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

How to Do Things With Words

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

This 1966 paperback edition of a publication which first appeared in 1963 has by now been widely reviewed as a worthy contribution to the sociological study of deviant behavior. Its current appearance as a paperback is a testimonial both to the quality of the work and to the prominence of deviant behavior in this generation. In general the author places deviance in perspective, identifies types of deviant behavior, considers the role of rule makers and enforcers, and some of the problems in studying deviance. In addition, he develops a sequential model of deviance relying on the concept of career, a concept originally developed in studies of occupations. In his study of a particular kind of deviance, the use of marihuana, the author posits and tests systematically an hypothesis about the genesis of marihuana use for pleasure. The hypothesis traces the sequence of changes in individual attitude

Outsiders Studies in the Sociology of Deviance.

A fully updated and expanded second edition of this flagship work, which introduces methodological techniques to carry out analyses of text varieties, and provides descriptions of the most important text varieties in English. Part I introduces an analytical framework for studying registers, genre conventions, and styles, while Part II provides more detailed corpus-based descriptions of text varieties in English, including spoken interpersonal varieties, general and professional written varieties and emerging electronic varieties. Part III introduces more advanced analytical approaches and deals with larger theoretical concerns, such as the relationship between register studies and other sub-disciplines of linguistics, and practical applications of register analysis. A new chapter on EAP and ESP has been added, with new sections on the important differences between academic writing in the humanities and sciences, and a case study on engineering reports as an ESP register and genre. Coverage of new electronic registers has been updated, and a new analysis of hybrid registers has been added.

/pdf/register-genre-and-style-5dgexc09y1.pdf

Register, Genre, and Style

The primary objective of this study is to show the methodological benefits of a multimodal analysis of computer-mediated discussions. In order to go beyond the limits of a text-centered analysis, this study takes the kinesic behaviors of participants into account. An analysis of nonverbal communication, facial expression, and the relationship between text and kinesic behaviors in video recordings of four instant messaging discussions reveals that some kinesic behaviors can be seen as markers of engagement in interaction, even though an instant messaging discussion is not really interactive. Moreover, analyzing the kinesic behaviors of the participants shows that linear transcripts of the discussion generated by computer software hide many overlap phenomena. Finally, observation of the participants' facial expressions permits a more precise analysis of the emotional dimension of the discussion and highlights the discrepancy between text and nonverbal behaviors. Introduction: Theoretical Background and Research Questions Linguistic analyses of computer-mediated communication (CMC) are generally limited to text for methodological reasons. Studies that focus on logs of mediated texts separate messages from the physical context of their production and reception; as a result, they often neglect the situated dimension of discursive CMC exchanges and the multimodal nature of these communicative activities. Furthermore, the methodological choice to focus on text logs is related to the questions raised in the studies. CMC studies in general have tended to focus on "online behaviors:" What is analyzed is what we see on the screen. For example, linguists deal with the features of "digital discourse" (Collot & Belmore, 1996; Crystal, 2001), sociolinguists and sociologists emphasize the mechanisms of virtual community formation (Paolillo, 1999; Smith & Kollock, 1999), and social psychologists examine the emergence of group norms in cyberspace (Postmes, Spears, & Lea, 2000). According to Jones (2005a,b), these kinds of studies give the impression that 2 M. MARCOCCIA, H. ATIFI, AND N. GAUDUCHEAU Language@Internet, 5 (2008), article 7. (www.languageatinternet.de, urn:nbn:de: 0009-7-16215, ISSN 1860-2029) interaction takes place in a virtual space with no connection to the physical space in which participants are operating their computers. However, the physical context in which CMC takes place may have an impact on the way interaction is managed. If one considers CMC as situated human interaction (Goodwin, 2000; Relieu, 2005), it seems necessary to go "beyond the screen" (Jones, 2001) and to adopt a multimodal methodology, by which we mean recording and observing not only the textual production of the participants but also their postures, gestures, facial expressions, and reading/writing activities. Such an approach would focus on computermediated communication not only as a textual product, but also as an interactional process. Through the analysis of nonverbal behaviors of participants involved in an instant messaging session, this study intends to show the methodological interest of such an approach. Several questions will illustrate the benefits of a multimodal analysis. The first question asks what types of gestures are more common: ergonomic (or manipulative, i.e., task-oriented gestures), interactional (which permit intersynchronization), expressive (which indicate affect), symbolic (emblematic), or referential (which represent specific referents and semantic contents) (Ekman & Friesen, 1969; Kendon, 1970; Nehaniv, 2005; Tobin, 2000)? Description of gestures can show that participants are involved not in a solitary task of reading/writing digital texts but also in dialogic activity, in which they engage in exchanges with real recipients. Second, can the kinesic behaviors of online participants be considered as indicating the degree to which this dialogic activity is conversational and interactional? Whereas textual logs of written discussion display a clear dichotomy between sender and receiver without mutual or simultaneous interdependency, the analysis of kinesic behaviors reveals that an instant messaging discussion can be seen as an interactional achievement (Schegloff, 1982). For example, feedback phenomena occur when a participant reads a post. Gestures also occur that may indicate inter-synchronization and turntaking phenomena. Similarly, to what extent can the analysis of kinesic behaviors permit a better understanding of the structural organization of a discussion, including turntaking? For example, analyzing reading and writing activities shows that the TEXT-CENTERED VERSUS MULTIMODAL ANALYSIS 3 Language@Internet, 5 (2008), article 7. (www.languageatinternet.de, urn:nbn:de: 0009-7-16215, ISSN 1860-2029) linear transcripts of the discussion generated by computer software hide overlap phenomena. Last, can the study of the emotional expressivity of CMC be enriched through the description of kinesic behaviors? For example, how are facial expressions linked to such textual devices as smileys, acronyms of emotion, and expressive punctuation? The divergence that can be observed between facial expressions and these textual devices shows the limits of a log-centered analysis of the emotional dimensions of CMC.

