How has Japan become a major economic power, a world leader in the automotive and electronics industries? What is the secret of their success? The consensus has been that, though the Japanese are not particularly innovative, they are exceptionally skilful at imitation, at improving products that already exist. But now two leading Japanese business experts, Ikujiro Nonaka and Hiro Takeuchi, turn this conventional wisdom on its head: Japanese firms are successful, they contend, precisely because they are innovative, because they create new knowledge and use it to produce successful products and technologies. Examining case studies drawn from such firms as Honda, Canon, Matsushita, NEC, 3M, GE, and the U.S. Marines, this book reveals how Japanese companies translate tacit to explicit knowledge and use it to produce new processes, products, and services.

The knowledge-creating company : how Japanese companies create the dynamics of innovation

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

Individualism and collectivism

Open Innovation: The New Imperative for Creating and Profiting from Technology

What makes organizations so similar? We contend that the engine of rationalization and bureaucratization has moved from the competitive marketplace to the state and the professions. Once a set of organizations emerges as a field, a paradox arises: rational actors make their organizations increasingly similar as they try to change them. We describe three isomorphic processes-coercive, mimetic, and normative—leading to this outcome. We then specify hypotheses about the impact of resource centralization and dependency, goal ambiguity and technical uncertainty, and professionalization and structuration on isomorphic change. Finally, we suggest implications for theories of organizations and social change.

The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields (Chinese Translation)

The present research paper shows the results of an analysis of the existing literature on one of the topics that has sparked the most interest among scholars and researchers in the fields of international management and entrepreneurship: born global firms or international new ventures. Concretely, with the aim of identifying and visualising the intellectual structure of research on this phenomenon, a total of 124 research papers whose titles contain the above terms are analysed. The methodology is mainly based on the bibliometric techniques of document citation and co-citation analyses and the analysis of social networks.

Mapping the Intellectual Structure of Research on ‘Born Global’ Firms and INVs: A Citation/Co-citation Analysis

The present research work shows the results of an analysis about the existing literature on one of the `topics' which is currently raising greater interest among scholars and researchers in the fields of strategic management and organization science, namely: organizational ambidexterity. More precisely, and seeking to identify and visualize the intellectual structure or knowledge base of the research developed in relation to this construct, a decision was made to analyze a total of 283 research papers which appeared after the publication in the journal California Management Review in the summer of 1996 of the seminal work by Tushman and O'Reilly III entitled `Ambidextrous Organizations: Managing Evolutionary and Revolutionary Change,' where these authors suggested that organizations need to explore and exploit simultaneously if they want to be ambidextrous. As for the methodology applied, it was based on the utilization of bibliometric techniques--particularly citation analyses and author co-citation analyses and social networks analysis.

Organizational ambidexterity: exploring the knowledge base

Purpose




The purpose of this paper is to explore if human resource (HR) flexibility facilitates the development of organizational ambidexterity, which in turn has positive effects on firm performance.




Design/methodology/approach




The research hypotheses are tested by partial least squares with data from a sample of 100 Spanish hotels.




Findings




The results confirm a total mediator effect of organizational ambidexterity on the relationship between HR flexibility and performance. However, it was not possible to check that such flexibility directly influences performance. This may be due to the fact that HR flexibility has a gradual effect on the development of organizational ambidexterity.




Research limitations/implications




The results of this study contribute to the knowledge on the impact of HR flexibility on performance. This paper, thus, stresses the strategic role that HRs play within organizations, insofar as their flexibility makes it possible to develop a highly relevant organizational capability such as ambidexterity. The study’s limitations are the analysis technique utilized (it assumes linearity between latent variables) and that the research only explores the hotel industry.




Practical implications




HR managers need to consider that HR flexibility contributes to developing organizational ambidexterity and the ability to combine the learning of exploration and exploitation, which affects the firm’s performance and, therefore its competitiveness.




Originality/value




The results of this study can contribute to broaden the knowledge about the impact of HR flexibility on performance. In fact, the studies on HR flexibility performed so far have focused on analysing the role played by that flexibility as a mediator variable between high performance work system and performance. This work goes one step further, trying to examine the extent to which HR flexibility influences the ability to undertake exploitation and exploration processes at the same time. This paper, thus, stresses the strategic role that HRs play within organizations, insofar as their flexibility makes it possible to develop a highly relevant organizational capability as is ambidexterity.

/pdf/human-resource-flexibility-and-performance-in-the-hotel-39w90hcpfc.pdf

Human resource flexibility and performance in the hotel industry: The role of organizational ambidexterity

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/csr.2171

Green ambidexterity and environmental performance: The role of green human resources

A few years ago and coinciding with the dilemma posed by March about the contradictions involved in exploration and exploitation learning, we saw the emergence of the “Organizational Ambidexterity”...

Mercedes Úbeda-García

Papers

Mapping the Intellectual Structure of Research on ‘Born Global’ Firms and INVs: A Citation/Co-citation Analysis

Organizational ambidexterity: exploring the knowledge base

Human resource flexibility and performance in the hotel industry: The role of organizational ambidexterity

Green ambidexterity and environmental performance: The role of green human resources

Toward Organizational Ambidexterity in the Hotel Industry: The Role of Human Resources