How have Japanese companies become world leaders in the automotive and electronics industries, among others? What is the secret of their success? Two leading Japanese business experts, Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi, are the first to tie the success of Japanese companies to their ability to create new knowledge and use it to produce successful products and technologies. In The Knowledge-Creating Company, Nonaka and Takeuchi provide an inside look at how Japanese companies go about creating this new knowledge organizationally. The authors point out that there are two types of knowledge: explicit knowledge, contained in manuals and procedures, and tacit knowledge, learned only by experience, and communicated only indirectly, through metaphor and analogy. U.S. managers focus on explicit knowledge. The Japanese, on the other hand, focus on tacit knowledge. And this, the authors argue, is the key to their success--the Japanese have learned how to transform tacit into explicit knowledge. To explain how this is done--and illuminate Japanese business practices as they do so--the authors range from Greek philosophy to Zen Buddhism, from classical economists to modern management gurus, illustrating the theory of organizational knowledge creation with case studies drawn from such firms as Honda, Canon, Matsushita, NEC, Nissan, 3M, GE, and even the U.S. Marines. For instance, using Matsushita's development of the Home Bakery (the world's first fully automated bread-baking machine for home use), they show how tacit knowledge can be converted to explicit knowledge: when the designers couldn't perfect the dough kneading mechanism, a software programmer apprenticed herself withthe master baker at Osaka International Hotel, gained a tacit understanding of kneading, and then conveyed this information to the engineers. In addition, the authors show that, to create knowledge, the best management style is neither top-down nor bottom-up, but rather what they call "middle-up-down," in which the middle managers form a bridge between the ideals of top management and the chaotic realities of the frontline. As we make the turn into the 21st century, a new society is emerging. Peter Drucker calls it the "knowledge society," one that is drastically different from the "industrial society," and one in which acquiring and applying knowledge will become key competitive factors. Nonaka and Takeuchi go a step further, arguing that creating knowledge will become the key to sustaining a competitive advantage in the future. Because the competitive environment and customer preferences changes constantly, knowledge perishes quickly. With The Knowledge-Creating Company, managers have at their fingertips years of insight from Japanese firms that reveal how to create knowledge continuously, and how to exploit it to make successful new products, services, and systems.

The knowledge-creating company

The 2008 crash has left all the established economic doctrines - equilibrium models, real business cycles, disequilibria models - in disarray. Part of the problem is due to Smith’s "veil of ignorance": individuals unknowingly pursue society’s interest and, as a result, have no clue as to the macroeconomic effects of their actions: witness the Keynes and Leontief multipliers, the concept of value added, fiat money, Engel’s law and technical progress, to name but a few of the macrofoundations of microeconomics. A good viewpoint to take bearings anew lies in comparing the post-Great Depression institutions with those emerging from Thatcher and Reagan’s economic policies: deregulation, exogenous vs. endoge- nous money, shadow banking vs. Volcker’s Rule. Very simply, the banks, whose lending determined deposits after Roosevelt, and were a public service became private enterprises whose deposits determine lending. These underlay the great moderation preceding 2006, and the subsequent crash.

The Economic Institutions of Capitalism

Purpose – Facing the multiplication of entrepreneurship education programmes (EEP) and the increasing resources allocated, there is a need to develop a common framework to evaluate the design of those programmes. The purpose of this article is to propose such a framework, based on the theory of planned behaviour (TPB). Design/methodology/approach – TPB is a relevant tool to model the development of entrepreneurial intention through pedagogical processes. The independent variables are the characteristics of the EEP and the dependent variables are the antecedents of entrepreneurial behaviour. To illustrate and test the relevance of the evaluation methodology, a pilot study is conducted. Findings – Data are consistent and reliable, considering the small scale of this experiment. The EEP assessed had a strong measurable impact on the entrepreneurial intention of the students, while it had a positive, but not very significant, impact on their perceived behavioural control. Research implications/limitations – This is a first step of an ambitious research programme aiming at producing theory-grounded knowledge. Reproduction of the experiment will allow researchers to test how specific characteristics of an EEP influence its impact and how the impact differs across several cohorts of students. Those comparisons will serve to improve a priori the design of EEP. Originality/value – The new methodology is built on a robust theoretical framework and based on validated measurement tools. Its originality is about a relative – longitudinal – measure of impact over time and a particular use of the theory of planned behaviour which is seen as an assessment framework.

