Applying Ba to Improve Knowledge Flow between Organization Levels in Teamwork Discussions

A business teamwork discussion is one of necessary actions in current business circumstances. However, many discussions are ineffective; consequently, time, costs and resources are wasted. The objective of this study is to identify factors that can enhance the effectiveness of a teamwork discussion, through the focus group method. Six focus groups of participants from different types of business and organizational positions were conducted. The results from these focus groups indicate many factors influencing the success and failure of teamwork discussion. These factors, then, were summarized in four dimensions. The study also noticed that, in a teamwork discussion, a bulk of messages is ordinarily delivered among participants. These messages not only contain the contextual information, but also the implicit knowledge of the senders. The exchange of knowledge causes new knowledge and insight to be created in the receiver’s mind. We believe that the traditional knowledge creation concept of “ba” can be adapted in a teamwork discussion to remedy the impact of some factors and improve the efficiency of the teamwork discussion. Hence, the characteristics of ba were linked to our four-dimension results and the areas in which ba can play its roles were identified.