Page 88 -

Knowledge Management Models 71

It is possible to structure metaphors, models, and analogies in an organizational
KM design. The fi rst principle is to have built-in redundancy to make sure that there
is overlapping information. Redundancy will make it easier to articulate content, to
share content, and to make use of it. An example is to set up several competing groups,
to build in a rotational strategy so workers do a variety of jobs, and to provide easy
access to company information via a single integrated knowledge base.
Knowledge sharing and use happens through the knowledge spiral that, “ starting
at the individual level and moving up through expanding communities of interaction
[. . .] crosses sectional, departmental, divisional and organizational boundaries ”
(Nonaka and Takeuchi 1995, 72). Nonaka and Takeuchi argue that an organization
has to promote a facilitating context in which both the organizational and the indi-
vidual knowledge-creation processes can easily take place, acting as a spiral. They
describe the following “ enabling conditions for organizational knowledge creation ” :
Intention An organization ’ s aspiration to its goals (strategy formulation in a business
setting)
Autonomy To allow individuals to act autonomously, according to the “ minimum
critical specifi cation ” principle, and involved in cross-functional self-organized teams
Fluctuation and creative chaos To stimulate the interaction between the organization
and the external environment and/or create fl uctuations and breakdowns by means
of creative chaos or strategic “ equivocality ”
Redundancy Existence of information that goes beyond the immediate operational
requirements of organizational members; competing multiple teams on the same issue;
strategic rotation of personnel
Requisite variety Internal diversity to match the variety and complexity of the environ-
ment; to provide to everyone in the organization the fastest access to the broadest
variety of necessary information; fl at and fl exible organizational structure interlinked
with effective information networks
The Nonaka and Takeuchi model has proven to be one of the more robust in the
fi eld of KM and it continues to be applied in a variety of settings. One of its greatest
strengths is the simplicity of the model — both in terms of understanding the basic
tenets of the model and in terms of being able to quickly internalize and apply the
KM model. One of the major shortcomings is that while valid, it does not appear to
be suffi cient to explain all of the stages involved in managing knowledge. The Nonaka
and Takeuchi model focuses on the knowledge transformations between tacit and
explicit knowledge, but the model does not address larger issues of how decision
making takes place by leveraging both these forms of knowledge.