Advancing Knowledge Creation Modelling Through Improved Organizational Communications

Abstract

The basis of competition in today’s marketplace is changing from one based on human labor, to one where the principle source of value creation is an organization’s knowledge, and the organization’s ability to rapidly acquire new knowledge through learning. The rise of the knowledge economy in today’s marketplace is an indicator these changes are occurring. Businesses, for example, collected more customer information in 2010, than in all prior years combined. The amount of corporate data being collected is said to be doubling every six months. Researchers are reporting that the huge increase in the amount and availability of information is causing an information overload condition. Organizations have to counter information overload by improving how they use information to learn, and also improving how they translate and manage the knowledge obtained from learning. A large part of organizational learning involves knowledge conversion modes or processes that transform knowledge states between an individual and group focus, and between tacit and explicit forms, as the organization’s core knowledge levels evolve iteratively to increasingly refined levels of accumulated base knowledge. Such knowledge conversion, and the organizational learning that accompanies it, rely on effective communications within the organization. Based on research data collected through personal interviews of industry representatives, this dissertation recommends steps that businesses can take to make their organizational learning more efficient through improved communication practices, and thereby achieve better firm performance. The recommendations are identified by comparing how a firm should communicate to learn (as guided by the elements proffered in Ikujiro Nonaka’s organizational learning model), and then assessing whether the firm has the communications and messaging capabilities in place to implement the model. Any gaps in capabilities required to implement the organizational learning model were made the basis of recommendations to fill the gaps by constructing a new enhanced learning model.