According to W. Edwards Deming, American companies require nothing less than a transformation of management style and of governmental relations with industry. In Out of the Crisis, originally published in 1982, Deming offers a theory of management based on his famous 14 Points for Management. Management's failure to plan for the future, he claims, brings about loss of market, which brings about loss of jobs. Management must be judged not only by the quarterly dividend, but by innovative plans to stay in business, protect investment, ensure future dividends, and provide more jobs through improved product and service. In simple, direct language, he explains the principles of management transformation and how to apply them.

Out of the Crisis

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 to Do Things With Words

The present historical moment may seem a particularly inopportune time to review Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam's latest exploration of civic decline in America. After all, the outpouring of volunteerism, solidarity, patriotism, and self-sacrifice displayed by Americans in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks appears to fly in the face of Putnam's central argument: that \"social capital\" -defined as \"social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them\" (p. 19)'has declined to dangerously low levels in America over the last three decades. However, Putnam is not fazed in the least by the recent effusion of solidarity. Quite the contrary, he sees in it the potential to \"reverse what has been a 30to 40-year steady decline in most measures of connectedness or community.\"' As an example of how the current \"war on terrorism\" could generate a durable civic renewal, Putnam points to the burst in civic practices that occurred during and after World War II, which he says \"permanently marked\" the generation that lived through it and had a \"terrific effect on American public life over the last half-century.\" 3 If Americans can follow this example and channel their current civic

Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community

We may not be able to make you love reading, but archaeology of knowledge will lead you to love reading starting from now. Book is the window to open the new world. The world that you want is in the better stage and level. World will always guide you to even the prestige stage of the life. You know, this is some of how reading will give you the kindness. In this case, more books you read more knowledge you know, but it can mean also the bore is full.

The archaeology of knowledge

David Coghlan and Teresa Brannick (2009): Doing Action Research in Your Own Organisation Sage, London 2010, (3rd edition), $ 44.95, euro 27.99 (amazon), pp. 184, Paperback ISBN: 9781848602168 Reviewed by Richard Ennals This new edition of a popular text, used by researchers and practitioners, focuses attention on central issues in Action Research. David Coghlan has been an active participant in many of the separate traditions of Action Research. Both he and his co-author Teresa Brannick teach in University Business Schools in Dublin, moving Action Research into the mainstream. This new edition takes the opportunity to refer to the latest literature in a fastgrowing and diverse field. It provides a valuable foundation for new researchers in the field. There has been a separate literature, for example dealing with Educational Action Research (Noffke/Somekh 2009; McNiff/Whitehead 2009), with a focus on the individual reflective practitioner. By contrast we can point to work on Action Research and Organisational Renewal, which has included consideration of major managed programmes (Gustavsen et al. 2001; Levin 2002; Fricke/Totterdill 2004) which have deployed Action Research in order to pursue policy objectives. This has raised questions as to how Action Research is itself to be defined (Greenwood/Levin 2007). At this point we may have concluded that what different instances of Action Research have in common is that they are cited as instances of Action Research. There are family resemblances. However, readers of earlier editions of works in the field (e.g. Reason/Bradbury 2001) will have noticed limited cross-citations of literature from other traditions. Coghlan and Brannick have made a welcome contribution, both in the breadth of their referenees, and in the platform which they provide for further debate and development. The title of the book deals with Action Research in one's own organisation. The implication is that such research is not necessarily part of a larger scale managed programme. Reliance is not to be placed on research expertise from outside. The authors define Action Research as "an approach to research which aims at both taking action and creating knowledge or theory about that action. The outcomes are both an action and a research outcome, unlike traditional research approaches which aim at creating knowledge only". They set out the cyclical process of planning, taking action, and evaluating. They emphasise the collaborative dimension, whereby the members of the system which is being studied participate actively in the cyclical process. They highlight the diversity of approaches. The focus is on the combination of organisational roles with the additional demands of a role of inquiry and research. This raises practical challenges such as the selection of a research question, attaining some sense of objectivity, and choice of frameworks for viewing and understanding the data. Action Research work can be undertaken for different reasons, including securing academic qualifications, with some expectation of benefit for the organisation. Action Research can involve dealing with emergent processes, and leading radical change, which requires a capacity for self-reflection, realistic expectations, self-containment and an ability to learn. The book is intended to complement books exploring the theory and practice of action research (Greenwood/Levin 2007; Reason/Bradbury 2008; Shani et al. 2008). The three sections of the book cover "Foundations", "Implementation", and "Issues and Challenges in Researching Your Own Organisation". The book ends with discussion of closeness and distance with respect to the organisation under study, contexts of politics and ethics, and hints on writing an Action Research Dissertation. The style of the book is clear and non-dogmatic, making good use of diagrams and summaries. Researchers and research students will have encountered scepticism about Action Research, and arguments that more traditional approaches are "safer", in the context of the need for academic recognition. …

Doing Action Research in Your Own Organisation

Work Organization has achieved recent prominence in European policy, as new employment guidelines are embodied in the policies of all European Member States. New forms of Work Organization, properly understood, offer collaborative competitive advantage to European enterprises. This book, based on decades of action research in separate European nations, identifies the research background from which these new insights and policy initiatives have emerged, with continuing lessons to be learned from differences. Work Organization is the missing link which enables innovation and training to produce sustainable increases in productivity: this is not mere academic theory but also vital practical business. The book launches a new European research agenda, which is attracting interest from across the developed world and beyond. Rather than arguing for a stronger role for the state, or simply leaving matters to the market, the book presents a “third way” based on networks and coalitions, illustrated with numerous current European case studies, which provide explanations for developments at the level of enterprises, regions and the European Union itself. The book provides valuable insights into new European Commission initiatives and Transatlantic Dialogue, and provides the foundations for renewed democratic dialogue.

Work Organization and Europe as a Development Coalition

The book examines European case studies on regional and local innovation. It is based on the work of a European network project. Regional innovation depends on dialogue, networking and learning between all social and economic actors. The interfaces between the different interest groups in a region or locality are the places where learning takes place: people learning to act together to address their problems. This can be understood as collaborative learning for action along "learning region" lines.

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Learning together for local innovation: promoting learning regions

Submerged beneath explicit and implicit knowledge is a vast iceberg of tacit knowledge that cannot be reliably accessed by traditional analytical approaches. This book looks at the importance of tacit knowledge, and shows how it is now being put in motion through analogical thinking methods such as the Dialogue Seminar.

Dialogue, skill and tacit knowledge

The results of the quality revolution have been mixed. Global competition has elevated the most successful companies, in terms of providing goods and services, but even then initiatives such as total quality, business process re-engineering and Six Sigma have been heralded as the solution, only to have been replaced with the next 'big thing' when it came along. Hoshin Kanri is not the next big thing in quality, it is a strategic approach to continuous improvement that provides a context for all of the individual elements such as Six Sigma or Lean Manufacturing. David Hutchins' Hoshin Kanri shows you how to develop a dynamic vision for continuous improvement; to implement effective policies to support it; to link key performance indicators to Six Sigma, Lean Manufacturing and Kaizen and to sustain a strategy-led programme for improving business performance.

Richard Ennals

Papers

Doing Action Research in Your Own Organisation

Work Organization and Europe as a Development Coalition

Learning together for local innovation: promoting learning regions

Dialogue, skill and tacit knowledge

Hoshin Kanri: The Strategic Approach to Continuous Improvement