Knowledge Management and the SECI Model

This assignment delves into the concept of Knowledge Management (KM) within organizations, emphasizing its importance for positive outcomes. It focuses on applying the SECI Model – Socialization, Externalization, Combination, and Internalization – to understand how tacit and explicit knowledge are created, shared, and utilized. The assignment highlights the role of KM in improving employee understanding, organizational effectiveness, and driving planned change.

Running head: Knowledge Management (KM) 1
Knowledge Management (KM)
Name of Student
Name of Institution

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Knowledge Management (KM)
Knowledge Management (KM)
1. Introduction
1.1. Definition
Knowledge management is described as the process of harnessing, distributing and
effectively utilising the information and knowledge in an organization. The notion about KM
was realised in 20 years ago involved in organizing the information in a holistic manner.
Knowledge management is also involved in preventing the staff from regularly coming up
with new ideas and instead provides a baseline in efforts to bring about progress
measurements and reducing the aspect of expert attrition. The KM is also an important
visual and tangible element that helps in managing in an effective manner the huge volumes
of information that helps workers to serve the clients in a plausible and swift way.
Knowledge management is also looked at as a discipline which promotes a superb and
integrated perspective important for identifying, evaluating, capturing, retrieving and even
sharing all important information assents within an organization. Such informational assets
can involve databases, procedures, policies, documents and the experience and some other
untapped expertise by individual workers (McInerney, 2011).
1.2. Needs of Knowledge management
Therefore, the ideal needs of the knowledge management involve finding
appropriate ways of capturing the organizational information, evaluating this knowledge to
review its impertinence to the organization and also there is the need for sharing the

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information or knowledge with an aim of helping the workers and the general organization
to grow positively (Ferguson, 2005).
1.3. Benefits of Knowledge management
There are some benefits of knowledge management that make the practice ideal in
today’s organizational setting and operations. For in instance, the KM has a role of
protecting the organization’s intellectual capital. This involves the knowledge held by
different levels of the organization including the management, employees and other
sources. There is also a benefit of KM that helps the organization to be focused towards the
most important assets such as human capital. This is the ideal importance of knowledge
management s it capitalizes on effectiveness of human capital (Durham, 2004). The KM has
also the benefit of connecting or linking people to people through setting up of the
collaborative techniques of organizational management. Further, the knowledge
management helps in opening up of new pathways for collaboration and sharing of
information within organizations. This is a great benefit of networking and helps improves
management or human resources (McInerney, 2011).
2. Company profile
2.1. Company History
Louis Upton founded the company at around 1911. The company was started by
Louis Upton and his uncle Emory Upton who had a machine shop. After his business failed,
Louis Upton took some patents on the manual washers for clothes and to make the system
work better he approached his uncle to know if it was possible to acquire an electric motor

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for the washer. With a help of around 5000 dollars the two began to make electric washers
and afterwards the younger brother to Louis Upton joined the company (Newman, 2006).
Commonwealth Edison was the first customer for the company and at first ordered about
100 washers. This was the opening years and the company improved year after year and in
1929 the expanding company merged with Nineteen Hundred Washer Company from New
Yolk. In the successive years the company continues to expand increasing some other
important brands for laundry products (Newman, 2006).
2.2. Nature of business
2.2.1. Areas of operation
Whirlpool Corporation is an important multinational manufacturer and also a marketer
for home appliances that has its headquarters in Michigan, Benton Charter Town in United
States. The multinational is huge and located near the Benton Harbour of Michigan.
The company was described as the largest in making of domestic or home appliances
across the globe. Some important markets of the company are KitchenAid, Maytag, Amana,
Jenn Air, Inglis, Indesit, Gladiator, Consul, Brastemp and GarageWorks. There are also eight
manufacturing branches for Whirlpool in the United States. These facilities are Amana,
Iowa; Cleveland, Tennessee; Ohio, Clyde, Marion, Greenville, Findlay and Tulsa, Oklahoma
(Lee, 2003).
2.2.2. Company size
The whirlpool multinational has great revenue of an estimated 21 billion dollars. The
company has also a vast number of employees that total to an estimated 100000. The

