“The basic argument is that knowledge creation is a synthesizing process through which an organization interacts with individuals and the environment to transcend emerging contradictions that the organization faces” [8].
The process moves from tacit knowledge to explicit knowledge and back. “Tacit knowledge is personal, context-specific, and therefore hard to formalize and communicate. Explicit or codified knowledge, on the other hand, refers to knowledge that is transmittable in formal, systematic language” [9]. Tacit knowledge tends to be specific to a context (available in a particular time and place), practical, routine, and procedural. Explicit knowledge can transcend a specific context (and is transferable to other times and places) and tends to be rationalizing, theoretical, and declarative.
Nonaka postulates four modes of “knowledge conversion that are created when tacit and explicit knowledge interact.”