Introduction to Nonaka's Knowledge Management Model - SECI
"SECI", introduced Ikujurio Nonaka and his colleagues, a professor at University of California and Hitotusbashi University, was the first Knowledge Management Model. It is also known as SECI model, an acronym for all the four process which are required in a knowledge generating and sharing community. It was first published in 1991.
S-Socialisation
E-Externalisation
C-Combination
I-Internalization
(Nonaka. I, 1995)
Basically all the four stages are the process of transforming one form of knowledge to another, not necessarily changing the knowledge form.
In Socialisation, tacit knowledge is transformed to tacit knowledge. This is mainly done through mutual conversations between the people, where one person transfer his/her tacit knowledge gained through experiences in life or by learning to opposite person (Tom De Geyterem, 2007).
In Externalisation, tacit knowledge is transformed to explicit knowledge. This process ensures that the knowledge is available to others even after the person who had gained the original tacit knowledge is not lost after the unavailability of the person (Tom De Geytere, 2007).
In Combination, explicit knowledge is transformed to more complex form of explicit knowledge (Tom De Geytere, 2007).
In Internalization, explicit knowledge is transformed to tacit knowledge (Tom De Geytere, 2007).
Critical Analysis of SECI Knowledge Management Model
Despite one of the most widely accepted Knowledge Management Model, I find certain drawbacks in this model. They are as follows:
1. Neglecting Cultural Influence
Different countries have different employment culture. The frequency of change in job by people varies from country to country. E.g. in Japan, people tend to remain in the same organisation for their whole life, whereas is country like India, people change jobs very frequently, especially in the private sector. Now in such scenarios Socialisation can be a big problem.
2. Neglecting Competitiveness
People acquire tacit knowledge by investing their time and effort. They may be very reluctant to share this knowledge with their colleagues, especially in a competitive environment of the modern age, where everyone wants to move upwards into their career. The organisation's employee retention policy also plays an important role in this phenomenon.
Moreover, SECI model prescribes that in Socialisation, people will share their tacit knowledge. Even though this model was developed in USA, Ikujurio Nonaka who is originally from Japan, may have kept in mind the Japanese Working Culture, where Socialisation has much less barriers and in very easy to implement.
This argument is also supported by Parissa Haghirian as follows:
"Individuals and organizations share several dimensions of context, e.g. climate, nationality, education, political, justice, economic, and other systems; corporate governance; management styles, and incentive schemes (Doz et al. 1997b) and each of these dimensions can influence the knowledge transfer process."
(Haghirian. P, 2003)
3. Suitability:
All the four stages of the SECI appear to be very good in theory, but they are very difficult to implement in real life. All the organisations will not be able to implement all the four stages successfully, especially in organisations where knowledge itself is very unclear.
E.g. In Information Technology Companies, where I have worked in past, these stages are easy to implement. Because you have very specific tacit and explicit knowledge, as most of the facets of computer hardware and software (IT in general) is based on predefined theories and rules. E.g. In software development, you face one problem, you find the solution, and then code it to the documents or some centralised knowledge repository system for the later use or to be used by some others (Knowledge Repository). Here knowledge creation and sharing is very clear and easy to implement.
But organisations like Product Design where I am working right now, the existing knowledge is not at all concrete. You have gained some knowledge from years of imagination and experiences which is very difficult to express in terms of code or document and very difficult to convey it to others. In organisations like this, I feel SECI model will not be suitable.
References
Hamel G., Doz Y. and Prahalad C. K. (1989). Collaborate with your competitors, and win.
Harvard Business Review, 67 (2)
Nonaka I. & Takeuchi H. (1995), "The Knowledge-Creating Company: How Japanese Companies Create the Dynamics of Innovation", Oxford University Press.
Perez. P (2002)
Retrieved January 27, 2008,
from http://www.knowledgeboard.com/item/380/23/5/3
Tom De Geytere (2007), "Unified model of dynamic organisational knowledge creation"
Retrieved January 27, 2008
from http://www.12manage.com/methods_nonaka_seci.html
6 comments:
Samir
That is a good critique of the Nonaka's model with fair examples. However, you need to reference this model appropriately using standard referencing techniques (e.g. Harvard Referencing 2007 )
You can also find information about referencing in my research methods blog
This is a great criticism of the Nonaka approach because of cultural influences. I think there is also a time influence. How you characterise workers in India is more widespread than just India: it may be true in the UK and Western Europe more and more.
You seem to be implying that if you move jobs frequently you want to take your knowledge with you and keep it precious. So there is a disadvantage to sharing. You might want to acquire but not make your own knowledge explicit for the benefit of an organisation you plan to leave.
It would be useful if you were to explore the effect of "silos" in an organisation. Do they preserve and create knowledge internally but prevent it being shared outside the silo but within the organisation?
In this post, your definition of Socialization and externalisation is the same thing that is transfering tacit knowledge to explicit knowledge. Nonaka mentioned transfer of tacit knowledge to tacit knowledge through socialisation. Please chech and revert.
Contrary to your last comment, i believe the process of socialisation will work very well in a place where much of the knowledge is tacit because given the right enviromental setting, tacit knowledge will rob-off on others when people socialise more.
First of all Thank you Tubo for finding the mistake I made in the blog. Really thanks for that.
As far as your second comment about transfer of tacit knowledge in organisations where most of the knowledge is tacit, the problem i have highlighted is that sometimes the tacit knowledge is such that it is very difficult to express it to somebody. That is why I gave the example of product design companies. I would like to give you one more example. Yesterday I say Top Gear on some channel. They had Lewis Hamilton as guest. They gave him a junk piece of car and told him to drive on a slippery road. This exercise has been done by Top Gear people with all the Formula1 drivers they have as guests. Now Lewis Hamilton got the third best time that too on a slippery surface. They host asked him how did you do that. He said that I seriously do not know. See this is the best example of how people find it difficult to express the tacit knowledge they have.
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