The document discusses a study examining how social media facilitates tacit knowledge sharing among public sector professionals. It provides background on the study, which is part of a larger doctoral thesis. The study aims to understand how social media enables tacit knowledge sharing and what contextual factors support this. A literature review identified themes of social media affordances and the concept of "Ba," which refers to a shared context for knowledge exchange. An online survey of over 1,000 professionals found that a social platform facilitated learning, expertise sharing, problem-solving, and innovation by enabling interactions and visibility of tacit knowledge, though it did not notably increase productivity. Findings provided insights into how social interactions and different types of "Ba" support tacit knowledge

1. TACIT KNOWLEDGE SHARING
IN ONLINE ENVIRONMENTS:
locating 'Ba' within a platform for public sector professionals.
Centre for Social Informatics - School of Computing - Edinburgh Napier University
Iris Buunk, Prof. Hazel Hall, Dr Colin F. Smith
@irisbuunk
27-30 June 2017

2. CONTENT
 Background
 Themes
 Social media affordances
 The concept of 'Ba'
 Survey implementation
 Findings
 Learning processes
 Expertise sharing
 Problem-solving
 Innovation
 Productivity
 New understandings
 Questions & Discussion

3. BACKGROUND
Part of larger doctoral study
Easier, faster, better? How social media facilitate the sharing of tacit
knowledge between employees within public sector organisations.
Paper based on preliminary results from survey.
Literature review Online surveyMethodology Interviews Data analysis Thesis

4. BACKGROUND
Research Questions
 How do social media facilitate the
sharing of tacit knowledge between
employees?
 To what extent do social media bring new
capabilities in the sharing of tacit
knowledge?
 Which situated factors may provide the
appropriate context for using social
media to enhance tacit knowledge
sharing practices?

5. TACIT KNOWLEDGE?
Assumptions
Intuition
Ideas
Understanding Routines
Expertise
Skills
Know-how
Problem solving
Best practices
Tips &
Tricks
Mental models
Emotions
Viewpoints
Information
Data
Documentation
Reports
Tacit
Explicit
Technical dimension
Cognitive dimension
(Nonaka, 1994; Panahi, Watson, Partridge, 2013)

6. LITERATURE REVIEW THEMES
•Social media affordances (Panahi, 2013)
– Facilitation of tacit knowledge sharing through social media
affordances.
•The concept of ‘Ba’ (Nonaka, 1998)
– Contextual space shared with others from which relationships
emerge, and in which knowledge is exchanged.

7. SOCIAL MEDIA AFFORDANCES (SMA)
Based on the work of Panahi, Watson, Partridge, (2013)
Initiate informal discussions among experts
Informal discussions help people with similar skills and interests to discuss & solve
issues (Hildrum, 2009)
Foster collective intelligence
Enable the connection and addition of employees’ intelligence which consequently
enhances collective intelligence (Razmerita, Karchner and Nabeth, 2014).
Make tacit and personal knowledge visible
 Facilitate online social interactions & help employees discover sources of expertise
within the network (Mansour et al., 2011)
 Decrease time & effort needed for sharing knowledge
 Help in communicating tacit knowledge and reduce time & efforts needed for knowledge
codification (Gordoyeva, 2010)

8. THE CONCEPT OF 'BA‘

9. THE CONCEPT OF 'BA‘
Characteristics
1. Originating Ba
2. Interacting or Dialoging Ba
3. Cyber or Systemizing Ba
4. Exercising Ba
Concept invented by
Nonaka & Konno (1998).
Inspired by philosopher
Kitaro Nishida
場
Contextual space shared with others from which relationships
emerge, and in which knowledge is exchanged.

10. Socialisation Externalisation
CombinationInternalisation
Existential Reflective
Synthetic
Originating Ba
Interacting Ba
(Dialoging)
Exercising Ba Cyber Ba
(Systemizing )
Face-to-
face
On-the-
site
peer-to-peer
Group-to-
groupSystemic
From
To
Tacit/
tacit
Explicit/
Tacit
Tacit/
Explicit
Explicit/
Explicit
SECI
model
Ba
model
THE 'BA‘ & SECI MODEL

11. Why does it matter?
Tacit knowledge
is highly contextual.
(Koskinen, Pihlanto, Vanharanta, 2003;
Jakubik, 2007; Krishnaveni & Sujatha, 2012)

12. 'Ba' in the literature
• Nonaka, Konno (1998). The Concept of
“Ba”: bulding a foundation for
knowledge creation. California
Management Review, 40
• Choo, W., Chun, & Alvarenga Neto, R.
(2010). Beyond the ba: managing
enabling contexts in knowledge
organizations. Journal of Knowledge
Management, 14(4)
• Martin-Niemi, F., & Greatbanks, R.
(2010). The ba of blogs: enabling
conditions for knowledge conversion
in blog communities. Vine, 40(1)
Bartolacci, C., Isidori, D., Cristalli, C.
Niccolini, F. (2016). Ba evolution. Virtual
spaces for inter-organizational knowledge
creation. Journal of Knowledge
Management, 20(4)

13. RESEARCH DESIGN
Population
• Members of an online social
platform of knowledge sharing
hosted by UK public service.
• Respondents based in various
public & 3rd sector organisations
(national & local Government,
health service, charities) mainly in
Scotland.

