Basics of qualitative research: Grounded theory procedures and techniques

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

Getting to YES. Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In

(2002). Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement without Giving in. Quality Management Journal: Vol. 9, No. 2, pp. 73-74.

Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement without Giving in

Qualitative methods in psychology: A research guide

The relentless pressures of competition stemming from globalization, technological changes, etc., today are increasingly buffeting organizations. One of the pathways for companies to weather these storms is through unleashing the entrepreneurial spirit latent in its employees enabling these employees to carve out new paths, initiate new ventures, defy the status quo in their organizations, and break fresh ground. There is an increasing body of knowledge relating to unleashing entrepreneurial energies in large organizations referred to as ‘corporate entrepreneurship’ or ‘intrapreneurship.’ Intrapreneurship is a major driver for organizational renewal or ‘reinvention.’ This article seeks to understand the intrapreneurial mindset as opposed to the ‘employee’ mindset. It is inextricably connected with leadership since it involves mobilizing teams of people towards a cause much greater than the individuals involved, often in the face of significant resistance from status quo preserving forces within and outside the organization. Intrapreneurship at any level (individual, group or organization) fundamentally involves taking ownership, i.e., operating with an entrepreneurial mindset. In the corporate context, since the person leading the reinvention is not an autonomous entrepreneur, he/she is more appropriately referred to as an ‘intrapreneur.’ It is very unlikely that reinvention at any level can occur without this basic transformation of perspective from ‘employee’ to ‘psychological owner’ or intrapreneur. Intrapreneuring is not a path that is chosen by the vast majority of people in any profession since this path involves a lot more of the person than would be the case for a person operating with an ‘employee mindset.’ However, the reason it is important is that it is challenging, fulfilling, personally and professionally rewarding, and is urgently required by corporations—both big and small—the world over to thrive meaningfully in today’s uncertain times. While the context in which this manifestation of entrepreneurial behaviour is enacted may vary (government, public sector, private sector, NGO, etc.), the fundamental fibre of the person who chooses this path is essentially similar. This article presents three interesting case studies from Tata Steel, a company that has sought to create an entrepreneurial climate in the organization over the last several years. Two of these relate to crashing project time and cost lines to create international records in the face of international technical collaborators affirming that this would not be possible in India. The third intrapreneurial episode relates to turning around a run-down manufacturing facility in the company to produce spectacular results. In the process, the authors have: ae drawn generic lessons from each of these case studies ae presented the results of interviews with 30 practising managers on the facilitators and inhibitors for creating an intrapreneurial climate in large organizations ae highlighted the perspectives of a few senior managers from the Indian IT industry on this very important source of innovation in large organizations ae tied together the three intrapreneurial episodes presented in this paper by attempting to understand the commonalities among the intrapreneurs. This article would be beneficial to Indian companies seeking to create an entrepreneurial climate and to professionals in these companies to motivate them to look at their work lives differently and to enable them to redefine their roles in their organizations.

https://www.elmayorportaldegerencia.com/Documentos/Emprendedores/%5bPD%5d%20Documentos%20-%20Intrapreneurship.pdf

Innovation through Intrapreneurship: The Road Less Travelled:

Prologue Shlomo Maital and D V R Seshadri PART ONE: STRATEGIES AND CONCEPTS FOR INNOVATION The Innovation Imperative: Why Innovate? The Innovation Portfolio: What to Innovate? The Innovation Voices: How to Innovate? The Innovative Mind: Who Innovates? PART TWO: TOOLS FOR PROFIT AND GROWTH Price-Cost-Value Hidden Costs, Hidden Benefits Trade-Offs: Optimizing and Eliminating Them Cost Functions: 'Survival of the Fittest' People, Knowledge and Machines: In Search of a Free Lunch Scale and Scope: Scaling Markets of One Learning Curves Are Made, not Born Where is the Money? Markets and Demand-Driven Innovation Calculating Risks: Decision-Making in an Uncertain World Competing by Collaborating Epilogue: Ten Essential Tools Index

Innovation Management: Strategies, Concepts and Tools for Growth and Profit

Nowhere is the fast changing nature of the global business landscape more perceptible than on the ethics front. With a spate of recent unethical behaviours by large corporations in the Western world, especially in USA, their societies have become intolerant to businesses that manifest unethical behaviour. Legal and regulatory frameworks in these countries have been swift to respond through stringent laws such as the Sarbanes Oxley Corporate Reform Act. Consequently, most businesses based in these countries have become extremely risk averse on the ethics front. Few of them would like to have anything to do with any unethical company in any part of the world. This changed mindset has significant ramifications for Indian companies that have global aspirations. No Indian company that hopes to globalize in any manner can afford to ignore these changes sweeping the global business arena on the ethics front.Business ethics encompasses much more than mere compliance with laws and regulations. It is about every individual in the organization acting ethically, about creating an ethically sound working environment within the organization and about modeling ethical behaviour by leadership at all levels. Research suggests that it makes good long-term business sense to be ethical.For a company's ethics policy to be successfully implemented, it is essential that: The code of ethics is clearly communicated to employees.Employees are formally trained in it.They are told how to deal with ethical challenges.The code is implemented strongly.The code is contemporary.The company leadership adheres to the highest ethical standards.When an employee gets no clear answers from the organization while dealing with decisions that have inherent ethical dilemmas, he tends to chart his own course of action by drawing on his intuition, conviction, and beliefs, and assessing the pressures of the situation at hand, putting the organization at considerable risk.Globalizing Indian companies essentially have two options. One is to sit back and wait for the tightening of regulatory and societal screws on them, forcing them into ethical behaviour in a reactive mode. The other approach is for them to proactively herald the new era of business ethics by becoming torch bearers of the new order of things. It is in the organization's selfinterest to take a proactive posture on the ethics issue, and be well-prepared for the shape of things to come. We also show how this can be done and what challenges must be addressed for success on this journey.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0256090920070305

