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

Organizational learning II: Theory, method and practice

Nonaka's paper [1994. A dynamic theory of organizational knowledge creation. Organ. Sci.5(1) 14--37] contributed to the concepts of “tacit knowledge” and “knowledge conversion” in organization science. We present work that shaped the development of organizational knowledge creation theory and identify two premises upon which more than 15 years of extensive academic work has been conducted: (1) tacit and explicit knowledge can be conceptually distinguished along a continuum; (2) knowledge conversion explains, theoretically and empirically, the interaction between tacit and explicit knowledge. Recently, scholars have raised several issues regarding the understanding of tacit knowledge as well as the interaction between tacit and explicit knowledge in the theory. The purpose of this article is to introduce and comment on the debate about organizational knowledge creation theory. We aim to help scholars make sense of this debate by synthesizing six fundamental questions on organizational knowledge creation theory. Next, we seek to elaborate and advance the theory by responding to questions and incorporating new research. Finally, we discuss implications of our endeavor for organization science.

Perspective---Tacit Knowledge and Knowledge Conversion: Controversy and Advancement in Organizational Knowledge Creation Theory

Zahra and George (2002) suggested a reconceptualization of the absorptive capacity construct in order to reduce ambiguity in empirical studies. A rereading of the seminal Cohen and Levinthal (1990) article in light of current research on learning and innovation directs our attention to serious ambiguities and omissions in Zahra and George's reconceptualization. We suggest a reintroduction of “recognizing the value,” an alternative understanding of “transformation,” a clarification of “potential absorptive capacity,” an elaboration of the impact of socialization mechanisms, an investigation of the role of “power relationships,” and an inclusion of feedback loops in a dynamic model of absorptive capacity.

Absorptive capacity: Valuing a reconceptualization

Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the legacy of late colonialism

This paper critically addresses the coherence, reception, and dissemination of "situated learning theory" (Lave and Wenger 1991). Situated learning theory commends a conceptualization of the process of learning that, in offering an alternative to cognitive theories, departs radically from the received body of knowledge on learning in organizations. The paper shows how elements of situated learning theory have been selectively adopted to fertilize or extend the established terrain of organizational learning. In this process, we argue, Lave and Wenger's embryonic appreciation of power relations as media of learning is displaced by a managerial preoccupation with harnessing (reified) "communities of practice" to the fulfillment of (reified) corporate objectives. We illustrate our argument by reference to Orr's (1990, 1996) study of photocopier technicians, which is very widely cited as an example of the "new," situated conceptualization of learning in communities of practice. We commend a revitalization of situated learning theory in which learning practices are understood to be enabled and constrained by their embeddedness in relations of power; and, more specifically, by the unstable institutionalization of power relations within capitalist work organizations.

Re-Embedding Situatedness: The Importance of Power Relations in Learning Theory

The author reconnects resistance in production to its radical roots. Current literature suggests that resistance in the liberal workplaces of late capitalism has gone underground, becoming mostly evident in unofficial, offstage practices such as cynicism, parody, and humor. The author argues this resistance is too often a decaf resistance. This is a resistance without the cost of radically changing the economy of enjoyment, which ties us to our master. The author argues that resistance, as a real act, which suspends and changes the constellation of power relations, has a cost that cannot be accounted for in advance. To understand this cost, we need an ethics, which the author calls, following Lacan, the Ethics of the Real.

Decaf Resistance: On Misbehavior, Cynicism, and Desire in Liberal Workplaces

You Spin Me Round: The Realist Turn in Organization and Management Studies

Comment on Wenger and Yanow. Knowing in Practice: A `Delicate Flower' in the Organizational Learning Field

Julian Orr’s Talking About Machines (TAM) is celebrated for communicating something of the richness and complexity of work practices. Our endeavour is to connect the current wave of interest in practice with Orr’s focal attentiveness to the practices of photocopier-repair technicians. More specifically, we revisit how, in TAM, a careful examination of work practice is commended by Orr as a way of ‘deepen[ing] our under-standings’—for example, about ‘the relations of employment and the role of work in the constitution of workers’ identity’. This central theme of TAM, we contend, provides illuminating insights into, and poses interesting questions for students of, the politics of work organization. The novelty of our reading of TAM stems from a mobilization of some Marxist and Lacanian ideas, as developed in theorizations of hegemony, that enable us to problematize both the self-identification of the technicians as heroic, and the distancing of their practices from the corporation’s bureaucratic prescriptions. Our particular interest lies in unpicking the politico-economic significance of the technicians’ practices; and, more specifically, their relevance for understanding the reproduction of capitalist work relations.

Alessia Contu

Papers

Re-Embedding Situatedness: The Importance of Power Relations in Learning Theory

Decaf Resistance: On Misbehavior, Cynicism, and Desire in Liberal Workplaces

You Spin Me Round: The Realist Turn in Organization and Management Studies

Comment on Wenger and Yanow. Knowing in Practice: A `Delicate Flower' in the Organizational Learning Field

Studying Practice: Situating Talking About Machines