Basics of qualitative research: Grounded theory procedures and techniques

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

This paper consolidates the state of academic research on innovation. Based on a systematic review of literature published over the past 27 years, we synthesize various research perspectives into a comprehensive multi-dimensional framework of organizational innovation - linking leadership, innovation as a process, and innovation as an outcome. We also suggest measures of determinants of organizational innovation and present implications for both research and managerial practice.

A Multi‐Dimensional Framework of Organizational Innovation: A Systematic Review of the Literature

Статья посвящена вопросам влияния власти на поведение человека. Авторы рассматривают данные различных источников, в которых увеличение власти связывается с напористостью, а ее уменьшение - с подавленностью. Конкретно, власть ассоциируется с: а) позитивным аффектом; б) вниманием к вознаграждению и к свойствам других, удовлетворяющим личные цели; в) автоматической переработкой информации и резкими суждениями; г) расторможенным социальным поведением. Уменьшение власти, напротив, ассоциируется с: а) негативным аффектом; б) вниманием к угрозам и наказаниям, к интересам других и к тем характеристикам я, которые отвечают целям других; в) контролируемой переработкой информации и совещательным типом рассуждений; г) подавленным социальным поведением. Обсуждаются также последствия этих паттернов поведения, связанных с властью, и потенциальные модераторы.

Power, approach, and inhibition. Власть, напористость и подавленность

While research on contextual ambidexterity has primarily focused on the role of individuals to host exploration-exploitation tensions, the emergence process linking ambidexterity at the individual ...

Opening Up the Black Box: A Contingent Dual-Process Model of Ambidexterity Emergence

The article presents management science research on the role of social capital regarding knowledge transfers within organizations. Social capital is defined as the resources created by the network of relationships within a social unit. It is hypothesized that knowledge transfer mediates the relationship between social capital, innovative ability within the organization and financial performance. While high degrees of social capital within an organization were found to increase knowledge transfer, this was not found to result in an increase in innovation.

Social capital, knowledge transfer and outcomes: meta-analysis of a moderated mediation model.

This study examines how business units manage the ratio of realized to potential absorptive capacity and reveals how absorptive capacity drives performance differences. Results from 462 business units within 150 branches show that cross-functional interfaces, participation and job-rotation especially enhance a unit’s potential absorptive capacity. Formalization and socialization tactics particularly develop a unit’s realized absorptive capacity. Regarding consequences of absorptive capacity, our findings show that superior financial performance originates from a unit’s ability to nurture and harvest potential absorptive capacity. Moreover, our study suggests that potential and realized absorptive capacity have different roles n enabling explorative and iexploitative adaptations. Lower ratios of realized to potential absorptive capacity are associated with explorative adaptations, whereas higher ratios are related to exploitative adaptations. In this regard, our study shows how managing potential and realized absorptive capacity provides sources of sustainable competitive advantage. Keywords: Potential and realized absorptive capacity, combinative capabilities, adaptation, and performance

Absorptive capacity, adaptation, and performance: an intra-organizational perspective

textStrategic and corporate entrepreneurship have been widely acknowledged by scholars and executives alike as an effective means of revitalizing organizations to improve performance. Spurring entrepreneurial behavior and exploration within established organizations, however, remains a big challenge facing today’s businesses. As organizations grow and age over time, like people in general, they tend to become set in their ways of thinking, learning, managing and acting – they become less flexible and less willing to sense and seize new opportunities. There is little doubt that the mindsets and organizational attributes needed for exploring and leveraging new opportunities are radically different from those needed for smoothening ongoing operations, making it difficult to pursue both sets of activities at the same time within an organization. Given the importance for future sustainable growth, scholars have yet to uncover how organizations may reconcile conflicting demands and resolve the challenges associated with corporate entrepreneurship’s emphasis on leveraging existing opportunities as well as new ones ‘out there’.

The aim of this inaugural address is to draw the foundations and to identify emergent opportunities for moving forward research on strategic entrepreneur - ship in general and on corporate entrepreneurship in particular. It considers the
challenges associated with corporate entrepreneurship and details important organizational and managerial features of successful organizations that span different levels of analysis. The inaugural address concludes that the integration of theory and research in strategic management and entrepreneurship using such a multilevel approach generates valuable new research avenues underlying a prosperous research agenda.

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Corporate Entrepreneurship: Sensing and Seizing Opportunities for a Prosperous Research Agenda

Research on organizational ambidexterity has introduced various approaches for organizations to combine exploratory and exploitative activities. Yet, these approaches are often not feasible for sma...

Justin J. P. Jansen

Papers

Opening Up the Black Box: A Contingent Dual-Process Model of Ambidexterity Emergence

Social capital, knowledge transfer and outcomes: meta-analysis of a moderated mediation model.

Absorptive capacity, adaptation, and performance: an intra-organizational perspective

Corporate Entrepreneurship: Sensing and Seizing Opportunities for a Prosperous Research Agenda

"Top Management Team Attributes, Bricolage and Ambidexterity in SMEs"