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

Part I: AN INTRODUCTION TO INQUIRY. 1. Human Inquiry and Science. 2. Paradigms, Theory, and Research. 3. The Ethics and Politics of Social Research. Part II: THE STRUCTURING OF INQUIRY: QUANTITATIVE AND QUALITATIVE. 4. Research Design. 5. Conceptualization, Operationalization, and Measurement. 6. Indexes, Scales, and Typologies. 7. The Logic of Sampling. Part III: MODES OF OBSERVATION: QUANTITATIVE AND QUALITATIVE. 8. Experiments. 9. Survey Research. 10. Qualitative Field Research. 11. Unobtrusive Research. 12. Evaluation Research. Part IV: ANALYSIS OF DATA:QUANTITATIVE AND QUALITATIVE . 13. Qualitative Data Analysis. 14. Quantitative Data Analysis. 15. Reading and Writing Social Research. Appendix A. Using the Library. Appendix B. Random Numbers. Appendix C. Distribution of Chi Square. Appendix D. Normal Curve Areas. Appendix E. Estimated Sampling Error.

社会研究方法基础 = The Basics of Social Research

Knowledge Management

The Wealth of Knowledge: Intellectual Capital and the Twenty‐First Century Organization

Local and indigenous knowledge is being transformed globally, particularly being eroded when pertaining to ecology. In many parts of the world, rural and indigenous communities are facing tremendous cultural, economic and environmental changes, which contribute to weaken their local knowledge base. In the face of profound and ongoing environmental changes, both cultural and biological diversity are likely to be severely impacted as well as local resilience capacities from this loss. In this global literature review, we analyse the drivers of various types of local and indigenous ecological knowledge transformation and assess the directionality of the reported change. Results of this analysis show a global impoverishment of local and indigenous knowledge with 77% of papers reporting the loss of knowledge driven by globalization, modernization, and market integration. The recording of this loss, however, is not symmetrical, with losses being recorded more strongly in medicinal and ethnobotanical knowledge. Persistence of knowledge (15% of the studies) occurred in studies where traditional practices were being maintained consiously and where hybrid knowledge was being produced as a resut of certain types of incentives created by economic development. This review provides some insights into local and indigenous ecological knowledge change, its causes and implications, and recommends venues for the development of replicable and comparative research. The larger implication of these results is that because of the interconnection between cultural and biological diversity, the loss of local and indigenous knowledge is likely to critically threaten effective conservation of biodiversity, particularly in community-based conservation local efforts.

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Global trends of local ecological knowledge and future implications.

Conserving indigenous knowledge as the key to the current and future use of traditional vegetables

Adding knowledge cafés to the repertoire of knowledge sharing techniques

Knowledge audit: Tools of the trade transmitted to tools for tradition

Background : The purpose of this study was to investigate social media technology trends in Nielsen - a global information and measurement company - and to establish how these technologies can help the company to create a knowledge-sharing culture.
Objective : The objective of this study was to investigate trends in knowledge-sharing technologies in Nielsen.
Method : The researchers distributed semi-structured questionnaires to a sample of employees in Nielsen's Television Audience Measurement Department. They also conducted interviews with specific employees in this department to gain a better understanding of employees' attitudes toward, and perceptions of, the use of social media tools for creating a knowledge-sharing culture at Nielsen. The researchers validated the data to see whether it could support the research and used triangulation to create a holistic view of the data they received from the questionnaires.
Results : The findings of the study revealed that respondents had a positive attitude to sharing knowledge with one another through using social media tools. However, some respondents thought that technology, in general, was 'the tree of good and evil'. The survey findings showed that Nielsen did have social media tools. However, not all employees were aware of these tools or were willing to use the tools to share knowledge. This study highlighted the possible advantages of the social media for sharing knowledge and how Nielsen could use the tools more widely.
Conclusion : In order for a knowledge sharing culture to thrive at Nielsen, its employees need to engage more with social media tools in their business practices.

Knowledge sharing through social media : investigating trends and technologies in a global marketing and advertising research company : original research

This article presents the results of a literature review into the many definitions that exist for indigenous knowledge (IK). The literature review forms part of a study that was conducted to determine the extent of the conservation of IK in various cultural villages in South Africa. The article also briefly touches on isolated but relevant experiences that the researchers encountered during telephonic interviews with various cultural villages in South Africa. The empirical survey discussed in this article illustrates that cultural villages in South Africa represent a large proportion of the indigenous groups in South Africa. Foreign tourists are the target market at the majority of cultural villages. Staff members at cultural villages are employed for their knowledge of the culture, but cultural villages also train their staff with regard to IK. The telephonic interviews were also used to identify cultural villages that could be used as case studies where in-depth interviews were conducted. Both employees and visitors to the cultural villages were interviewed to determine the extent of IK conservation at cultural villages. This article will, however, not report on the results from the case study visits, which will be reported in future articles.

Martie Mearns

Papers

Conserving indigenous knowledge as the key to the current and future use of traditional vegetables

Adding knowledge cafés to the repertoire of knowledge sharing techniques

Knowledge audit: Tools of the trade transmitted to tools for tradition

Knowledge sharing through social media : investigating trends and technologies in a global marketing and advertising research company : original research

Conservation of indigenous knowledge at cultural villages : an exploratory study