The Japanese concept of BA for Knowledge Management

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Strategic Knowledge Communities

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One may talk about a good ba when relational situations energize people making them creative within positive and dynamic interactions.

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Reality is a succession of events that flows without stopping, wrote Kitaro Nishida. The use of ba concept comes from this philosopher who pointed out that way a physical space where a hidden power is lying, where one can receive energy when diving in.

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Ba is not just a spot but also a moment in which one might live a transformation process but also an emergent one.

A ba could be memorized and opened to a continuity of relation within a kind of atmosphere that refers to a particular feeling linked to a community’s shared space and time. What we call time, space and material force are simply concepts established in order to organize these facts and to explain them (Nishida). In this perspective, a ba could be assimilated to a sort of level of consciousness.

Ba is a Kanji ideogram whose left part means ground, boiling water or what is rising and whose right part means to enable. On the one side it points out a potential and from the other a kind of engine that gives a direction. The right part of the ideogram refers to the yin and yang philosophy of permanent transformation.

For Ikujiro Nonaka, a ba could be thought as a shared space for emerging relationships? This space can be physical (e.g. office, dispersed business space), mental (e.g. shared experiences, ideas, ideals) or any combination of them. What differentiates ba from any ordinary human interactions is the concept of knowledge creation. Ba provides a platform that a transcendental perspective integrates all transformation needed. Ba may also be thought as the recognition of the self in all. According to the theory of existentialism, ba is a context which harbors meaning. Thus, we consider ba to be shared space that serves as a foundation for knowledge creation.

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As a positive and voluntary field of constraints, ba is favorable to constructive human interactions between selves and between them and their useful environments.

Exchanges of data, of information and opinion, collaboration and mobilization on a project to face necessities and the unknown convey ba within an organization. It could be understood as emptiness appropriated for emergence or as a kind of “oriented but not so determined” opened, tacit and consensual space.

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Ba does not come to reality by decrees. It is not produced by the command and control model of traditional pyramidal management.

On the contrary, is set up by voluntary membership within an “energize and stimulate” mode through care and mutual respect. Ba is fundamentally subjective and relational and one involves in because it is ruled by common interest and because there is no conflicts within human relationships.

Referring to the four stages of SECI model from Nonaka, it is possible to consider ba through different particularities: its emergence, the socialization it provides, the systematic interaction it allows and finally its effect as an agent for internalization.

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Ba includes a tacit component when emotions, experiences, feelings and mental images are shared.

It provides a context for socialization and existential space for individuals transcend their limits through physical implication of the broad spectrum of their capacities. Nonaka used to say that care, love, confidence and responsibility are required. In addition to this inter-individual relationship, a collective one opens to practices, values, processes, culture and climate to be shared in a more or less formalized way.

Virtual ba may function using information and communication technologies and distant networking. Interactions combine tacit and explicit within knowledge spirals. At last, ba provides adequate context for internalization of knowledge and catalyzes reflection actually transformed in action! Effective ba could be revealed in various ways. For example, while passing within a store, weak signals could be perceived and then combined and enriched with other data, hypothesis about markets, purchase attitudes or scenarios about future…

Ba is what allowed scrupulous observers to be tuned within right rhythms in order to take efficient decisions in terms for instance of supplies, answers to questions or ways to present services and products… Interaction with consumers and users might create global ba too. Relationships within a ba do not exist a-priori, they are not pre-determined or coming from any extra solid model out of human implications.

The inner coherency of ba reveals itself through organic interactions based on vision and community knowledge effort rather than as the effect of a mechanical concentration produced by a dominant center. These interactions lead to apparition of a higher self and continuous exchanges strengthen inner relationships. Individuals create the ba of teams which create the one of organizations.

Read more about Ba and Knowledge Management : Le réveil du samouraï. Culture et stratégie japonaise dans la société de la connaissance. Pierre Fayard, Ed. Dunod, Paris 2006.

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Comments

[Rédigé par: Wiki]

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[Rédigé par: PF]

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[Rédigé par: wikipedia]

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[Rédigé par: Wiki]

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