8. Conclusion
This paper highlights the context and importance of knowledge creating ‘ba's and the role that these ‘ba's play in improving employee performance. Manufacturing sector was particularly chosen for the study because there exist a dire need for these firms to continuously perform to meet the market requirements. As suggested by Singh et al. (2006) there exists a lot of scope for manufacturing firms to leverage the benefits of Knowledge Management practices for their performance. The research findings statistically confirmed the impact of knowledge creation on employee work performance and also the impact of four ‘ba's originating ba, dialoguing ba, exercising ba and cyber ba on work performance. The study also shows that manufacturing firms can further explore the possibilities of having better enabling context for ‘ba’ by allowing the employees to interact and collaborate. Also less use of cyber ba is noticed among the companies. Arguably these companies need to enhance their IT adaptability and configure it for Knowledge Creation.
If organizations have to compete effectively in the knowledge economy, it is essential to develop the conditions and the necessary ‘ba's in which knowledge creation occurs and enhances work performance. The current research finding is quite remarkable because early studies were to focus on knowledge creation as a whole without placing emphasis on the type of ‘ba’ on work performance. This study also contributed to the growing Knowledge Management literature because it is first of its kind to explore the impact of ‘ba’ on work performance of manufacturing firms. Further research is needed to study about the prevalence of ‘ba’ in knowledge intensive industries like biotechnology, pharmaceutical and others, where the influence of knowledge creation is expected to be considerable.
