世界経済・社会統計 = World development indicators

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

\"What are your assumptions (implicit as well as explicit) about the most effective way to manage people?\" So began Douglas McGregor in this 1960 management classic. It was a seemingly simple question he asked, yet it led to a fundamental revolution in management. Today, with the rise of the global economy, the information revolution, and the growth of knowledge-driven work, McGregor's simple but provocative question continues to resonate-perhaps more powerfully than ever before. Heralded as one of the most important pieces of management literature ever written, a touchstone for scholars and a handbook for practitioners, The Human Side of Enterprise continues to receive the highest accolades nearly half a century after its initial publication. Influencing such major management gurus such as Peter Drucker and Warren Bennis, McGregor's revolutionary Theory Y-which contends that individuals are self-motivated and self-directed-and Theory X-in which employees must be commanded and controlled-has been widely taught in business schools, industrial relations schools, psychology departments, and professional development seminars for over four decades. In this special annotated edition of the worldwide management classic, Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld, Senior Research Scientist in MIT's Sloan School of Management and Engineering Systems Division, shows us how today's leaders have successfully incorporated McGregor's methods into modern management styles and practices. The added quotes and commentary bring the content right into today's debates and business models. Now more than ever, the timeless wisdom of Douglas McGregor can light the path towards a management style that nurtures leadership capability, creates effective teams, ensures internal alignment, achieves high performance, and cultivates an authentic, value-driven workplace--lessons we all need to learn as we make our way in this brave new world of the 21st century.

The Human Side of Enterprise.

Individualism and collectivism

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)

Making their own way: international experience through self-initiated foreign assignments

This article explores the career capital of expatriates, differentiating between self-initiated expatriates (SEs) and company assigned expatriates (AEs). Previous research has considered issues such as individual background variables, employer and task variables, motives, compensation, and repatriation. The present study adds new perspectives related to the development of career capital. The article uses a survey of more than 200 Finnish expatriates to explore these concepts in relation to international work experiences; finding considerable similarities and some differences in the development of career capital of those sent on an expatriate assignment by an organization, and those having a self-initiated expatriate experience.

Career capital during international work experiences: contrasting self-initiated expatriate experiences and assigned expatriation

The concept of human resources management (HRM) has been much debated in the literature. The concept developed initially from work in the U.S.A. in the 1960s and 1970s and since then has been adopted increasingly around the world. This paper argues that in Europe there is only limited acceptance of the organizational autonomy upon which the concept in based, and that, therefore, different approaches to the notion of human resource management are required. External constraints are analysed and a new model of the concept that would encompass EuroHRM is proposed.

Towards a ‘European’ Model of Human Resource Management

Introduction(1) The concept of flexible working practices(2), the extent of such practices and the implications for practitioners and policy makers in the area, have been much discussed. These are critical issues for employers, trade unions and governments. Recent opinions from the European Court of Justice have raised the political profile of the subject and the European Commission is committed to further action on this issue in 1997. This paper addresses these issues in a comparative European context. The paper presents evidence on developments in flexible working from organisations across Europe. Flexible working here covers only working time and contractual variations (temporary contracts, outsourcing etc.).(3) The paper summarise the debates on the topic; briefly outlines the research that was done; shows the extent and growth of flexibility; explores the reasons for the massive growth in flexible working in Europe and considers whether this is evidence of convergence of European labour markets. This is followed by a wide-ranging examination of the implications of the findings. Theories of Labour Flexibility The concept of "labour flexibility" remains, both in theoretical and practical terms, highly problematic. Despite the huge volume of literature devoted to the so-called "flexibility debate" (see bibliography in Brewster et al. 1996a), relatively little progress has been made in resolving many of the problems associated with the concept. In the literature, the term "flexibility" is applied to a series of quite distinct (if related) theories. There are those which have been labelled "post-Fordist": a category which covers a range of variants, but is characterised by the work of Piore and Sabel (1984), Mathews (1989a, 1989b, 1990, 1992), Lash and Urry (1987), Katz (1985), Kern and Schumann (1987), Tolliday and Zeitlin (1986), and Streeck (1987). For these writers, who generally concentrate on manufacturing industry, new technology is the key to a more flexible form of production, more responsive to increasingly rapid changes in the market. Whilst such developments may depend for their success upon a more skilled, motivated, and flexible workforce, the focus of this stream of writing is on production systems rather than employment. A more critical, "neo-Marxian" (Clegg 1990) or "neo-Fordist" (Wood 1989b, p. 21) group of writers is also concerned with flexible production, though taking a more negative view of its likely effect on individuals and including discussion of the impact on labour markets (Bramble 1988; Bramble/Fieldes 1989, 1992; Harvey 1989, 1991). An alternative conception of flexibility is provided by researchers in the operational management area. There is also an important set of literature labelled by some as "managerialist" (Bagguley 1991, p. 164) or "neomanagerialist" (Clegg 1990, p. 210) and typified by the work of Atkinson (1984, 1985a, 1985b, 1986, 1987; Atkinson/Gregory 1986; Atkinson/Meager 1986). His work has been subjected to critiques which have attempted to demonstrate the limited utility and lack of theoretical robustness of his work or even, in the early debates, to deny that the labour market had changed substantially, rather than attempting to build upon the insights which it provides or to develop a more comprehensive theoretical framework based on it (see for example: Pollert 1988a, 1988b). Nonetheless, Atkinson's work has been extremely influential. His vision of flexibility has influenced policy debates internationally (OECD 1986a, 1989). These changes and the development of a more flexible labour market have been controversial. They are seen by some to have taken our societies back towards the early years of the industrial revolution, with the creation of a significant underclass of underprivileged and "vulnerable" workers. They are seen by others as evidence of an uncaring and irresponsible approach to employees by employers -- sometimes associated with a desire to "de-unionise" the workforce. …

https://www.jstor.org/stable/info/40228422

Flexible Working in Europe: A Review of the Evidence

One of the newer areas of research in the field of international human resource management concerns the repatriation of international assignees at the end of their time abroad. This paper is one of...

Chris Brewster

Papers

Making their own way: international experience through self-initiated foreign assignments

Career capital during international work experiences: contrasting self-initiated expatriate experiences and assigned expatriation

Towards a ‘European’ Model of Human Resource Management

Flexible Working in Europe: A Review of the Evidence

Repatriation: empirical evidence from a longitudinal study of careers and expectations among Finnish expatriates