirectly by managing behaviour and that successful knowledge sharing is affected by all the actions people take (Gourlay 2006).

Tacit knowledge is therefore important to organisations and its value is clearly described and supported in the literature. Communities of Practice have become a vital tool in retaining this valuable asset both for organisations and in the context of this study to the whole sector, that of Higher Education and the IT practitioners who operate within it.

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