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extensive manufacturing company has further 70 research centres involved in technology
and manufacturing from all over the world.
3. Ares of knowledge locations
3.1. People
People make important assets in any organization and the only way to use the value
of people s to harness the information they have. People with important expertise in an
organization should be identified and used as in providing the ever important knowledge
that should be used in positively transforming an organization. For instance, apart from
employees there are many other people with different status in an organization. For
instance, whirlpool has many employees who are critical in enhancing organizational
performance. These employees are the lower personnel who undertake daily functions such
as marketing, branding, transportation and communication type organizations products to
the clients. There are other middle people such as the departmental managers which are
important in enhancing the operational systems such as making sure the technology,
budgets and records are well developed for efficiency of the functions. There are also the
higher level people in an organization such as the executive mangers who are the
developers of critical strategies that are used in bringing about positive changes in an
organization (Capozzi, 2007).
3.2. Artifacts
With help of people, artefacts are developed in an organization. For instance, there
are procedures that are followed and used day to day by the employees. For instance,

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Whirlpool has effective procedures that help it and the huge number of employees to
undertake the company functions in an orderly manner. The procedures are developed on a
process which clearly stats the way forward in an organization (McInerney, 2011).
3.3. Entities
The entities are also critical and involve different departments and units. For
instance, the whirlpool has many units or departments such as the research unit, marketing
unit, the budgeting unit, the distribution unit, the human resources unit among others. The
unit helps in easy and swift dissemination of knowledge to these departments foe effective
functioning of the employees (Ponzi, 2002).
4. Application of knowledge engineering through SECI Model
4.1. SECI Model
SECI model involves the element of implicit and explicit in business and appreciates the
nature of dynamism that the knowledge creates including a strategic framework for
managing relevant processes.
4.1.1. Socialization- tacit to tacit
Socialization is a KM dimension that explores the levels of social interaction to
involve the tacit information sharing via experiences. For instance, meetings can be held to
brainstorm which helps in this type of interaction. This kind of knowledge can only be
acquired via shared experiences including having to spend time and also living in similar
environmental settings (Nonaka, 2000).

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4.1.2. Externalization- tacit to explicit
Externalization involves tacit to explicit information through articulating knowledge
and publishing together with developing factors that help in embending a link between
tacit knowledge that enable communication to occur. For instance, aspects of images,
written documents and concepts involved in this respect (Gourlay, 2003).
4.1.3. Combination- explicit to explicit
Combination involves an aspect of organizing a integrating of knowledge such as use
of different building prototypes. Use of vast databases and computerised networks are
involved in this type of interaction (Nonaka, 2000).
4.1.4. Internalization- explicit to tacit
Internalization is concerned with application and reception of knowledge from an
individual’s point of view. It involves continuous use of individuals in acquiring collective
connections through ideals and concepts people possess (Ponzi, 2002).
5. Conclusion
KM is therefore an effective tool to use in an organization as to bring forth positive
results such as improved knowledge about employees, units and also people. This
knowledge is critical in measuring the effectiveness of an organization and driving the
expected and planned change (Gupta, 2004).

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References
McInerney, Claire, (2011), The Knowledge Management process in an Organization, the
Theoretical Foundation and the Practice, Morgan & Claypool.
Ponzi, Leonard, (2002). Knowledge Management- the other Management, Information
Research, 8(1)
Durham, (2004). Three Critical Roles for Knowledge Management, In M.E.D. Koenig & T. K.
Srikantaia, Medford NJ, pp. 23-36)
Newman, Rick (2006). Maytag Buy, Whirlpool Is Awash in Sales, the. U.S. News & World
Report
Nonaka, I, (2000). SECI, and leadership, the unified models of dynamic knowledge
management, Long Range Planning, 33, pp 5–34
Gourlay, Stephen (2003), SECI model of knowledge creation- some empirical shortcomings,
4th European Conference, Oxford, England, pp. 18-19
Lee M. Maxwell (2003). Save Women Lives: History of Washing Machines. Oldewash, pp. 49
Capozzi, (2007). The Knowledge Management Architecture beyond the Technology, vol, 12
(6)
Ferguson, J. (2005). Bridging gap between the research and practice, Knowledge
Management Development Journal,Vol, 1 (3): pp. 46–54.

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Gupta, Jatinder, (2004). Creating the Knowledge Based Organization, the Boston, Ideal
Group Publishing Inc