Basics of qualitative research: Grounded theory procedures and techniques

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

Lincoln, Yvonna, and Egon Guba, "Postpositivism and the Naturalist Paradigm," pp. 14-46 in Yvonna Lincoln and Egon Guba, Naturalistic Inquiry . Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1985.*

物件導向軟體之架構(Object-Oriented Software Construction)探討

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

Context: Several large software-developing organizations have adopted Open Source Software development (OSSD) practices to develop in-house components that are subsequently integrated into products. This phenomenon is also known as ''Inner Source''. While there have been several reports of successful cases of this phenomenon, little is known about the challenges that practitioners face when integrating software that is developed in such a setting. Objective: The objective of this study was to shed light on challenges related to building products with components that have been developed within an Inner Source development environment. Method: Following an initial systematic literature review to generate seed category data constructs, we performed an in-depth exploratory case study in an organization that has a significant track record in the implementation of Inner Source. Data was gathered through semi-structured interviews with participants from a range of divisions across the organization. Interviews were transcribed and analyzed using qualitative data analysis techniques. Results: We have identified a number of challenges and approaches to address them, and compared the findings to challenges related to development with OSS products reported in the literature. We found that many challenges identified in the case study could be mapped to challenges related to integration of OSS. Conclusion: The results provide important insights into common challenges of developing with OSS and Inner Source and may help organizations to understand how to improve their software development practices by adopting certain OSSD practices. The findings also identify the areas that need further research.

/pdf/a-comparative-study-of-challenges-in-integrating-open-source-2ugx3834zm.pdf

A comparative study of challenges in integrating Open Source Software and Inner Source Software

Cloud computing has gained significant attention of industry and academic sectors which are interested in adopting or experimenting with this technology. An increasing number of companies are expected to migrate their systems to cloud enabled infrastructures. However, there has not been much attention paid to provide sufficient process support. Since migration projects are likely to encounter several kinds of challenges, it is important to identify and share the process and logistical requirements of migration projects in order to build a body of knowledge of appropriate process, methods, and tools. This paper purports to contribute to the growing knowledge of how to migrate existing systems to cloud computing by reporting our effort aimed at migrating an Open Source Software (OSS) framework, Hackystat, to cloud computing. We report the main steps followed, the process and technical challenges faced, and some of the strategies that helped us to address those challenges. We expect the reported experiences can provide readers with useful insights into the process and technical aspects that should be considered when migrating existing software systems to cloud computing infrastructures.

Migrating Service-Oriented System to Cloud Computing: An Experience Report

A Framework for Supporting Architecture Knowledge and Rationale Management

Agile software development approaches have recently gained popularity as a mechanism for reducing cost and increasing ability to handle change in dynamic market conditions. However, there is also a significant concern about the role and importance of the issues related to the software architecture of a system being developed using agile approaches. There is to date little empirical evidence available on what software architecture related practices are followed by teams using agile approaches and the kinds of architectural challenges resulting from using agile approaches. This paper reports a case study aimed to empirically identify and understand the architectural practices and challenges of teams using agile approaches. The findings provide useful information about the researched issues and also highlight the areas that need to be focused on for integrating agile and architecture-centric approaches.

https://ulir.ul.ie/bitstream/handle/10344/1127/babar_exploratory.pdf?sequence=2

Muhammad Ali Babar

Papers

A comparative study of challenges in integrating Open Source Software and Inner Source Software

Migrating Service-Oriented System to Cloud Computing: An Experience Report

A Framework for Supporting Architecture Knowledge and Rationale Management

An exploratory study of architectural practices and challenges in using agile software development approaches

Factors that motivate software engineering teams: A four country empirical study