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

The present historical moment may seem a particularly inopportune time to review Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam's latest exploration of civic decline in America. After all, the outpouring of volunteerism, solidarity, patriotism, and self-sacrifice displayed by Americans in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks appears to fly in the face of Putnam's central argument: that \"social capital\" -defined as \"social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them\" (p. 19)'has declined to dangerously low levels in America over the last three decades. However, Putnam is not fazed in the least by the recent effusion of solidarity. Quite the contrary, he sees in it the potential to \"reverse what has been a 30to 40-year steady decline in most measures of connectedness or community.\"' As an example of how the current \"war on terrorism\" could generate a durable civic renewal, Putnam points to the burst in civic practices that occurred during and after World War II, which he says \"permanently marked\" the generation that lived through it and had a \"terrific effect on American public life over the last half-century.\" 3 If Americans can follow this example and channel their current civic

Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community

We may not be able to make you love reading, but archaeology of knowledge will lead you to love reading starting from now. Book is the window to open the new world. The world that you want is in the better stage and level. World will always guide you to even the prestige stage of the life. You know, this is some of how reading will give you the kindness. In this case, more books you read more knowledge you know, but it can mean also the bore is full.

The archaeology of knowledge

Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity

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

https://www.uio.no/studier/emner/jus/afin/DRI3010/h09/The%20shape%20of%20eParticipation_2008.pdf

The shape of eParticipation: Characterizing an emerging research area

Characterizing eParticipation

A long-standing debate in the IS literature concerns the relationship between technology and organization. Does technology cause effects in organizations, or is it humans that determine how technology is used? Many socio-theoretic accounts of a middle way between the extremes of technolog- ical and social determinism have been suggested: in recent years the more convincing explanations have been based on Giddens' structuration theory and, more recently, on actor network theory. The two theories, however, may be seen to adopt rather different, and potentially incompatible, views of agency. Thus, structuration theory sees agency as a uniquely human prop- erty, whereas the principle of general symmetry in actor network theory implies that machines may also be actors. This rather fundamental disagree- ment may be characterized as the problem of agency. At the empirical level the problem of agency can be studied through ERP systems. These systems, though built and implemented by people, are thought to be wide-ranging in

/pdf/socio-theoretic-accounts-of-is-the-problem-of-agency-4kfl07qehh.pdf

Socio-Theoretic Accounts of IS: The Problem of Agency

Public sector managers take much of the responsibility for selecting, commissioning, implementing and realising benefits from information technology IT projects. However, e-Government initiatives often suffer from complexity, vision failure, lack of goal clarity and insufficient commitment. These problems may stem from value traditions that are deeply ingrained in managers' cultural environments but not always in harmony with each other. A first step towards working with value complexity is to understand it; we synthesise a model of value positions for e-Government derived from major traditions in the public administration literature. Four value positions relevant to e-Government together with their IT assumptions are identified; they reflect the ideals of professionalism, efficiency, service and engagement. A qualitative investigation of Danish local authority managers displays both value congruence and value divergence. The interpretive study results in a theoretical model that combines value positions and relationships, and the model's implications for researchers and practitioners in focusing successful e-Government initiatives are outlined.

/pdf/managing-e-government-value-positions-and-relationships-alo6dndbb7.pdf

Managing e-Government: value positions and relationships

The e-government field, like most young fields, lacks a strong body of well-developed theory. One strategy for coping with theoretical immaturity is to import and adapt theories from other, more mature fields. This study reviews Stakeholder Theory (ST) and investigates its potential in relation to e-Government. Originally a management theory, stakeholder theory advocates addressing the concerns of all stakeholders in a firm, as opposed to concentration on the interests of senior managers and stockholders. Apart from its original profit focus, there is no serious conceptual mismatch between stakeholder theory and government’s objective of providing policy and services for citizens and organizations – society’s stakeholders. Potential problems with adapting a management theory to a government setting are discussed. The paper further discusses how information technology impacts a stakeholder model of governance. Finally, the paper makes recommendations for future work in adapting ST to the e-government context.

/pdf/stakeholder-governance-adapting-stakeholder-theory-to-e-4dji2rutoh.pdf

Jeremy Rose

Papers

The shape of eParticipation: Characterizing an emerging research area

Characterizing eParticipation

Socio-Theoretic Accounts of IS: The Problem of Agency

Managing e-Government: value positions and relationships

Stakeholder Governance: Adapting Stakeholder Theory to E-Government