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

The Concept of Corporate Strategy. Por Kenneth R. Andrews. Homewood, III.: R. D. Irwin, 1980 Revised Ed. xi, 180 p.; 24 cm. Incluye referencias e indice. ISBN 0-256-02371-9.

The Concept of Corporate Strategy

Reengineering the Corporation

A grey-based DEMATEL model for evaluating business process management critical success factors

Current NHS finance mechanisms use activity-based models that do not measure individual services. Economic policies that measure profitability of different services can drive improvement and efficiency. Monitor is looking at the introduction of a requirement for foundation trusts to implement these policies, and will shortly be consulting on the processes involved.

The new economics.

Motivated by the view that the managerial processes underpin the dynamic capabilities of the firm, this article seeks to review the current state of knowledge on managerial processes and propose a research agenda towards a better understanding of managerial processes. A systematic approach to the literature review covering business process and strategic management fields concludes that managerial processes are critical for sustaining and developing competitive advantage, but our understanding as to what they are, their contents and how they function is limited. A definition for managerial processes is proposed and the context within which managerial processes function is identified. An empirically based research agenda, comprising research questions, is outlined that would serve to enhance our understanding of the managerial processes that underpin dynamic capabilitie

John D Davies

Papers

Managerial processes: an operations management perspective towards dynamic capabilities