2.4 Knowledge creation as transformation
2.4.1 Nonaka (1994) brought the dynamic relation between tacit and explicit knowledge into organizational theory. His central proposition was that organizational knowledge creation occurs through continuing interaction between these dimensions rather than through the passive storage of information.
2.4.2 The four modes later represented through the acronym SECI—socialization, externalization, combination, and internalization—describe different patterns through which knowledge may move and transform (Nonaka, 1994; Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995).
2.4.3 Socialization concerns forms of shared experience through which tacit knowing can be acquired or altered without first being reduced to formal language.
2.4.4 Observation, apprenticeship, participation, imitation, shared practice, and situated encounter may allow forms of judgment or skill to become available through socialization.
2.4.5 Externalization concerns the movement through which tacit or insufficiently articulated knowing is given a more explicit form.
2.4.6 Metaphor, analogy, model, narrative, definition, diagram, concept, protocol, and dialogue may participate in this transformation.
2.4.7 Externalization is not a lossless extraction of internal content. The explicit form selects, stabilizes, reorganizes, and makes criticizable particular relations without containing the whole tacit field from which it arose.
2.4.8 Combination concerns the reorganization of explicit knowledge through classification, connection, comparison, synthesis, documentation, data processing, modeling, or systemic arrangement.
2.4.9 Literature reviews, bibliographic Records, conceptual maps, standards, databases, and Source packages may participate in combination.
2.4.10 Combination fails when explicit materials are aggregated without creating intelligible relation. A large database, extensive bibliography, or densely linked website does not become knowledge integration merely through volume.
2.4.11 Internalization concerns the process through which explicit knowledge participates in renewed practice, perception, judgment, and embodied capacity.
2.4.12 A standard becomes internalized when its requirements inform action without requiring complete rereading at every step. A concept becomes internalized when it changes what the researcher is able to notice and distinguish.
2.4.13 Internalization is not passive memorization. It involves the reconstitution of explicit material within lived activity, where it may become part of tacit competence and later contribute to further externalization.
2.4.14 The SECI relations should not be interpreted as an automatic organizational mechanism. Knowledge does not spiral merely because documents, meetings, systems, or digital platforms exist.
2.4.15 Transformation depends on agents, situations, interpretive capacities, language, power, trust, purpose, and practical conditions.
2.4.16 Scholarly Research mobilizes the dynamic relation between tacit and explicit manifestations without treating the Chain as a renamed SECI model.
2.4.17 The Chain governs transformations specific to scholarly formation: from Inquietation to Theme, Object, Problem, Question, Literature, Constructs, Method, Field/Corpus, Data/Evidence, Findings, Argument, Contribution, Technical-Technological Product / Artifact, Ethics/Authorship/AI, and Publication/Circulation/Continuity.
2.4.18 The relation to Nonaka is foundational but bounded. Nonaka supports the claim that knowledge creation involves dynamic conversion and interaction rather than simple information accumulation.
2.4.19 Scholarly Research remains responsible for the identities, sequence, burdens, transitions, and governance of its own passages.
