The 7C’s knowledge management (KM) models (part 2): Harri Oinas-Kukkonen’s model for organizational knowledge creation & management

In section 3.1 of their landmark 2023 review¹ of the past and future of knowledge management (KM) research and practice, John Edwards and Antti Lönnqvist alert to the continued over-reliance on well-known models from the earliest days of KM. Models such as Nonaka’s 1994 SECI model² and Ackoff’s 1989 data-information-knowledge-wisdom (DIKW) model³ remain a focus when newer models have emerged since drawing on a more recent evidence base. For example, David Williams’ 2014 action-knowledge-information (AKI) model⁴ is a highly coherent alternative to the DIKW model.

This two-part article series looks at two further more recent KM models that are worthy of attention: the 7C’s models. This second part looks at Harri Oinas-Kukkonen’s 2004 7C’s model for organizational knowledge creation and management⁵, aspects of which build on Nonaka’s SECI model. The first part looked at Paul S. Myers 2014 7C’s normative model of knowledge management effectiveness.

Harri Oinas-Kukkonen’s model for organizational knowledge creation and management suggests that the following 7C’s play a critical role in the creation of organizational knowledge: connection, concurrency, comprehension, communication, conceptualization, collaboration, and collective intelligence.

As shown in Fugure 1, Harri Oinas-Kukkonen’s 7C’s model may be described through different abstraction levels:

• In the technology context an information system confines object systems to a view of how efficiently data are processed and stored in a given material carrier
• In the language context an information system provides a means and environment for comprehension and linguistic communication.
• In the organizational context an information system supports, enables and takes part in an organizational process involving human interactions and collaboration, e.g. decision-making.

As shown in Figure 2, the creation of organizational knowledge is not a linear process, but rather a multicycle spiral process. The framework assumes that concurrent connection of all stakeholders with the joint information space is provided in a technologically sound manner, e.g. through the web, internet, wireless, mobile and other technologies. The 7C’s model follows Nonaka’s SECI model in that the integration of individual and organizational orientations is emphasized and that knowledge is assumed to create through interaction between tacit and explicit knowledge in the outcomes of the comprehension, communication, and conceptualization sub-processes.

The four key phases or sub-processes in the knowledge creation are:

• Comprehension – a process of surveying and interacting with the external environment, integrating the resulting intelligence with other project knowledge on an ongoing basis in order to identify problems, needs and opportunities; embodying explicit knowledge in tacit knowledge, “learning by doing”, re-experiencing.
• Communication – a process of sharing experiences between people and thereby creating tacit knowledge in the form of mental models and technical skills; produces dialog records, which emphasize the needs and opportunities, integrating the dialog along with resulting decisions with other project knowledge on an ongoing basis.
• Conceptualization – a collective reflection process articulating tacit knowledge to form explicit concepts and systemizing the concepts into a knowledge system; produces knowledge products of a project team, which form a more or less comprehensive picture of the project in hand and are iteratively and collaboratively developed; may include proposals, specifications, descriptions, work breakdown structures, milestones, timelines, staffing, facility requirements, budgets, etc.; rarely a one-shot effort.
• Collaboration – a true team interaction process of using the produced conceptualizations within teamwork and other organizational processes.

Each of the sub-processes may also be regarded as the building of an artifact and reasoning why it has been built the way it has. Going through these phases several times in a seamless step by step spiral-like way leads into the growth of collective intelligence. Support for capturing deep individual thinking and recording the dialog between team members may help create truly innovative knowledge products.

Oinas-Kukkonen advises that while the comprehension and communication in the 7C’s model are similar with the internalization and socialization concepts in Nonaka’s SECI model, the conceptualization and collaboration in the 7C’s model do not have explicit correspondences within the SECI model. Conceptualization in the 7C’s model includes features of both externalization and combination, while collaboration, i.e. the use of the conceptualizations, has not been explicitly addressed in the SECI model.

At that time in 2004, Oinas-Kukkonen further suggested investigating the potential for the hypertext functionality inherent in web information systems to support organizational knowledge creation and management. What is better investigated now is the potential for AI to support the implementation of the 7C’s model in organizations.

Header image source: © Harri Oinas-Kukkonen, 2004.

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