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 with the 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.
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Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9780199879922
Publisert
2020
Utgiver
Vendor
Oxford University Press
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter