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Abstract The ubiquitous information society gave birth to quasi-explicit, or formative, knowledge. Formative knowledge is like explicit knowledge in that it can be copied, but unlike explicit knowledge because it is not fixed. Some manufacturers are beginning to adopt approaches to knowledge management that rely on formative knowledge. Such an approach enabled Honda to start production of its newest Civic model almost simultaneously at 12 plants around the globe in 2000. Strong fear of formative knowledge "consumption" by lead consumers made Honda use CAD/CAE networks to nurture a worldwide community of engineers to design the Civic. This innovation reduced Honda's average model transfer time to about a half that of Toyota. Honda's achievement suggests that a new approach to knowledge management is possible, one that lies between Japanese-style knowledge management centered on human mediation and tacit knowledge and Western-style knowledge management based on information technology and explicit knowledge.
Keywords Knowledge management, Organizations
Introduction
The view that knowledge is the source of corporate competitiveness is widely shared in our society, and companies are focusing their efforts on how to accumulate and utilize knowledge as an internal resource. The approach of US corporations has been to utilize a wide range of IT machines and equipment for knowledge management. But knowledge management (KM) has a poorer reputation than other management tools. According to a 1999 survey, corporations are least satisfied with KM among the management techniques that they have introduced. Furthermore, of the 28.5 percent of responding companies that had adopted knowledge management, 18 percent had even decided to discontinue using it. Even IBM, whose business is knowledge management, went through much trial and error before it succeeded with WorldJam. The way Japanese corporations approach KM, on the other hand, is based on the notion that knowledge is not identical with information. Knowledge is a dynamic human process of justifying personal belief toward the "truth", while information is only a commodity capable of yielding knowledge (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995).
A number of authors have looked for the cause of the apparent failure of knowledge management in US corporations. IBM's Prusak, an early advocate of KM, emphasized that knowledge is entirely different from information and suggested that the real benefit of KM can be obtained only by recognizing...