Nonaka Knowledge Management (Criticism) Reply back to Prof. Mark Woodman comments

As I already have given my criticism on Nonaka knowledge management in my blog and here I am going to give a reply back to the comments which are given by Professor Mark Woodman.

Here I will reply to all the issues one by one.

Part1:
In this part I will discus the Nonaka Seci model in operation In hotel type organization.
According to Nonaka there are four different modes of knowledge conversion which are Socialization, Externalization, Internalization and Combination. All of these four modes revolve around Tacit or Explicit knowledge and here we will see how these different modes play an important role in my organization (hotel-type).

Though Nonaka didn’t describe precisely from which mode his model starts with but his spiral model pictures and literature starts with Socialization. It can also be another debate that from which mode someone will start implementing the model. According to my understanding it depends on organization to organization but I’ll start with Socialization as Nonaka has described.

Socialization:
This mode describes the conversion from individual tacit knowledge to group tacit knowledge.
My organization (hotel) is one of the industries where customer satisfaction is a main factor and every single employee is equally responsible to provide the best customer services. A hotel reception is a very first place from where a guest makes his/her mind about the quality so being as a receptionist it is also a very first place from where knowledge (tacit knowledge) starts by observing and interacting with guests.
This individual tacit knowledge converts to group tacit knowledge by sharing the knowledge with other staff people (Receptionists, house keeping, Restaurant and Management etc).

Externalization:
This mode describes the conversion from tacit knowledge to explicit knowledge.
In hotel industry the individual/group tacit knowledge which we employee share with each other bring new ideas and if those ideas are applicable, management converts them into the explicit form.

Combination:
This mode describes the conversion from separate explicit knowledge to systemic explicit knowledge.
My hotel is a multinational organization and having more then 100 branches nation wide. Explicit knowledge of one branch don’t stay or applicable to one and only that particular branch but that explicit knowledge shares through out all the branches via head office and then each and every branch look into it, if the applicability of that explicit knowledge is possible to that particular branch or not. In this way the separate explicit knowledge becomes the systemic explicit knowledge.

Internalization:
This mode describes the conversion from explicit knowledge to tacit knowledge.
As I have said we do have more then 100 branches nation wide and also operating overseas as well. Head office issue the orders (explicit knowledge) to all of the branches which comes to the General Manager of a branch and then general manager forward that order (explicitly or tacitly depends on the situation) to the managers and then managers inform their team members tacitly. This is how the explicit knowledge from head office in the form of a notice converts into tacit knowledge in a branch to the end employees through the team managers.

A Real Time Example:
My hotel (Premier Inn) has a standard uniform in which hotel provides shirts to their employees while employees wear their own trousers, in some cases employees also have given the trousers.
We have a trend of getting together once in every 3 or 4 month time and all the employees of one branch go outside for a party and we call this an even gathering.
In case of an event gathering, the employees from some other branch cover that branch that is going outside so employees from different branches get a chance to go to the other branches. Similarly we also went to another branch for a night shift which is located at M4/J4 (Motorway4/ junction4 Premier Inn) when they were out for an event.
The night when we were working in there, the GM of that branch was staying in the hotel after coming back from the party and we already been informed about him that he is going to stay in that hotel. Me and my colleague who is also my house mate we were working together in their and we always wear our own black suite with the company shirt. When GM arrived at hotel after attending the party he introduced himself to us and asked about the uniform if that suite is given by the company and he really appreciated that we look professionals by wearing our own suites and he will ask the company to provide the suites as a uniform to everyone.
So here all the conversation with GM is Socialization (which is the conversion from individual tacit knowledge to explicit tacit knowledge).
After that he forward a proposal to the head office about a new uniform in which he asked if a new uniform (black suite) can be introduced which calls Externalization (this is the conversion from tacit knowledge to explicit knowledge).
Head office also appreciated that idea and issue notices to all of the company branches (GMs) in which company asked everyone to wearing a suite. This is Combination (this is the conversion from separate explicit knowledge to systemic explicit knowledge).
On a branch level GM’s issue notices to their team managers to enforce that everyone wears a suite and team managers informed all of their team members verbally that everyone should have to wear a suite from now which is Internalization (A conversion from explicit to tacit)

Part2:
In this part I will discus the terminology hard lines which I have used in my blog and also why the relevant knowledge must have to be explicit. Are there not circumstances where a new member of staff acquire knowledge by observing and copying what other staff does?

In my hotel, Premier Inn has a brand standard (the instruction which we must have to follow) and we can’t negotiate on brand standard. The brand standard is available in written form to all the employees all the time and they can consult that any time they want to so I used the word Hard Lined instead of brand standard.

My point was to high light those areas where we haven’t given any explicit material to consult, especially regarding to the information system usage. We been told only once how to use that system and that’s it, which is not enough to get know how about any system. It becomes really very crucial when there is a long queue at reception to check in and there is only one receptionist and no one else to assist that receptionist and not even any explicit material to consult with. It is also critical in terms of customer services as no one likes to wait for a long time at reception to get a room as professional people comes to the hotel at late night after their work.
So if we have all the necessary procedure in terms of information system usage available explicitly then it becomes easy to solve the information system related problems.

There are certain things which can be learnt by copying other staff members like as the formal greetings to the guests and to inform the hotel policy about their stay etc which is all verbal and it is also a communication skill rather then a technical skill.
In terms of information system usage it’s a technical skill and technical skills only can be gained after doing some practice, it can never be learnt by copying someone else.
It also becomes difficult for employees like us as we work on night shifts and some time its only one person who runs the hotel so if we have a problem we can’t acquire an immediate help.
In terms of using information system (especially for night staff who runs all the end of day reports and micros etc) it becomes more crucial where everything is dependent to another and getting stuck with one matter means you cant do anything else.
For example first of all we do the micros account posting (technical term which is relevant to information system) then the micros end of day. At 04:00 A.M we do the banking. If there is something wrong with the micros we cant run our banking so here it can be seen how important is it to having all the instruction explicitly available to avoid any kind of inconvenience.