https://www.languageatinternet.org/articles/2008/1621/marcoccia.pdf

Text-Centered versus Multimodal Analysis of Instant Messaging Conversation

Television genre as an object of negotiation: A semio-pragmatic analysis of French political “television forum”

This paper deals with methodological issues about the study and the design of computer-mediated solutions for online social support. First, we expose lacks in existing studies in the field of online social support. We have identified limits on three dimensions: methodological, conceptual and instrumental. Based on this critical analysis, we then describe our proposition of an interdisciplinary methodology (called MISS), involving psychology, sociology, computer science and conversational analysis. The role of each of these disciplines is described and discussed. As an illustration, we present the first results of the analysis of a corpus taken from a forum.

/pdf/online-social-support-benefits-of-an-interdisciplinary-57rnp5eskb.pdf

Online Social Support: Benefits of an Interdisciplinary Approach for Studying and Designing Cooperative Computer-Mediated Solutions

The co-operative principle and computer-mediated communication: the maxim of quantity in newsgroup discussions

In order to promote reuse, we have to help designers understand the context of previous projects . We have to build project memories that not only simply archive previous project solutions but that document the reasons why these solutions were chosen. These reasons have to show experts skills, document the representation of treated problems and the decision context, etc. This study presents a way to analyze mediated discussions using a discussion forum. We use pragmatic analysis in order to identify criteria that help to analyze coordination messages in design projects. These criteria can help to emphasize the context of decision making based on coordination interactions.

Hassan Atifi

Papers

Text-Centered versus Multimodal Analysis of Instant Messaging Conversation

Television genre as an object of negotiation: A semio-pragmatic analysis of French political “television forum”

Online Social Support: Benefits of an Interdisciplinary Approach for Studying and Designing Cooperative Computer-Mediated Solutions

The co-operative principle and computer-mediated communication: the maxim of quantity in newsgroup discussions

Analysis of Interactions on Coordination for Design Projects