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

In this article I describe and compare a number of alternative generic strategies for the analysis of process data, looking at the consequences of these strategies for emerging theories. I evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the strategies in terms of their capacity to generate theory that is accurate, parsimonious, general, and useful and suggest that method and theory are inextricably intertwined, that multiple strategies are often advisable, and that no analysis strategy will produce theory without an uncodifiable creative leap, however small. Finally, I argue that there is room in the organizational research literature for more openness within the academic community toward a variety of forms of coupling between theory and data.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/259349.pdf

Strategies for Theorizing from Process Data

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/201/4359/899.2.full.pdf

Phenomenology of perception.

Knowledge is too problematic a concept to make the task of building a dynamic knowledge-based theory of the firm easy. We must also distinguish the theory from the resource-based and evolutionary views. The paper begins with a multitype epistemology which admits both the pre- and subconscious modes of human knowing and, reframing the concept of the cognizing individual, the collective knowledge of social groups. While both Nelson and Winter, and Nonaka and Takeuchi, successfully sketch theories of the dynamic interactions of these types of organizational knowledge, neither indicates how they are to be contained. Callon and Latour suggest knowledge itself is dynamic and contained within actor networks, so moving us from knowledge as a resource toward knowledge as a process. To simplify this approach, we revisit sociotechnical systems theory, adopt three heuristics from the social constructionist literature, and make a distinction between the systemic and component attributes of the actor network. The result is a very different mode of theorizing, less an objective statement about the nature of firms ‘out there’ than a tool to help managers discover their place in the firm as a dynamic knowledge-based activity system.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/smj.4250171106

Making knowledge the basis of a dynamic theory of the firm

Mind, Self and Society from the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist

This text seeks to demonstrate what leadership means in an environment where complete control is not possible. Explaining what self-organization means in human systems, it provides a model of the learning organization that takes into account the real-life anxieties that are involved.

Complexity and Creativity in Organizations

1. The Nature of Strategy and Organisational Change Part 1. Orthodox Perspectives on Strategy and Organisational Dynamics 2. The Foundations of Strategic Choice Theory: Cybernetic Systems and Cognitivist Psychology 3. Strategic Choice: Formulating the Strategy 4. Strategic Choice: Designing the Systems to Deliver the Strategy 5. Strategic Choice: Taking Account of Uncertainty and Conflict 6. Strategic Choice: Motivation, Leadership, Politics and Culture 7. Review of Strategic Choice Theory 8. The Foundations of Learning Organisation Theory: Systems Dynamics and Cognitivism 9. The Learning Organisation 10. Obstacles to Strategic Choice and Organisational Learning: Open Systems and Psychoanalytic Perspectives Case Studies: 1. Enigma Chemicals 2. Apex Engineering 3. Managing Creativity in Pharmaceuticals 4. The Co-operative Alliance Between The Bank of St Helier of the UK, and Banco Real of Spain Part 2. Towards a Radical Perspective on Strategic Management and Organisational Dynamics 11. Chaos Theory, Dissipative Structures and Synergetics 12. Complex Adaptive Systems 13. How Organisation Theorists are Using Chaos and Complexity Theory 14. Complexity: The Problem with Notion of the Autonomous Individual 15. Complexity: Self-Organising Experience 16. Understanding Organisations as Complex Responsive Processes 17. The Implications of Understanding Organisations as Complex Responsive Processes Management Narratives: 1. Innovation in Water Utility 2. The Budget Meeting 3. Performance Measurement 4. Experiencing a Change Program 5. Consulting and Culture Change 6. Culture Change at a Factory Index

Strategic Management and Organisational Dynamics: The Challenge of Complexity

The two perspectives of strategy process most firmly established in the literature—strategic choice and ecology—assume the same about system dynamics: negative feedback processes driving successful systems (individual organizations or populations of organizations) toward predictable equilibrium states of adaptation to the environment. This paper proposes a third perspective, that of complex adaptive systems. The framework is provided by the modern science of complexity: the study of nonlinear and network feedback systems, incorporating theories of chaos, artificial life, self-organization and emergent order. Here system dynamics are characterized by positive and negative feedback as systems coevolve far from equilibrium, in a self-organizing manner, toward unpredictable long-term outcomes.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2486790.pdf

The science of complexity: An alternative perspective for strategic change processes

Introduction - can learning and knowledge creation in organizations really be managed?. Part 1 The Foundations of Mainstream Views on Learning and Knowledge Creation in Organizations: Systems Thinking Mainstream Thinking about Learning and Knowledge Creation in Organizations Transmitting knowledge between individuals, diffusing it across an organization and storing it in explicit forms Constructing knowledge and making sense in communities of practice Different levels of Learning and Knowledge Creation in Organizations - the individual and the social The individual and the social as separate mutually influencing levels Moving away from the split between individual and social. Part 2 Towards a Complexity Perspective: The Emergence of Knowledge in Complex Responsive Processes of Relating The Emergence of the Individual and the Social in Communicative Interaction Complex adaptive systems as a source domain for analogies of human acting and knowing The evolution of the mind, self and society Back to the complexity sciences for analogies Communicative Action in the Medium of Symbols The importance of feelings - protosymbols The importance of reflection-in-action - significant symbols, The multiple aspects of symbols Organization of Communicative Action - rule-based or self-organizing knowledge? Global rules and the structuring of communication Narrative forms of communication Local rules and the structuring of communication Communicative action as patterning process Themes organizing the experience of being together The Emergence of Enabling Constraints power relations and unconscious processes Turn taking, power and ideology The dynamics of inclusion-exclusion and anxiety, Fantasy and unconscious processes Organization as Communication in the Living Present - how knowledge emerges in complex responsive processes of relating Identity and difference - boundaries around a system or movement of process? Complex responsive processes of relating in the living present. Part 3 Systems Thinking and the Perspective of Complex Responsive Processes: Comparisons and implications Comparing Systems - thinking and the Perspective of Complex Responsive Processes From sender-receiver to responsive relating From storing to perpetually constructing memory From the individual-social split to individuals in social relationship From the individual tacit/unconscious to unconscious processes of relating From systems of language to the action of language Institutions, communication and power Dialogue and ordinary conversation in the living present The Organizational Implications of Complex Responsive Processes of Knowledge Creation, The limitations of mainstream prescriptions on knowledge management- Focusing attention on participative self organization.

Complex Responsive Processes in Organizations: Learning and Knowledge Creation

Complexity theory is generating increasing interest amongst strategic thinkers. This fascinating book covers issues such as predictability, creativity and relationships as it considers how complexity, and its central principles of emergence and self-organization, are being used to understand organizations. The book:

 introduces the variety of views put forward by different writers on complexity and management
 outlines and critiques the way that complexity theory is frequently interpreted purely in the context of systems thinking
 draws a new perspective on using complexity sciences to understand organizational stability and change by focusing on the emergence of novelty and creativity in the course of everyday processes
 calls for a radical re-examination of management thinking.

Timely and controversial, Complexity and Management is essential reading for anyone interested in strategy, systems thinking, organization and management theory, and organizational change.

Ralph Stacey

Papers

Complexity and Creativity in Organizations

Strategic Management and Organisational Dynamics: The Challenge of Complexity

The science of complexity: An alternative perspective for strategic change processes

Complex Responsive Processes in Organizations: Learning and Knowledge Creation

Complexity and Management: Fad or Radical Challenge to Systems Thinking?