According to W. Edwards Deming, American companies require nothing less than a transformation of management style and of governmental relations with industry. In Out of the Crisis, originally published in 1982, Deming offers a theory of management based on his famous 14 Points for Management. Management's failure to plan for the future, he claims, brings about loss of market, which brings about loss of jobs. Management must be judged not only by the quarterly dividend, but by innovative plans to stay in business, protect investment, ensure future dividends, and provide more jobs through improved product and service. In simple, direct language, he explains the principles of management transformation and how to apply them.

Out of the Crisis

How has Japan become a major economic power, a world leader in the automotive and electronics industries? What is the secret of their success? The consensus has been that, though the Japanese are not particularly innovative, they are exceptionally skilful at imitation, at improving products that already exist. But now two leading Japanese business experts, Ikujiro Nonaka and Hiro Takeuchi, turn this conventional wisdom on its head: Japanese firms are successful, they contend, precisely because they are innovative, because they create new knowledge and use it to produce successful products and technologies. Examining case studies drawn from such firms as Honda, Canon, Matsushita, NEC, 3M, GE, and the U.S. Marines, this book reveals how Japanese companies translate tacit to explicit knowledge and use it to produce new processes, products, and services.

The knowledge-creating company : how Japanese companies create the dynamics of innovation

Knowledge sharing: A review and directions for future research

We develop a theoretical model to describe and explain variation in corporate governance among advanced capitalist economies, identifying the social relations and institutional arrangements that shape who controls corporations, what interests corporations serve, and the allocation of rights and responsibilities among corporate stakeholders. Our “actor-centered” institutional approach explains firm-level corporate governance practices in terms of institutional factors that shape how actors' interests are defined (“socially constructed”) and represented. Our model has strong implications for studying issues of international convergence.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/30040732.pdf

The Cross-National Diversity of Corporate Governance: Dimensions and Determinants

An understanding of culture is important to the study of information technologies in that culture at various levels, including national, organizational, and group, can influence the successful implementation and use of information technology. Culture also plays a role in managerial processes that may directly, or indirectly, influence IT. Culture is a challenging variable to research, in part because of the multiple divergent definitions and measures of culture. Notwithstanding, a wide body of literature has emerged that sheds light on the relationship of IT and culture. This paper sets out to provide a review of this literature in order to lend insights into our understanding of the linkages between IT and culture. We begin by conceptualizing culture and laying the groundwork for a values-based approach to the examination of IT and culture. Using this approach, we then provide a comprehensive review of the organizational and cross-cultural IT literature that conceptually links these two traditionally separate streams of research. From our analysis, we develop six themes of IT-culture research emphasizing culture's impact on IT, IT's impact on culture, and IT culture. Building upon these themes, we then develop a theory of IT, values, and conflict. Based upon the theory, we develop propositions concerning three types of cultural conflict and the results of these conflicts. Ultimately, the theory suggests that the reconciliation of these conflicts results in a reorientation of values. We conclude with the particular research challenges posed in this line of inquiry.

Review: a review of culture in information systems research: toward a theory of information technology culture conflict

The exchange of information among organizational employees is a vital component of the knowledge-management process. Modem information and telecommunication technology is available to support such exchanges across time and distance barriers. However, organizations investing in this type of technology often face difficulties in encouraging their employees to use the system to share their ideas. This paper elaborates on previous research, suggesting that sharing personal insights with one's co-workers may carry a cost for some individuals which may yield, at the aggregate level, a co-operation dilemma, similar to a public-good dilemma. A review of the research on different types of public-good dilemmas provides some indications of the specific interventions that may help organizations encourage the kind of social dynamics that will increase overall knowledge sharing. These interventions can be classified into three categories: interventions aimed at restructuring the pay-offs for contributing, those that tr...

/pdf/knowledge-sharing-dilemmas-1jbegs2oon.pdf

Knowledge-Sharing Dilemmas:

Knowledge management systems try to elicit and support the flow of ideas and experiences among groups of employees (sometimes referred to as knowledge communities). Whereas numerous information and communication systems have been developed to support such knowledge exchanges, practical applications have found that technology alone cannot ensure that knowledge will indeed be volunteered and exchanged, and whereas researchers and consultants alike have argued that culture and other human variables constitute key success factors, it is not clear what specific variables are at play, nor what management practices can affect those variables. This exploratory research investigates some of the psychological, organizational and system-related variables that may determine individual engagement in intra-organizational knowledge sharing. Results from a survey of 372 employees from a large multinational show that self-efficacy, openness to experience, perceived support from colleagues and supervisors and, to a lesser ...

Determinants of individual engagement in knowledge sharing.

This paper focuses on the issue of knowledge sharing, one of the key mechanisms by which knowledge transfer can take place within organizations. The aim of the paper is to identify the people manag...

/pdf/fostering-knowledge-sharing-through-people-management-4nkp99znen.pdf

Ángel Cabrera

Papers

Knowledge-Sharing Dilemmas:

Determinants of individual engagement in knowledge sharing.

Fostering knowledge sharing through people management practices

The key role of organizational culture in a multi-system view of technology-driven change

An exploration of the factors that influence employee participation in Europe