What are virtual walls to flow of knowledge in teamwork discussions?

Abstract

Generally, the teamwork discussion involves participants with different characteristics and ideas. These differences could be virtual walls obstructing knowledge flow among team participants. Some of these walls, such as physical appearance and educational background, are easily observed; however, many of them are hidden. This chapter reports on a focus group methodology to identify these inhibitive walls. The results identified by several focus groups were consolidated and categorised into four dimensions:. ■environment■format■process■people.As characteristics of Japanese Ba (such as its comfortable atmosphere, independence from a physical space or subjectivity consideration) are beneficial in the process of knowledge creation in which knowledge flow among participants is transformed to be new knowledge (Nonaka and Konno, 1998), this chapter tends to adopt Ba to cope with the effects of the virtual walls. The proposed four-dimension categories ease the mapping of the inhibitive walls to Ba. We anticipate that the mapping can enhance the capability of information flow in an organisation. Moreover, the mapping can further relate in whatever ways are relevant to these inhibitive walls to organisational objectives and ecosystems as the underlying elements in knowledge-creating firms (Nonaka and Toyama, 2005). © 2011 Woodhead Publishing Limited All rights reserved.