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

What makes organizations so similar? We contend that the engine of rationalization and bureaucratization has moved from the competitive marketplace to the state and the professions. Once a set of organizations emerges as a field, a paradox arises: rational actors make their organizations increasingly similar as they try to change them. We describe three isomorphic processes-coercive, mimetic, and normative—leading to this outcome. We then specify hypotheses about the impact of resource centralization and dependency, goal ambiguity and technical uncertainty, and professionalization and structuration on isomorphic change. Finally, we suggest implications for theories of organizations and social change.

The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields (Chinese Translation)

Anarchy, state, and utopia

Social responsibilities of businesses and their managers have been discussed since the 1950s. Yet no consensus about progress has been achieved in the corporate social responsibility/corporate social performance literature. In this article, we seek to analyze three views on this literature. One view is that development occurred from conceptual vagueness, through clarification of central constructs and their relationships, to the testing of theory—a process supported by increased sophistication in research methods. In contrast, other authors claim that hardly any progress is to be expected because of the inherently normative character of the literature. A final view is that progress in the literature on the social responsibilities of business is obscured or even hampered by the continuing introduction of new constructs. This article explores which of these three views better describes the evolution of the literature during a period of 30 years and suggests implications for further research.

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A Bibliometric Analysis of 30 Years of Research and Theory on Corporate Social Responsibility and Corporate Social Performance

This article explores the dynamics of the discourse and practice of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in France to illustrate the interplay between endogenous and exogenous factors in the development of CSR in a country. It shows how the cultural, socioeconomic, and legal traditions influence the way ideas are raised, the kinds of questions considered relevant, and the sorts of solutions conceived as desirable and possible. Furthermore, the article traces how expectations and practices evolve as a result of various social and economic factors within a country and, increasingly, as a result of global influences such as the international academic discourse, the international practices of multinational companies, nongovernmental organizations and trade unions, and initiatives of supranational organizations. The article closes with reflections about what can be learned from the French experience with CSR and how to stimulate such cross-border learning.

https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00765278/document

Corporate Social Responsibility in France A Mix of National Traditions and International Influences

This article first outlines the logic for "global responsibility," then it discusses the organisational learning implications of taking the concept seriously and provides several illustrations of learning processes that different organisations have experienced. In so doing, this article illustrates the fruitfulness of learning from different theories and from different actors in the field, a strategy that is increasingly called for by researchers and experts. The article then addresses the question of how to speed up organisational learning for global responsibility beyond the limited number of early innovators. To this end it builds on lessons learned from experiences in different countries over the past four decades with voluntary and mandatory approaches to corporate social reporting. From this analysis of related initiatives, conclusions are drawn for the specification of key criteria for a framework for global responsibility and supporting processes. At a time when practitioners stress that "corporate social responsibility is an ongoing learning process for companies and stakeholders," academics are criticising theories of corporate social responsibility and corporate social performance for being too static.

https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/47925/1/490083064.pdf

Beyond CSR: organizational learning for global responsibility

Labour and employment law no longer has a monopoly on regulating labour relations and is facing a crisis as its effectiveness is questioned. Codes of conduct adopted by companies to recognise their social responsibility for the global supply chain are instruments that can usefully complement labour and employment law. The aim of this paper is to analyse in depth the legal nature of codes of conduct and their impact on labour and employment law. Will the use of codes of conduct reinforce the crisis of labour and employment law in the era of globalisation or will these codes be part of a solution to this crisis? Do we have to consider codes of conduct as competitors to labour and employment law or as an opportunity for rethinking the way that labour and employment law norms should be produced and applied?

Are Codes of Conduct in Global Supply Chains Really Voluntary? From Soft Law Regulation of Labour Relations to Consumer Law

As the number of institutions adopting the United Nations’ Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) initiative grows, there is an overhanging risk that many of them will merely add “r...

/pdf/we-are-the-champions-organizational-learning-and-change-for-4a8cgynoro.pdf

We Are the Champions Organizational Learning and Change for Responsible Management Education

The purpose of this article is to analyse the impact of higher education on students' and young managers' perception of companies and corporate social responsibility (CSR). The research is based on an electronic questionnaire for students and alumni of different institutions of higher education in Nantes (France).

https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00765267/document

André Sobczak

Papers

Corporate Social Responsibility in France A Mix of National Traditions and International Influences

Beyond CSR: organizational learning for global responsibility

Are Codes of Conduct in Global Supply Chains Really Voluntary? From Soft Law Regulation of Labour Relations to Consumer Law

We Are the Champions Organizational Learning and Change for Responsible Management Education

The impact of higher education on students' and young managers' perception of companies and CSR: an exploratory analysis