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

An increasing interest in “bringing actors back in” and gaining a nuanced understanding of their actions and interactions across a variety of strands in the management literature, has recently helped ethnography to unknown prominence in the field of organizational studies. Yet, calls remain that ethnography should “play a much more central role in the organization and management studies repertoire than it currently does” (Watson, 2011: 202). Ironically, those organizational realities that ethnographers are called to examine have at the same time become less and less amenable to ethnographic study. In this paper, we respond to these calls for innovative ethnographic methods in two ways. First, we report on the practices and ethnographic experiences of conducting a year-long team-based video ethnography of reinsurance trading in Lloyd’s of London. Second, drawing on these experiences, we propose an initial framework for systematizing new approaches to organizational ethnography and visualizing the ways in which they are ‘expanding’ ethnography as it was traditionally practiced.

Charting new territory for organizational ethnography:insights from a team-based video ethnography of reinsurance trading in Lloyd’s of London

The advent of customer experiential knowledge management approach (CEKM): The integration of offline & online experiential knowledge

Purpose – Increasing complexity, fragmentation, mobility, pace, and technological intermediation of organizational life make “being there” increasingly difficult Where do ethnographers have to be, when, for how long, and with whom to “be there” and grasp the practices, norms, and values that make the situation meaningful to natives? These novel complexities call for new forms of organizational ethnography The purpose of this paper is to discuss the above issues

Design/methodology/approach – In this paper, the authors respond to these calls for innovative ethnographic methods in two ways First, the paper reports on the practices and ethnographic experiences of conducting a year-long team-based video ethnography of reinsurance trading in London

Findings – Second, drawing on these experiences, the paper proposes a framework for systematizing new approaches to organizational ethnography and visualizing the ways in which they are “expanding” ethnography as it was traditionally practiced
Originality/value – The paper contributes to the ethnographic literature in three ways: first, the paper develops a framework for charting new approaches to ethnography and highlight its different dimensions – site, instrument, and fieldworker Second, the paper outlines the opportunities and challenges associated with these expansions, specifically with regard to research design, analytical rigour, and communication of results Third, drawing on the previous two contributions, the paper highlights configurations of methodological expansions on the aforementioned dimensions that are more promising than others in leveraging new technologies and approaches to claim new territory for organizational ethnography and enhance its relevance for understanding today’s multifarious organizational realities

/pdf/charting-new-territory-for-organizational-ethnography-4y8p934eem.pdf

Charting new territory for organizational ethnography : Insights from a team-based video ethnography

Coordination practices in extreme situations

As practical knowledge seems to have a central place in organisational issues, we focus on possibilities of studying and formalising it. From an unusual theoretical perspective, we view practical knowledge as embodied knowing that is only manifest through action in a particular situation. Although this knowledge is largely implicit, we try to make what is articulable explicit. After highlighting the stakes involved in the codification of practices, we review the ontological and epistemological assumptions underlying the method developed. The method is founded on participant observation, a video recording of a situated subjective perspective and an ex post interview using this perspective to aid an actor in making part of his/her practical knowledge explicit. We present its implementation within research on polar expeditions in order to understand how an experienced actor deals with risks. In conclusion, we point out (1) the importance of this kind of data in knowledge management, (2) some lines of further research.

/pdf/towards-a-codification-of-practical-knowledge-2om326xknd.pdf

Towards a codification of practical knowledge

La primaute des valeurs negatives affirmee par Canguilhem dans le champ de la maladie est mise a l'epreuve dans le champ de l'exercice corporel. Cette etude se centre sur l'experience subjective et l'activite d'un volleyeur qui presente la particularite de manifester en situation de frequentes reactions d'insatisfaction. L'evitement de la rupture de l'echange apparait comme la relation prevalente au fondement de son activite et de son experience : elle s'impose comme norme propre sous-jacente. L'article met en evidence quelques aspects du processus d'actualisation en situation de cette norme.

Norme propre et exercice corporel : le cas d'un volleyeur

La presente contribution est le texte remanie de nos communications au sein du symposium « Tendances et conations : le sens en action » dans le cadre du colloque AFRAPS-ARIS-EPDM de Louvain la Neuve. Elle presente, a partir du constat robuste d’une dissociation entre motivation hors situation et mobilisation en situation, une serie d’etude portant sur la sensibilite des pratiquants en situation. Les principaux resultats issus de quatre etudes de terrain sont exposes. Tout pratiquant est apprehende en tant qu’organisme caracterise par sa sensibilite propre, c’est-a-dire par un sens sensible qui mobilise son activite aux plans qualitatif et intensif et qui assure la production de son milieu de pratique. Les implications en matiere d’intervention sont evoquees : toute entreprise d’intervention ne peut faire l’economie d’une tentative d’apprehension de la sensibilite propre du pratiquant. Les resultats sont discutes et rapportes a l’etat des recherches en matiere de motivation et d’emotion.

/pdf/sensibilite-et-mobilisation-perspectives-d-investigation-du-46ocu0dcvl.pdf

Sensibilité et mobilisation : perspectives d’investigation du sens à l’œuvre en situation de pratique

L’enseignement de l’education physique et sportive (EPS) dans les colleges et lycees francais fait classiquement l’objet de nombreux travaux en didactique et en pedagogie, selon une approche qui privilegie la relation entre l’eleve et le savoir. Dans ces travaux, l’activite de l’enseignant n’est generalement interrogee qu’au regard de cette relation qu’il tente de construire. Ainsi de nombreux enjeux de cette activite echappent aux etudes, alors qu’ils apparaissent largement constitutifs du rapport construit entre l’enseignant et son travail, et donc des formes de mobilisation de cet enseignant dans sa relation a l’eleve.
L’enquete presentee ici vise precisement a objectiver le rapport au travail des enseignants d’EPS, notamment au travers des relations entre effets sur la sante, perception du metier et conditions de travail. Realisee en region Auvergne (France) aupres de 218 enseignants d’EPS, les resultats montrent d’abord un ecart entre le discours general positif sur le metier et les reponses specifiques apportees a des questions precises sur l’organisation du travail, le collectif, ou encore la sante, qui revelent de reelles difficultes. Une correlation significative apparait notamment entre certaines difficultes vecues dans le travail relatives aux questions d’organisation du travail, de charge de travail et de sens du travail, et certaines situations de fatigue et d’epuisement. Par ailleurs, des differences liees a l’âge et au sexe sont reperees dans le rapport au travail.
Les difficultes soulevees relevent du champ de l’ergonomie et plusieurs perspectives d’actions peuvent etre envisagees : la gestion des fins de carriere, le developpement des collectifs et des organisations, l’intervention ergonomique en milieu scolaire, l’intervention ergonomique en conception, la formation continue des enseignants.

https://journals.openedition.org/pistes/pdf/4391

Géraldine Rix

Papers

Towards a codification of practical knowledge

Norme propre et exercice corporel : le cas d'un volleyeur

Sensibilité et mobilisation : perspectives d’investigation du sens à l’œuvre en situation de pratique

Enquête sur les conditions de travail auprès de professeurs d’éducation physique et sportive et perspectives d’action