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

No project is an island: linking projects to history and context

http://kth.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:907024/FULLTEXT01.pdf

The resource allocation syndrome: the prime challenge of multi-project management?

Sustainability aims at addressing environmental and socio-economic issues in the long term. In general, the literature on sustainability has focused mainly on the environmental issues, whereas, more recently, a Circular Economy has been proposed as one of the latest concepts for addressing both the environmental and socio-economic issues. A Circular Economy aims at transforming waste into resources and on bridging production and consumption activities; however, there is still limited research focusing on these aspects. This paper addresses the link between procurement and supply practices, and proposes changing from a traditional public procurement process, based on product-selling business models, to a more service-oriented system. The paper proposes a framework to include technical and non-technical specifications of product/service combinations that improve resource usage efficiency through recovery. The framework also considers socio-cultural specifications and physical and social proximity between the stakeholders in the procurement process. The framework is based on collaboration, which is a vital link between the public procurement process and the development of more sustainable business models, where the experience gained in the collaboration process serves as the bases for suppliers and procurers in improving their contribution to CE, whilst at the same time securing economic benefits for both parties. Although, in this process, the specification setting may take longer, the relationships between procurer and supplier tend to be longer lasting and stronger. This research shows that collaboration between procurers and suppliers throughout the procurement process can lead to reductions in raw material utilisation and waste generation, whilst promoting the development of new, more sustainable, business models.

Towards a more Circular Economy: Proposing a framework linking sustainable public procurement and sustainable business models

https://findresearcher.sdu.dk:8443/ws/files/148543180/Accepted_manuscript_of_Stakeholder_analysis_in_projects.pdf

Stakeholder analysis in projects: Challenges in using current guidelines in the real world

Project portfolio management - There's more to it than what management enacts

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyze how various approaches to stakeholder management, as well as sustainable development principles, are included in internationally‐used project management standards; and to consider the demands these approaches and principles place on project stakeholder management.Design/methodology/approach – An analytical framework was developed based on stakeholder theory within general management, as well as on sustainability research. Desk research was carried out by applying the analytical framework to three project management standards: ICB, PMBOK and PRINCE2.Findings – The research findings suggest that stakeholder issues are treated superficially in the project management standards, while putting stakeholder management in the context of sustainable development would ask for a paradigm shift in the underpinning values. The current project stakeholder practices represent mainly a management‐of‐stakeholders approach, i.e. making stakeholders comply to project needs, w...

Sustainable development and project stakeholder management: what standards say

In many project-based industries, there has recently been an increased tendency for collaboration and cocreation of value with the customers. However, many existing studies report inherent challenges and complexities related to multipartner collaboration. This article presents a conceptual framework that explains the focal collaboration related elements and their interdependencies in multipartner projects. The elements in the framework and relations between them are derived from the existing empirical studies and theoretical literature on collaboration, knowledge integration, and project success. Based on the conceptual analysis of the extant literature, we identify eight collaboration antecedents and three collaboration outcome elements. The conceptual framework explains how two collaboration mediators, project-collaboration quality and knowledge-integration capability, relate collaboration antecedents with collaboration outcomes. In addition, based on the literature analysis, we identify 15 mechanisms that enhance the project-collaboration quality in multipartner projects. The article provides novel insights on the dynamics of collaboration in multipartner projects by offering the concepts of project-collaboration quality and knowledge-integration capability and explaining their role in collaborative projects.

The Dynamics of collaboration in multipartner projects.

In this special issue on project stakeholder management, the aim is to advance the understanding of this topic by looking into theory outside the project management field and by presenting findings...

Pernille Eskerod

Papers

Stakeholder analysis in projects: Challenges in using current guidelines in the real world

Project portfolio management - There's more to it than what management enacts

Sustainable development and project stakeholder management: what standards say

The Dynamics of collaboration in multipartner projects.

Project Stakeholder Management—Past and Present