자연주의적 탐구조사(Naturalistic Inquiry)

Basics of qualitative research: Grounded theory procedures and techniques

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

Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge. Edited by I. Lakatos and A. Musgrave. Pp. viii, 282. £3·50, paperback £1. 1970. (Cambridge University Press.)

Theory in Practice: Increasing Professional Effectiveness

This study analyses the degree to which change in the organizational context , content and location ( both of the individual within the organization and the organization within the field ) of professional work has contributed to variation in attitudes toward professional ideology and institutions. Through an online survey of Canadian chartered accountants we observe that, contrary to current accusations, a majority of accounting professionals remain committed to their profession, despite profound changes in the context, content and location of their work. We do find, however, that the strongest espoused deviation from core professional values and logics has occurred in traditional work contexts (i.e. public accounting firms), and for the distinctive value of commitment to independence enforcement, the deviation is most pronounced in the elite core of the profession – the Big Four professional service firms. Accountants in higher ranks also tend to identify more with commercialistic values. We speculate on the implications these findings hold for the professional project of accountancy.

The organizational context of professionalism in accounting

This paper reviews literature on audit committees in order to evaluate the extent to which committees are effective in terms of strengthening financial reporting. Specifically, we examine academic research on the topic of audit committee effectiveness published in a variety of accounting journals from 1994 until 2008. In particular, our review investigates from a meta-perspective the results reported in studies which examine the relationship between certain audit committee characteristics and measures of audit committee effectiveness. A large proportion of the studies report a positive association between effectiveness and the following characteristics: presence of the audit committee; audit committee members’ independence; and members’ competencies. However, the number of meetings and the size of the committee are not frequently associated positively with audit committee effectiveness. Our review also highlights important gaps in literature. Most studies are relational and explanatory; very few studies are exploratory, descriptive or transformative. Psychological and sociological perspectives of analysis are neglected. Knowledge is scant on audit committees in jurisdictions which do not follow the Anglo-Saxon model of corporate governance. Further, research on dynamics surrounding audit committee processes is scarce. As a result of these gaps in literature, our review aims to sensitize accounting researchers about the appropriateness of extending the boundaries of research on audit committees: methodologically, theoretically, and geographically speaking. Further, by summarizing research results on the effectiveness of various audit committee attributes, our review can be useful for regulators in terms of assessing the impact of extant regulation or in terms of implementing new regulation. Regulators and practitioners, however, should be careful in interpreting the results; 59 percent of the studies we reviewed focus on US public companies and most of the other studies rely on data gathered in countries characterized by the Anglo-Saxon model of corporate governance.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm?abstractid=1438150

Strengthening the Financial Reporting System: Can Audit Committees Deliver?

Pressures to perform and be effective are significantly influential within contemporary society, including within the realm of corporate boards of directors and audit committees. This paper adopts a social constructivist approach to better understand the process by which meanings regarding audit committee effectiveness are internally developed and sustained, within the small group of people who attend audit committee meetings. We conducted the investigation through interviews in three large Canadian public corporations listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange. Our analysis indicates that attendees’ reflective acts upon processes and activities surrounding audit committee meetings play a key role in configuring meanings of effectiveness. Moreover, every attendee’s configuration of meaning consists of an amalgamation of a more or less heterogeneous set of emotions regarding the committee’s formal duties—emotions that vary from confidence to hopefulness to anxiety. As such, the paper problematizes several assumptions that underlie corporate governance literature.

On the constitution of audit committee effectiveness

Accounting research has increasingly been concerned to investigate professional expertise. This paper contributes to this interest by examining the process by which state (or government) auditors may become recognized as possessing expertise relevant to guiding and implementing new public management reforms. We analyze this process in the Canadian province of Alberta to understand the construction of a claim to expertise, drawing on theories in the social study of science and technology. Specifically, through our study of the development and consolidation of a network of support, we examine how the Office of the Auditor General of Alberta anchored its claims to expertise in the corpus of knowledge on measurement of government performance; the various devices that the Office used to sustain these claims; and the ways in which government and public servants reacted to them. In particular, our paper provides insights into how standards of “good practices” develop through a process of “fact” building, which involves the undertaking of local experiments by practitioners, the production of inscriptions in reports, and their subsequent validation by other practitioners. The production of inscriptions in sites of occupational practice such as those operated by government audit offices, and the collective process of validation that subsequently takes place in the practitioner community, are significant aspects in the construction of networks of support around claims to expertise.

http://cgi.st-andrews.ac.uk/media/school-of-management/documents/gendron_et_al.pdf

The construction of auditing expertise in measuring government performance

Using change theory integrated with Bourdieusian sociology, we re-theorize a major institutional shift in the field of public accounting The case we examine involves the consolidation of commercial values in the auditing profession In reinterpreting this shift, we highlight an institutional process structured around a conflict between commercial innovators and guardians of the professional tradition Our analysis indicates a peculiar kind of institutional work, wherein economic capital is reinforced at the field level while the logic of commercialism is strengthened in accounting firms' structures and practitioners' mindset From our studying of the field of accountancy, we develop the concept of institutional experimentation in order to offer a view of institutional work as a fragile and unpredictable process Specifically, the latter is subject to trials and tests by actors involved in a series of more or less connected experiments in trying to extend their professional jurisdiction through institutional innovation, while seeking to consolidate the traditional foundations of their jurisdictional legitimacy through institutional reproduction Our paper also challenges the notion of organizational archetypes While a focus on the firms' formal organizational parameters may suggest archetypical stability, the picture is more complex when one takes into account processes of institutional experimentation and the duality of institutional change and stability

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/joms12006.pdf?abstractid=2280960&mirid=4

Yves Gendron

Papers

The organizational context of professionalism in accounting

Strengthening the Financial Reporting System: Can Audit Committees Deliver?

On the constitution of audit committee effectiveness

The construction of auditing expertise in measuring government performance

Re-Theorizing Change: Institutional Experimentation and the Struggle for Domination in the Field of Public Accounting