ABSTRACT
This chapter builds a vocabulary for describing knowledge communication practices in global organisations. The vocabulary builds mainly on Nonaka and Takeuchi’s SECI model (Socialisation, Externalisation, Combination and Internalisation). The model was adopted with reservations arising from the discussion of the tacit and explicit dimensions of knowledge which the SECI model builds on. The discussion emphasises that externalised knowledge, which is seen as explicit in Nonaka and Takeuchi’s model, has tacit presuppositions, i.e., it presupposes that the person internalising the knowledge possesses some pre-existing knowledge necessary to understand what is being communicated. This argument entails that communicating knowledge is a complete process requiring interaction between knowers and between knowers and knowledge products. In this discussion, the chapter also proposes that knowers may have different preferences or perceptions of what useful knowledge is in terms of being more or less explicit. The chapter also presents two case analyses to offer a practice perspective on the theories.
