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

Individuals' knowledge does not transform easily into organizational knowledge even with the implementation of knowledge repositories. Rather, individuals tend to hoard knowledge for various reasons. The aim of this study is to develop an integrative understanding of the factors supporting or inhibiting individuals' knowledge-sharing intentions. We employ as our theoretical framework the theory of reasoned action (TRA), and augment it with extrinsic motivators, social-psychological forces and organizational climate factors that are believed to influence individuals' knowledge- sharing intentions.

Through a field survey of 154 managers from 27 Korean organizations, we confirm our hypothesis that attitudes toward and subjective norms with regard to knowledge sharing as well as organizational climate affect individuals' intentions to share knowledge. Additionally, we find that anticipated reciprocal relationships affect individuals' attitudes toward knowledge sharing while both sense of self-worth and organizational climate affect subjective norms. Contrary to common belief, we find anticipated extrinsic rewards exert a negative effect on individuals' knowledge-sharing attitudes.

http://www.cob.calpoly.edu/~eli/Class/p5.pdf

Behavioral intention formation in knowledge sharing: examining the roles of extrinsic motivators, social-psychological factors, and organizational climate

https://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1099&context=mgmt_papers

The Business Model: Recent Developments and Future Research

What makes organizations so similar? We contend that the engine of rationalization and bureaucratization has moved from the competitive marketplace to the state and the professions. Once a set of organizations emerges as a field, a paradox arises: rational actors make their organizations increasingly similar as they try to change them. We describe three isomorphic processes-coercive, mimetic, and normative—leading to this outcome. We then specify hypotheses about the impact of resource centralization and dependency, goal ambiguity and technical uncertainty, and professionalization and structuration on isomorphic change. Finally, we suggest implications for theories of organizations and social change.

The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields (Chinese Translation)

http://www.matizyasociados.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/The-power-of-business-models-Shafer-Smith-Linder.pdf

The power of business models

The business model concept is becoming increasingly popular within IS, management and strategy literature. It is used within many fields of research, including both traditional strategy theory and in the emergent body of literature on e-business. However, the concept is often used independently from theory, meaning model components and their interrelations are relatively obscure. Nonetheless, we believe that the business model concept is useful in explaining the relation between IS and strategy. This paper offers an outline for a conceptual business model, and proposes that it should include customers and competitors, the offering, activities and organisation, resources and factor market interactions. The causal inter-relations and the longitudinal processes by which business models evolve should also be included. The model criticises yet draws on traditional strategy theory and on the literature that addresses business models directly. The business model is illustrated by an ERP implementation in a European multi-national company.

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1057%2Fpalgrave.ejis.3000446.pdf

The business model concept: theoretical underpinnings and empirical illustrations

This paper argues that current research into knowledge management fails to recognize and offer a detailed understanding about the role of knowledge in improving firm performance. Instead of focusing, exclusively, on the nature and attributes of knowledge, and the management of learning, research should also direct attention to the factors that enable knowledge to contribute to performance. To aid in this, this paper suggests that the concept of knowledge management is divided into three instances; development, utilization and capitalization, based on the assumption that knowledge is not always utilized, and that utilized knowledge does not always result in improved performance. The paper also identifies challenges and solutions in relation to each of the instances. Empirical findings are based on empirical study of three knowledge ventures within a European manufacturing MNC.

Knowledge Management and the Occasional Links with Performance

This paper reports a case study of a knowledge transfer programme in a manufacturing MNC, and suggests that firm-internal knowledge transfer programmes are exercises requiring a great deal of recipient motivation. In contrast to existing theory, which has a tendency to address the role of cognitive factors such as tacitness, causal ambiguity and absorptive capacity, this paper suggests that motivation needs to be in place first. In the studied case, differences in local perceptions of transfer ventures, aspiration and strategic ambitions, internal competition, the view on the nature of knowledge and local communication seem to explain success and failure in transfer ventures. If motivation is not in place ‘naturally’, it can be managed in different ways, including local and corporate management control routines as well as organization structure. Consequently, we argue that knowledge transfer theory should not presume that organizational units are interested in the knowledge transferred, or that knowledge is always ‘good’. Knowledge is contextual, meaning it fits certain operations and strategies better, even in instances where intra-organizational units are homogeneous. Hence motivation is central to transfer success. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Organisation-internal Transfer of Knowledge and the Role of Motivation. A Qualitative Study

This paper describes the processes that firms and managers go through in their quests to create and sustain competitive advantages based on so-called Enterprise Resource Planning ERP systems. It is based on resource-based theory, combined with the strategy process perspective and with existing literature on information technology and ERP. The theoretic framework is extended through a detailed case study of a specific in-house ERP venture in a European multinational manufacturing company in the paper packaging industry. The emergent resource management framework describes cognitive and cultural factors that support or hamper progress, including uncertainty, knowledge gaps, knowledge transfer issues and the problems of ensuring that ERP usage is converted into competitive advantage. The framework also addresses managerial implications and potential solutions to such obstacles, throughout the process.

ERP Systems and the Strategic Management Processes that Lead to Competitive Advantage

This book examines two different knowledge sharing programmes at two large multinational corporations, representing the paper packaging and pharmaceutical sectors.

Thomas Kalling

Papers

The business model concept: theoretical underpinnings and empirical illustrations

Knowledge Management and the Occasional Links with Performance

Organisation-internal Transfer of Knowledge and the Role of Motivation. A Qualitative Study

ERP Systems and the Strategic Management Processes that Lead to Competitive Advantage

Knowledge Sharing in Organizations