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

Transformational Leadership: Industrial, Military, and Educational Impact

This study examined the effects of vision content, delivery and organizational performance on perceptions of leader charisma and effectiveness. Subjects included 304 undergraduates who were presented videotaped speeches by a bogus CEO of a software company. A 2 × 2 × 2 design was employed in which message content (visionary/non-visionary), delivery (strong/weak), and organizational performance (high/low) were manipulated. A modified, 7-item version of Meindl and Ehrlich's (1988) Romance of Leadership Scale (RLS-D) served as a covariate. A MANCOVA analysis indicated significant effects of delivery, content, and organizational performance on both perceived leader charisma and effectiveness. The RLS-D was unrelated to either dependent variable as a covariate. The results suggest that strength of delivery is an especially important determinant of perceptions' of leader charisma and effectiveness. Although speech content and organizational performance cues likewise accounted for variance in these perceptions, their effects were at times offset by those of delivery.

Perceptions of leader charisma and effectiveness: The effects of vision content, delivery, and organizational performance

Organisational behaviour and management

Purpose



– This paper debates the Islamic perspective on the work ethics employed in an organization. It aims to discuss the issues of assumptions involving the Islamic Work Ethic (IWE). Therefore, this paper addresses the gap in the management literature and suggests a group of dimensions from fundamentals of Islam. 




Design/methodology/approach



– The paper reviews the foundations of IWE and investigates various empirical studies conducted in several countries. Then, briefly presents a short historical and conceptual review of the work ethic construct, suggests a general conceptual definition of work ethic, and offers multidimensional model including a series of constructs which can enable researchers to evaluate and measure work ethic in Islamic societies. 




Findings



– The study reveals that there is an evidence of ethics formulation depending on Islamic literature which constructs Islamic values for work. This paper proposes new perspective about the right ethics of work in Islam. Further, multidimensional model including 18 dimensions has been developed to evaluate work ethic in Islamic societies. 




Research limitations/implications



– This field needs to reconsider the constructs of IWEs where it is far from reflecting Islamic theory. This paper presents new dimensions which can be utilized to enrich this area. 




Originality/value



– This is one of the few attempts to suggest the appropriate constructs of IWE in the management literature. It provides 18 elements responsible and have the promise to strengthen individual transparency and morally which eventually enhance economic progress in Islamic world.

Fundamental Islamic perspective of work ethics


Purpose
The purpose of this study is to analyze crowdfunding (CF) as new entrepreneurial finance (EF) tool and to predict the success of CF projects in the Middle East region.


Design/methodology/approach
This study was conducted in seven Middle Eastern countries (i.e. Turkey, Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait and UAE) in addition to serval CF platforms that are commonly used by crowd funders in this region (such as Kickstarter, GoFundMe, Beehive and Zoomal) with total members (195,193). A pilot sample of 20 units was used to validate and verify the research instrument of the study. The research sample consists of 1,910 respondents from the seven countries included in the study. The study emphasizes the partners, micro-structures, administrative conditions and CF advancement in the Middle East.


Findings
The findings reveal that CF’s presence positively impacts fundraising success and that CF platforms are an effective financial technology (Fintech) tool for financing entrepreneurs in the Middle East. The study shows that the success of CF projects in the Middle East can be anticipated by estimating and breaking down enormous information of web-based and social media movement, human resources of funders and online venture introduction. The authors conclude with recommendations for future EF and CF research.


Originality/value
This study aims to analyze the CF and EF principles in the Middle East region as the CF experience and practice in this part of the world tend to be unexplored in terms of research. Presently a very few numbers published research on CF exists. Moreover, to the best of the knowledge, there is no single study investigating CF as an alternative financing source in the Middle East. In particular, the study.


Entrepreneurial finance and crowdfunding in the Middle East

Organizations progressively become innovative and recognize the environments that push for compliance within their internal environment and circumstances in the external environment. The rationale of this research is to discover the impact of national culture dimensions on commitment to organizational change initiatives. The current study review the previous studies to classify the aspects that impact organizational commitment and must be considered in managing change initiatives in organizations. This research assessed commitment by utilizing the Herscovitch and Meyer (2002 commitment to change scales to measure three components including affective, continuance, and normative commitment. National culture is measured utilizing the values survey module 2008 (Hofstede). The independent variable is national culture and the dependent variables are affective, continuance, and normative commitment.

The Influence of National Culture on Commitment that Produce Behavioral Support for Change Initiatives

The purpose of this study is to investigate the ―time perspective‖ (TP) in the Arab culture in particular, how Arab people look at their commitments in life in terms of time relation such as appointment, deadline and punctuality. We adopted Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory (ZTPI) as a questionnaire survey that was directed to a sample of 122 individuals from 5 different Arab countries namely: Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan and Sudan. These countries were chosen to ensure representation of high, middle and low income countries. The research instrument consists of 56 different items that measure the five time perspective dimensions: Past-Negative (PN), Past-Positive (PP), Present-Hedonistic (PH), Present-Fatalistic (PF) and Future (F) (Zimbardo and Boyd, 1999). The overall reliability of the questionnaire is 0.868 and the reliability levels for the five main dimensions of TP were found to be satisfactory as measured by Cronbach Alpha. The findings reveal that Arab people are respecting many social norms and the Present-Hedonistic (PH) with a mean of 48.6 scored the highest value among the five dimensions of TP followed by the Future (F) dimension with a mean value of 43.9. However, the Present Fatalistic (PF) with a mean of 30.0 scored the lowest value. Hence, we concluded that Arab people participated in this study are mainly oriented by the present-hedonistic and future and are not really oriented by fatalistic issues. In addition, the results indicate that there are significant differences among the five dimensions of TP and no balance in TP is recognized as a main prerequisite for psychological health, happiness, satisfaction in life, selfesteem and general wellbeing. The significance of this study lies in the fact that this is the first study of its kind that applied the ZTPI model in the Arab World. This study recommends that future research should address the use of a wider pool of participants and include some control variables such as age, education, and geographic location. Further attention should also be given to get insights from the psychology literature to determine the proper way of changing the time perspective.

The Economic Value of Time in Arab Culture: New Evidence using Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory (ZTPI)

Driven by the current circumstances of the COVID-19 outbreak, this study investigates the rise of online teaching in higher education (HE) It collects feedback from the teaching professionals regarding their opinion on E-learning experience to answer the following question: in the distinctive rise of e-learning during the covid-19 outbreak, what are the main challenges and opportunities in conducting your online teaching? This study has numerous implications related to E-learning in higher education It provides recommendations to governments and university policy-makers in designing the policies and programs on E-learning Furthermore, the university’s top management (ie president, VP, dean of college and HOD) need to concentrate on the importance of enhancing education quality in their institutions during this exceptional time

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Saeed Hameed Aldulaimi

Papers

Fundamental Islamic perspective of work ethics

Entrepreneurial finance and crowdfunding in the Middle East

The Influence of National Culture on Commitment that Produce Behavioral Support for Change Initiatives

The Economic Value of Time in Arab Culture: New Evidence using Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory (ZTPI)

E-Learning in Higher Education and Covid-19 Outbreak: Challenges and Opportunities