Introduction

Knowledge has had its presence in the philosophical discussion even before the Socratic era (Prusak, 1997; Takeuchi, 2001). The importance of knowledge has grown considerably over the years. Knowledge as a resource that needs to be managed in an organizational context is what has gained renewed interest. For many years, organizational knowledge has been stored in several ways, including human minds, documents, policies and procedures and shared among individuals through such means as conversations, training, apprenticeship programs and reports. Managing the dynamics of knowledge assets in organizations are crucial for their competitive advantage (Tsai, Li, & Lin, 2012). Organizations have to be able to transform their knowledge domains into profitable products and services as well as they have to dynamically renew their capabilities (Schiuma, 2012). Organizations look towards Knowledge Management for improving their performance than their competitors (Marques & Simon, 2006). They have to continuously and actively identify, acquire, organize, share, apply and assess their knowledge resources (Schiuma, 2012) because knowledge contributes to performance by better quality and lower cost through product and process innovation (Chang & Ahn, 2005). Individual learning contributes to organizational learning (Simon, 1991) and gets embedded in organizational memory (Argyris & Schon, 1978). Individual learning process results in improved work performance and work satisfaction when knowledge is created and applied in work practices (Mikkelsen & Gronhaug, 1999). Employee work performance is always a research interest all over the world. Organizations continuously try to understand the antecedents that influence individual work performance. Visweswaran and Ones (2000) define Work Performance as scalable actions behavior and outcomes that employees engage in or bring about that are linked with and contribute to organizational goals. The pump manufacturing industry is on upward swing and continuously undergoing structural changes. The pump manufacturing firms in India are located as clusters in and around major cities like Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Coimbatore etc. The indigenous pump and motor industry in Coimbatore started way back in early 1900’s and the first pump was developed in 1928 in Coimbatore. Less attention is paid so far by the firms to actively create, capture and manage the tacit knowledge of the employees. Also lack of proper documentation and codification of knowledge and best practices, transfer of individual knowledge held by key personnel into organizational knowledge are the main challenges faced by these firms. The manpower of this industry has to be equipped with the necessary skill sets and knowledge to improve their work performance so as to produce innovative and quality products to enhance productivity, quality and service to customers. Given the importance of knowledge management, work performance of employees in pump manufacturing firms, and the lack of literature showcasing the relationship, it is necessary to analyze the connection between knowledge creation and work performance. This study is undertaken to understand the relationship between knowledge creation practices and work performance and more particularly how the four ‘ba’s of knowledge creation individually affect the work performance by developing an empirical model. The structure of the paper is as follows. Section 2 reviews the existing literature on Knowledge Management and Knowledge Creation. Section 3 explains the research methodology, justifies the sample chosen and respondents. This section also explains the development of questionnaire followed by data analysis. Then the paper presents the results of the study, discussions and implications. The last section has conclusion and future research directions.