Caroline Benton

A Study of Knowledge Management Enablers across Countries

Knowledge has been long cited as a strategic asset and a source of competitive advantage for organizations. However, the creation of knowledge is a complex process that is influenced by several factors beyond the typical practice of knowledge management (KM). In this research, we assess the effects of leadership, Ba (shared context in motion), organizational culture, organizational control, and work style on KM defined in terms of the SECI process of socialization, externalization, combination, and internalization. On the basis of data gathered from a questionnaire survey of a Japanese pharmaceutical company and its subsidiaries in the United States, France, and China, we compare how the aforementioned organizational factors influence the processes of KM in these organizations. The results show that organizational factors affect KM practices differently in each of the targeted countries, and suggest that KM activities need to be tailored to the organizational idiosyncrasies of each local office, without betraying the global vision of the corporation.

Blended learning in MBA education: a cross-cultural experiment

e-Learning has entered the mainstream in higher education and many institutions are implementing technology-mediated learning at some level. This paper outlines the case of a course taught jointly in 2010 over three months by two graduate programmes in management at the University of Tsukuba in Japan and the Grenoble Ecole de Management in France through a video-conferencing system and other information and communications technology tools. The authors used a blended learning approach aimed at increasing collaboration among instructors and students remotely located. The results of a questionnaire survey of students conducted during the course provide practical recommendations for developing and managing a hybrid course balancing the positive aspects of e-learning with the benefits of face-to-face instruction, while suiting the participants’ cultural learning preferences. Particular insights include selecting a relevant blended learning course topic, addressing student diversity and distinct learning motives, and bringing ‘tangible diversity’ through the exchange of faculty.

Management innovation and firm performance: the mediating effects of tacit and explicit knowledge

This paper examines the role of tacit and explicit knowledge in translating management innovation into firm performance in Japanese companies. While past research has been inconsistent on the role of management innovation on firm performance, this research considers how management innovation in organizations can promote tacit and/or explicit knowledge creation, and whether this leads to higher firm performance. This research uses a questionnaire survey of employees of Japanese firms and applies conditional process analysis. There was no direct effect of management innovation onto firm performance, and that instead, both tacit and explicit knowledge fully mediated the relationship between management innovation and firm performance. While management innovation programs by themselves did not directly increase firm performance, the alignment of these programs with knowledge management initiatives enhanced performance. This highlights the need for management innovation that first considers the type of knowledge needed for enhanced performance. Previous research did not consider the role of knowledge as a means to translate management innovation into firm performance. This paper uncovers the mediating role of knowledge, potentially elucidating past inconclusive results.

The impact of commitment, empowerment, embeddedness on knowledge management in domestic and foreign-affiliated firms in Japan

This paper analyses how employees’ organizational commitment and empowerment, and firms’ embeddedness influence the knowledge management (KM) activities of foreign-affiliated subsidiaries of multinational corporations in comparison to domestic companies in Japan using regression analysis on data gathered from a questionnaire survey. Managers at Japanese-owned firms exhibited significantly higher levels of commitment, while those at foreign-affiliated firms reported greater levels of public knowledge storage and exploratory knowledge application. Although empowerment and supplier embeddedness were found to influence knowledge acquisition in both groups, customer embeddedness affected knowledge acquisition and commitment and empowerment affected knowledge diffusion for managers at foreign-affiliated firms only. These discriminations between predictors of KM based on the country of firm ownership suggest that the culture of the parent company can affect local employees and managers, and thus shape the resulting involvement in knowledge creation activities.

Bringing Virtual Teams and Cross-Cultural Business Education into the Classroom

This chapter describes the genesis, design, and implementation of an original cross-cultural experiment taught in English using a videoconferencing system connecting the University of Tsukuba’s MBA Program in International Business in Japan and the Grenoble Ecole de Management’s Master in Management Program in France. The course was conducted over several weeks, involving students working in mixed and geographically distributed virtual teams on various exercises and case studies dealing with issues specific to cross-cultural management. First, the evolution of this course over the past 3 years is reviewed. Second, the insightful content of the students’ final assignment on their experience in the classroom and beyond with both faculty and peers is used to assess changes in the course’s features and examine the contribution of such course. Last, concrete recommendations are provided on the course’s institutional support, structure, blended learning, tangible diversity, and cross-cultural learning.

Organizational virtuousness and job performance in Japan: does happiness matter?

Purpose This paper aims to examine the effect of subjective well-being, often referred to as happiness, on the relationship between organizational virtuousness and job performance among Japanese employees. The concept of happiness has been receiving more attention over the past decade as research suggests that it may be a source of greater performance. Design/methodology/approach This research uses a questionnaire survey and conditional process analysis among Japanese managers and front-line workers within Japanese firms in Japan. Findings This paper found that positive subjective well-being partially mediates the relationship between general organizational virtuousness and self-management-related job performance, while it acts as a moderator in the relationship between general organizational virtuousness and leadership-related job performance. Practical implications These findings indicate that in the Japanese context, the firm’s investment in organizational virtuousness will increase one part of job performance, but that investment may not be sufficient in itself to positively affect leadership competency, unless it also pays attention to its employees’ positive subjective well-being. Originality/value Based on this growing realization of the importance of subjective well-being, or happiness, and the lack of academic research in Japan on its impact on organization, this paper investigates its effect on employees’ ability to manage their own tasks and lead others.

Knowledge for Translating Management Innovation into Firm Performance

This paper examines the role of tacit and explicit knowledge in translating innovation measures into firm performance in Japanese companies. While innovation has been found to be a source of higher firm performance, this research is considering whether innovation measures adopted by the firm translate directly into higher firm performance or whether these innovation measures generate tacit and/or explicit knowledge which themselves produce higher corporate performance.

One-Size-Fits-All? Towards a Taxonomy of Knowledge Workers

Instead of focusing on one-size-fits-all policies for knowledge management (KM), this research attempts to establish a taxonomy of workers based on their KM readiness expressed through their attitudes and participation in KM activities. A questionnaire survey conducted with Japanese engineers reveals four distinct groups—advocates, skeptics, busy, and hopeful—derived from their perceived importance of and time spent on KM actions, with significantly differentiated perceived enablers and barriers of KM. The data, containing answers to both open-ended and ordinal scale questions, was analyzed with both text-mining and statistical analyses. Broadly, KM advocates and busy people recognize the importance of intention and autonomy while skeptics give very little credit to any established KM enabler. Advocates, busy people and skeptics recognize information and people as important barriers to knowledge acquisition, storage and system as impediments to knowledge storage, understanding as an obstacle to knowledge diffusion, and application as a hurdle for knowledge application. Advocates, representing the most actively-involved faction in KM, consistently acknowledge intention and autonomy as enablers, while they cite people as barriers of KM. The results of this study suggest that to improve KM, organizations should first segment their workers based on their attitudes and participation in KM activities, and then implement different strategies aimed at different subgroups of employees based on their level of preparation or readiness for KM.

Identifying the Knowledge Needs of Japanese Engineers

With knowledge a major source of competitive advantage, knowledge needs should be continuously identified and served. Engineering work, which is knowledge-intensive, is all the more critical as it both uses and generates knowledge for product and process innovation. Using data collected from Japanese engineers, this research first identifies their most pressing information and knowledge needs for engineers, and second examines whether industry differences exist, in terms of knowledge to retrieve from past work and knowledge to capture for future projects. Text-mining and descriptive statistics reveal that engineers wish to retrieve narrow-task and both explicit and tacit knowledge domains related to experiential and systemic knowledge assets from past work, and to capture broader experiential knowledge for future projects.