Business Ethics: The Next Frontier for Globalizing Indian Companies

Business incubators are found all over the world. Yet, to date, no viable integrative theory of effective business incubation exists. This essay outlines a grounded theory of incubation, driven by case studies, empirical results, and field work, based on three main principles that generalize across countries and cultures. They are: The paradox of market emulation: Successful incubators both emulate market conditions and shield their ‘infants’ from them. Managing this paradox is fraught with difficulty, not the least because it is often not explicitly recognized.Resolving the key make-or-break constraint: In every country, there are many constraints that hinder ultimate business success of incubator projects, but there is one key constraint that always ‘resonates’, i.e., that dominates the attention and concern of project managers. In India, this constraint is funding. In Israel, where the VC industry is mature and liquid, funding is not a major constraint (though as always and everywhere, raising money is a major challenge), but experienced managerial capacity is the resonating factor. Hence, a theory of incubation should include principles that guide identification of the key ‘resonating’ constraint and provide direction toward reducing or eliminating it.Alignment with local and national cultures: Culture is a shared, learned, symbolic system of values, beliefs, and attitudes that shapes and influences perception and behaviour. Culture is how values drive behaviour. In national studies of incubation, it is strongly evident how powerfully national culture acts as a mediating variable between, for instance, incubator operations and processes and the national and global business environment. Hence, a theory of incubation should include answers to the following question:How can incubator processes align well with elements of national and local culture, in order to:reinforce those aspects of the culture that act positively to help incubator projects attain successmitigate or eliminate those aspects of culture that act negatively, and lead to failure?It is hoped that this work will stimulate other scholars to seek even more important general principles, leading to a powerful general theory of business incubation.

Toward a Grounded Theory of Effective Business Incubation

This paper addresses the issue of best-practice research methodology in management. It is argued that management research should follow what is known as ‘grounded theory’, or what Harvard Business School Professor, Robert Kaplan, termed as “innovation action research.”Today, management research is found following an inappropriate model, the hypotheticoscientific method designed for laboratory research in the natural sciences. This is unsuitable for management and not aligned with case-based pedagogy, action learning or reality-based executive programmes. The result is a painful disconnect between management research and management teaching.There is an increasing divergence and separation between educators and researchers, when in fact these endeavours should be integrated and converging. While educators use case studies intensively, researchers reject N=1 qualitative methods and instead employ N ≥ 25. It is indeed strange that sometimes the educator and the researcher are the same person. This strange methodological schizophrenia needs a remedy.For management, world is the laboratory. It therefore requires a worldly. research methodology. Management educators seek to use reality-based tools; yet, they often do research that is abstract and diffused. Some of the leading management tools taught by management educators originated, in fact, in best-practice innovations in organizations. Why not adopt this as general best-practice?And why, then, does management research pay lip service to the natural sciences, when its most powerful theories and tools emerged from clinical, not laboratory, settings?This paper offers an alternative, a new way forward, based on the familiar concept of grounded theory. Through examples and case studies, it shows how this approach might be applied and how teaching and research can become tightly integrated. It concludes with some poignant thoughts on the way forward, including finding robust ways to partner between management researchers, educators, and practitioners (who are participants of executive education programmes in most business schools). For instance: There would be a need for extensive collaboration between these three constituents.Management education and research must include extensive team work, rather than the common phenomenon of each educator doing his ‘solo’ act in management education programmes and moving on.There should be relevant and well-thoughtout themes that facilitate high quality dialogue between the three constituents (educators, researchers, and practitioners), where there is intense learning on the part of all of them.Significant mindset changes on the part of companies sponsoring their managers for management education programmes would be necessary.It is hoped that this paper would generate a lot of dialogue resulting in positive changes that would bridge the existing chasm between management education, research, and practice.

/pdf/bridging-the-chasm-between-management-education-research-and-uc0394w66n.pdf

D V R Seshadri

Papers

Innovation through Intrapreneurship: The Road Less Travelled:

Innovation Management: Strategies, Concepts and Tools for Growth and Profit

Business Ethics: The Next Frontier for Globalizing Indian Companies

Toward a Grounded Theory of Effective Business Incubation

Bridging the Chasm between Management Education, Research, and Practice: Moving Towards the ‘Grounded Theory’ Approach: