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1. Introduction
The concept of ba developed by Nonaka and his colleagues (for example [13] Nonaka et al. , 2000, [9] Nonaka and Konno, 1998) has highly influenced the development of knowledge-based management. [9] Nonaka and Konno (1998) consider ba as a shared space that is used as the foundation for the creation of (individual and/or collective) knowledge. The creation of knowledge and the conversion of knowledge - as shown in the socialization, externalization, combination, internalization (SECI) model ([10] Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995) - are indeed very important factors for the success of a firm.
However, it can be argued that the most important factor for the sustainable and successful future of an organization is the generation of self-transcending knowledge or the access to individual and collective self-transcending knowledge. This sort of knowledge has been introduced by [17] Scharmer (2001) and by [13] Nonaka et al. (2000, p. 8).
This paper will focus on the access to self-transcending knowledge and on the conversion from self-transcending knowledge to embodied knowledge. Therefore the authors will introduce a new type of ba called "vocation ba " and describe the main aspects of this type of ba as well as the methods for vocation ba . Furthermore, some experiences with the methods of vocation ba and from several case studies at the individual level and the collective level will be described.
The rest of the paper is organized into four sections. Section 2 gives some basic information about the concept of ba . Section 3 introduces self-transcending knowledge and summarizes existing methods which tried to incorporate self-transcending knowledge into the SECI/ba model. In section 4 we will introduce vocation ba and the methods within this new type of ba , will be introduced, describing the experience of the authors with these methods in the context of knowledge-based management in practice.
2. The concept of ba
Nonaka and his associates, known for their various works on knowledge management and their theory of organizational knowledge creation (e.g. [10] Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995; [9] Nonaka and Konno, 1998; [11] Nonaka and Toyama, 2005), have "[...] identified the importance of the physical or virtual space of interaction called 'ba ', that is the context for knowledge creation" ([12] Nonaka and...