Organisational Knowledge Creation Theory and Knowledge Workplaces

To be able to develop offices for knowledge workers in knowledge-intensive organisations, one should understand the activity of knowledge creation and the concept ‘Ba’ (the shared context and the place) where knowledge is created. This chapter is addressing knowledge creation in organisations and the concept Ba supporting it. The nature of places supporting each phase of the knowledge creation process is acting as a bridge between the concept Ba and application of the concept in workplace research and management, since it connects the features of a place to a certain phase of the knowledge creation process. Together the concept Ba and the nature of places supporting each phase of the knowledge creation process are addressing the ability of a space to support different forms of knowledge-sharing behaviour and knowledge creation. Special focus is on the framework supporting the data analysis of requirements the different user groups have for their workplaces, so that the workplaces created can facilitate the activities needed. This chapter also gives a tool to combine the findings of a certain study to the body of knowledge in the field of transdisciplinary workplace research.