14. RESEARCH DESIGN
Online survey
• Demographic questions
• Digital usage of social media
features
• Knowledge sharing practices
(Lickert scale)

15. RESEARCH DESIGN
Data collection
• Survey opened during 6 weeks (July-August 2016)
• 1062 respondents
Data analysis
• Descriptive statistics
• Smart Survey & Excel
• Fuller analysis to follow (correlations, T-test) after the analysis of
qualitative data

16. Findings
Social platform KHub enables the sharing of tacit
knowledge by facilitating:
1. Learning processes
2. Expertise sharing
3. Problem-solving
4. Innovation
5. Productivity

17. 1.Learning processes
 58% indicated that they agreed or
strongly agreed with this statement,
against a small number (12%) who
disagreed or strongly disagreed
 Learning process occurs during
knowledge conversion between tacit &
explicit knowledge and through social
interactions.
“On KHub I find it easy to develop my learning.”
This correlates with the Exercising Ba

18. 2.Expertise sharing
 58 % indicated that they agreed or
strongly agreed with this statement
against a small number (11%) who
disagreed or strongly disagreed.
 Sharing of knowledge and
expertise facilitated by online
communities of practice.
‘On Knowledge Hub I find it easy to share my knowledge and expertise’.
This correlates with the Interacting Ba

19. 3.Problem solving
63 % indicated that they agreed or strongly
agreed with this statement, against a small
number (10 %) who disagreed or strongly
disagreed.
'On Knowledge Hub I find it easy to request help from others’ .
‘On Knowledge Hub I find it easy to help others to solve their problems’
53 % indicated that they agreed or strongly agreed with this
statement, against a small number (9%) who disagreed or strongly
disagreed.
This correlates with the Interacting Ba
Collaborative media tools can facilitate problem-solving when employees look for
answers among the online community of users.

20. 4.Innovation
52 % indicated that they agreed or strongly
agreed with this statement, against a small
number (14%) who disagreed or strongly
disagreed.
The discovery of ideas can only occur when
those are shared with other members of a
community and through social interactions.
This correlates with the Interacting Ba
‘On Knowledge Hub I find it easy to discover new ideas.’

21. 5.Productivity
Less than a third (30.3%) of the
respondents have agreed or
strongly agreed with this statement,
less than a half (42.90%) neither
disagreed nor agreed.
This does not seem to support what
is suggested in the literature.
‘Knowledge Hub has helped me to save time at work.’

22. DEVELOPMENT OF UNDERSTANDING OF SMA
Panahi et al., 2012 Findings
SMA initiate informal discussions
among experts
Learning process
Problem solving
SMA foster collective intelligence  Innovation
 Expertise sharing
SMA make tacit and personal
knowledge visible
Learning process,
Problem solving
 Innovation
 Expertise sharing
SMA decrease time & effort
needed for sharing knowledge
 Productivity

23. WHAT IS THE LINK?
Social interactions
Expertise
sharing
Informal
discussions
Collective
intelligence
Skills
visibility
Innovation
Problem
solving

24. WHAT IS THE LINK?
Social interactions facilitate the sharing of tacit
knowledge
But in which contextual environment?

25. Socialisation Externalisation
CombinationInternalisation
Physical Mental
Synthetic Virtual
Originating Ba Interacting Ba
Exercising Ba Cyber Ba
Face-to-face
On-the-site
peer-to-peer
Group-to-group
DEVELOPMENT OF UNDERSTANDING
OF THE ‘BA’
Tacit
Tacit Explicit
Explicit
2. Expertise sharing
3. Problem solving
4. Innovation
1. Learning
process
?

26. Thank you.
Any questions?
Next conference:
18th European Conference on Knowledge Management 7 – 8 September 2017
Universitat, Internacional de Catalunya, Spain
‘Skills in Sight: How Social Media Affordances Increase Network Awareness.’

27. @irisbuunk
uk.linkedin.com/in/irisbuunk/en
www.theknowledgeexplorer.org
www.napier.ac.uk/people/iris-buunk
CONTACT

28. REFERENCES
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