Assessing the Impact of Entrepreneurship Education Programmes: A New Methodology

Entrepreneurial education is the process of providing individuals with the ability to recognise commercial opportunities and the insight, self-esteem, knowledge and skills to act on them. It includes instruction in opportunity recognition, commercialising a concept, marshalling resources in the face of risk, and initiating a business venture. It also includes instruction in traditional business disciplines such as management, marketing, information systems and finance. The purpose of this paper is to describe the design and introduction of a new program in Entrepreneurship at the University of Tasmania. Within this program the process and responsibility of learning has largely been reversed through the process of student centred learning. This method of learning represents a challenging departure from the traditional mainstream teaching practices. In considering the benefits achievable from this teaching method, this paper also considers the difficulties in transferring increased responsibility to students to manage their futures.

A contemporary approach to entrepreneurship education

Firm disclosures often reach only a portion of investors, which results in information asymmetry among investors, and therefore lower market liquidity. This issue is particularly salient for firms that are not highly visible, as they tend not to receive broad news dissemination via traditional intermediaries, such as the press. This paper examines whether firms can reduce information asymmetry by more broadly disseminating their news. To isolate the impact of dissemination, we focus our analysis on firms' use of Twitter and exploit the 140-character message restriction. Specifically, using a sample of technology firms, we examine the impact of using Twitter to send market participants links to press releases that are provided via traditional disclosure methods. We find this additional dissemination of firm-initiated news via Twitter is associated with lower abnormal bid-ask spreads and greater abnormal depths, consistent with a reduction in information asymmetry. Moreover, this result holds mainly for firms that are not highly visible, consistent with them being in greater need of this additional dissemination channel. We also examine the impact of dissemination on a volume-based measure of liquidity, and find that dissemination is positively associated with liquidity.

The Role of Dissemination in Market Liquidity: Evidence from Firms' Use of Twitter

The aim of the paper is to investigate the relationship between audit committee characteristics and earnings management. Samples in the study included 50 industrial companies listed on the Amman Stock Exchange ASE. Two models were used to measure earnings quality: one which depends on earnings continuity as an indication of quality, and one which depends on the decrease of discretionary accruals of quality, using pooled data regression for the two tests (Ordinary Least Squares OLS and Binary Logit). The study found that there was an influence of some standard characteristics of the audit committee on earnings quality.

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The Audit Committee Characteristics and Earnings Quality: Evidence from Jordan

This study aims to examine the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and the financial performance (profitability and market value) of firms listed in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries’ stock markets.,The sample of the study consisted of all the listed companies in the GCC bourses for the period of 2010-2017. CSR was calculated by using the total amount of donations and charity disclosed in the financial reports. The three performance proxies used as the dependent variables included return on assets (ROA; profitability), return on equity (ROE; profitability) and Tobin’s Q (market value).,This study found that the UAE had the highest level of CSR compared to the other GCC countries. Additionally, the findings showed a negative and significant relationship between CSR and ROA, and a positive and significant relationship between CSR and Tobin’s Q.,In addition to other reforms, this paper recommends the GCC governments to impose a CSR framework and SMART platforms in line with the UAE’s initiatives.,This paper offers new contributions to the GCC literature and recommendations to their firms and governments.

Does it pay to be socially responsible? Empirical evidence from the GCC countries

The aim of current study is to investigate the impact of financial technology on the performance of Bahraini banks. The results indicates that the total level of applying financial technology by Bahraini banks was 70.51%, and it has a significant positive relationship with the financial performance. The study recommends that Bahraini banks to include more information about financial technology in the financial statements, and to indicate the level of resources invested in.

Relationship Between Financial Technology and Financial Performance

Investigating the Relationship between Corporate Governance and Internet Financial Reporting ( IFR ) : Evidence from Bahrain Bourse = العلاقة بين الحاكمية المؤسسية و الإفصاح المالي عبر الإنترنت : دليل من بورصة البحرين

Abdalmuttaleb M. A. Musleh Al-Sartawi

Papers

The Audit Committee Characteristics and Earnings Quality: Evidence from Jordan

Does it pay to be socially responsible? Empirical evidence from the GCC countries

Relationship Between Financial Technology and Financial Performance

Investigating the Relationship between Corporate Governance and Internet Financial Reporting ( IFR ) : Evidence from Bahrain Bourse = العلاقة بين الحاكمية المؤسسية و الإفصاح المالي عبر الإنترنت : دليل من بورصة البحرين

IT governance and E-banking in GCC listed banks