How do people learn and create knowledge as individuals and in groups?: A study of the IIM Bangalore students

Abstract

The introduction and understanding developed related to the theories of “Knowledge” and “Learning” during one of the courses at Indian Institute of Management Bangalore has spurred our interest, and prompted us to do this research project on knowledge creation and learning in individuals – by themselves and in group settings. The SocializationExternalization-Combination-Internalization (SECI) model formulated by Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi in 1995 will serve as the fundamental framework around which this study paper revolves. The primary reason for choosing this framework is that in our workexperience before coming to the institute, and during the course here, we have seen these processes to manifest themselves repeatedly in a more or less similar fashion and explained in detail in the next section. The aim of this paper is to study and understand the process of knowledge creation. Further, we also wanted to observe its conversion from tacit to explicit knowledge and vice versa, with respect to the IIM Bangalore students. We wanted to understand what role do the four stages in SECI model play for the individual, and their relative importance in the process of creating, absorbing, refining and transferring the knowledge. The teams formed during the academic terms in the IIM Bangalore are short-lived (10- 12 weeks), dynamic, and span a variety of disciplines from Organizational Behaviour to Supply Chain Management. By understanding the relevance of SECI model in this setting, we hope that this paper could help the individuals at IIM Bangalore in gaining insights into this process, and make the best use of the four stages to acquire, retain and transfer the knowledge which he/she creates. We wanted to study the relevance of this SECI model with working students (PGPEM course) across different industries and analyse the process of knowledge creation and conversion. As a general example, consider a kid who is going through the process of learning about the world. She learns the ethos of the society by interacting with his surrounding and the people in it (Socialization). She is educated about the rationale behind the customs with the help of scientific reasoning and Holy Scriptures. The kid asks questions, reflects on the answer received and evidence presented to her, and over time those ethos become the part of her intuition, which is essentially the internalization part of the SECI model. There is a suitability factor between the course structure and learning methods at IIM Bangalore, and the framework. The circumstances required for studying the SECI model and the process of conversion of knowledge are embedded in these two elements. Individuals with diverse backgrounds interact periodically with each other and share their experiences. Candidates are evaluated based on their learning as individuals, and they are also a part of project groups where the groups are judged based on their collective learning. From our experience, we can say that during each of these interactions, a person experiences any one of the processing the SECI model trying to absorb the knowledge around, and fine-tuning what she had learned in the light of new knowledge. In studying and understanding the concept of knowledge, we have referenced other literature published related to these topics whenever we deemed it to be a necessity. There have also been criticisms1 around the SECI model for being culture specific and also, for lacking empirical evidence. We would like to emphasize here that the limited sample size of the IIM Bangalore students we interviewed does not allow us to draw inferences about the cultural influences, or put forward any strong assertions related to the learning mechanism of an individual in this setting. Also, as is the case with qualitative research projects, the insights we gathered during the interviews and the interpretation of claims made by the interviewees are subjective. Nevertheless, this paper will help the readers in getting a glimpse of the knowledge creation process in students at IIM Bangalore and might prompt other candidates to do further research on this topic of knowledge creation within individuals at the institute or other formal and informal settings.