Organizational Design for Knowledge Exchange: The Hau-Ba Model
Knowledge transfer, especially its intrinsic nature, is central to research. A key concept for such inquiry has been ba (Japanese roughly meaning “place” in English), which in terms of knowledge transfer can be thought of as a shared space for knowledge c
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Organizational Design for Knowledge Exchange: The Hau-Ba Model Ahmed Bounfour and Gwénaëlle Grefe
Exploring Space and Spirit in Knowledge-Sharing The key role of knowledge in today’s economy has made the creation and transfer of knowledge the focus of many recent approaches. Among them, the fundamental Japanese concept of ba (Nonaka & Konno, 1998) affords an innovative perspective on how the different dimensions of knowledge can be connected to a spiral of transformations in which knowledge is created. The concept makes it possible to take both tacit and explicit knowledge into account, depending on the context and quality of the interactions between the individuals involved. The places that host and sustain these interactions are called ba, and they define the proper physical, mental, and virtual spaces, or any combination of them, that make specific knowledge transformations possible. However, this model is not totally clear when it comes to addressing the issue of ba sequences. Depending on the nature of the knowledge before and after transformation, four kinds of functional ba (originating, interacting, cyber and exercising) figure in the SECI1 matrix (Nonaka, 1994; Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995), but none of them have been examined analytically. Moreover, something beyond transfer—an exchange—is entailed between an individual who gives knowledge and one who receives it. Authors of several articles dealing with the concept of knowledge 1
SECI is the acronym for the four parts of the knowledge creation cycle: Socialization, Externalization, Combination, and Internalization (Nonaka, 1994; Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995). A. Bounfour (*) European Chair on Intellectual Capital Management & PESOR, Université Paris-Sud, 54, Boulevard Desgranges, 92330 Sceaux, France e-mail: [email protected] G. Grefe Granem (Groupe de recherches angevin en économie et management), Université Angers, 13, allée François Mitterrand, BP 13633, 49100 Angers Cedex 01, France e-mail: [email protected] A. Berthoin Antal et al. (eds.), Learning Organizations: Extending the Field, Knowledge and Space 6, DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-7220-5_3, © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014
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transfer (Berthon, 2003; Habib, 2008; Monnier-Sénicourt, 2005) have attempted to analyze its process within each interaction, but very few researchers have considered the global-exchange approach (Ferrary, 2003). And none have provided an explanation of the relationship between the dynamics of knowledge transfer and the “spirit” of exchange that governs the actors. Our research originates in the lack of clarification about the connection between knowledge exchanges and the force that drives them. To explore how organizational communities grow and how they develop their own memory, we question the logic of individuals’ input to that transfer knowledge. By analyzing the interactions within occupational communities, we hope to offer new leverage to managers seeking incentives for knowledge transfer. This research can aid m
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