Contents Executive Summary 3 1. TASK ONE 4 1.1 Introduction 4 1.2 Possession and practice 4 3.3 B&Q case 5 3. TASK TWO 8 3.1 Introduction 8 3.2 Time distance 9 3.3 Technological distance 10 3.4 Social distance 10 3.5 Cultural distance 11 4. Bibliography 13

Executive Summary
In a modernized and globalized world, knowledge creation and synergization of knowledge in an organization is truly crucial. As data and information are readily available, and information communication technology (ICT) has highly advanced, organizations such as B&Q need to understand how knowledge creation can assist to improve internal and external processes and also encourage innovation.

In task one, the aim is to
B&Q is following the same concept as they wish to guard their position as a responsible organization or employer where the rights of all workers throughout the world are respected and protected. Thus, this results to an encoded knowledge (Blackler, 1995) for the vendors as information is transmited through the code of conduct.

Unlike an individual or specialist ‘black box’, the construction of the code of conduct requires the involvement of a group of people. This method of knowledge creation follows Nonaka’s SECI framework where it is a spiralling process of interaction between tacit and explicit knowledge (Nonaka,1994; Nonaka & Toyama, 2003). The SECI framework consists of four knowledge conversion processes; Socialization, Externalization, Combination and Internalization; which can be seen in Figure 1.

The breakdown for B&Q case is as follow: 1. Socialization - The ILO standards which was made known to the B&Q management assist them to create their own knowledge or set of standards which vendors are to adhere. 2. Externalization – B&Q management then decides to have their on set of guidelines in accordance to ILO standards and form a group to write down the code of conduct. 3. Combination - We believed that during the process of writing down the code of conduct, B&Q managerial level will each provide inputs and opinions based