This article examines the function of documents as a data source in qualitative research and discusses document analysis procedure in the context of actual research experiences. Targeted to research novices, the article takes a nuts‐and‐bolts approach to document analysis. It describes the nature and forms of documents, outlines the advantages and limitations of document analysis, and offers specific examples of the use of documents in the research process. The application of document analysis to a grounded theory study is illustrated.

Document Analysis as a Qualitative Research Method

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

Smart wearable systems: Current status and future challenges

https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa48788/Download/0048788-10022019003706.pdf

Artificial intelligence for decision making in the era of Big Data – evolution, challenges and research agenda

Product architecture knowledge is typically embedded in the communication patterns of established development organizations. While this enables the development of products using the existing architecture, it hinders the organization's ability to implement novel architectures, especially for complex products. Structured methods addressing this issue are lacking, as previous research has studied complex product development from two separate perspectives: product architecture and organizational structure. Our research integrates these viewpoints with a structured approach to study how design interfaces in the product architecture map onto communication patterns within the development organization. We investigate how organizational and system boundaries, design interface strength, indirect interactions, and system modularity impact the alignment of design interfaces and team interactions. We hypothesize and test how these factors explain the existence of the following cases: (1) known design interfaces not addressed by team interactions, and (2) observed team interactions not predicted by design interfaces. Our results offer important insights to managers dealing with interdependences across organizational and functional boundaries. In particular, we show how boundary effects moderate the impact of design interface strength and indirect team interactions, and are contingent on system modularity. The research uses data collected from a large commercial aircraft engine development process.

/pdf/the-misalignment-of-product-architecture-and-organizational-ney2la03u2.pdf

Mansur Darlington

Papers

Investigating ontology development for engineering design support

A diary study of information needs and document usage in the engineering domain

Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)

A model of factors influencing the design requirement

High value information in engineering organisations