Proceedings of the 7 th Annual Conference of the Southern Association for Information Systems 239 T AXONOMY OF KNOWLEDGE CREATION PROCESS BY ORGANIZATION TYPE: ARE SOME TYPES OF ORGANIZATIONS BETTER EQUIPPED TO CONVERT TACIT/EXPLICIT KNOWLEDGE? Solomon Negash Kennesaw State University snegash@kennesaw.edu Irma Becerra-Fernandez Florida International University becferi@fiu.edu Waymond Rodgers University of California, Riverside Waymond.Rodgers@UCR.edu Abstract This is a research in progress to understand the various stages involved in knowledge creation and transfer. We believe that by depicting these stages, managers will improve their use of information and thereby positively influencing their judgments and decisions. The literature addresses various aspects of the fundamental questions about how organizations create, retain, and transfer knowledge. The creation of knowledge involves the conversion, sharing and combination of tacit and explicit knowledge. Finally, this study integrates theories of knowledge creation, knowledge management, and organizational learning to better understand the process of knowledge creation in organizations. Keywords: knowledge creation, knowledge conversion, knowledge transfer, taxonomy Introduction Does knowledge creation process differ between organizations? Are there characteristics that can be used to classify the knowledge creation process in organizations? Studies about organizations indicate two dominant sources of knowledge: tacit and explicit (Polanyi, 1966). Tacit knowledge resides in the experience and expertise of individuals and explicit knowledge is codified as artifacts, rules, and routines. The emerging literature in several academic disciplines on knowledge management (Argote, Ingram, Levine and Moreland, 2000; Argote, McEvily and Reagans, 2003; Cohen and Sproull, 1996; Helfat, 2001; Spender and Grant, 1996) indicates that the properties of knowledge, units, relationships and the environment predict firms’ outcomes. Further, this literature addresses various aspects of the fundamental questions about how organizations create, retain and transfer knowledge (Nonaka, 1994). Therefore, it is essential for researchers to understand the processes of knowledge creation: the different ways organizations create knowledge and the similarities and differences between the processes used in organizations. Understanding the similarities and differences of organizational knowledge creation process will contribute to our combined knowledge to advance organizational learning. This study borrows from the theories of knowledge creation, knowledge management, and organizational learning to understand the process of knowledge creation in organizations. This paper is a research in progress that centers on knowledge creation defined as recombining old knowledge to produce new knowledge (Lapre and van Wassenhove, 2001; Uzzi and Lancaster, 2003). The creation of knowledge involves the conversion, sharing and combination of tacit and explicit knowledge. Knowledge conversion may take the form of tacit to tacit, tacit to explicit, explicit to explicit, or explicit to tacit (Nonaka and Toyama, 2003). This research contributes to the