Hisato Tashiro

E-mail networks and leadership performance

Online communication is an indispensable tool for communication and management. The network structure of communication is considered to affect team and individual performances, but it has not been not empirically tested. In this article, we collected a set of 1-month e-mail logs of a company and conducted an e-mail network analysis. We calculated the network centralities of 72 managerial candidates, and investigated the relationship between positions in the network and leadership performance with partial least squares structural equation modeling. Betweenness and in-degree network centralities of those middle managers are correlated with their leadership performance; on the other hand, for this management group, out-degree has no correlation, and PageRank is a negative indicator of leadership. Leaders with high performance are trusted in their communities as a hub of the information channel of the communication network.

Identifying informal communities and leaders for total quality management using network analysis of email

Global communication networks with internet and email have changed the nature of community and leadership communication style within an organization. For TQM-based organizational innovation, it is a key issue to identify communities of practice and deploy adequate leaders within the communities in the global communication. For effective TQM activities with leadership, we propose a method for indentifying informal communities and potential leaders from email data. In a clustering process, we have detected informal communities and hierarchical structures. Network centrality characterizes members of the informal communities within the structure of the email network. These measures contributed to identify leadership roles with the informal communities. According to the results of a case-study with actual email data of a firm, we discuss how our method can be applied for TQM-based organizational management that could lead to innovation.

TQM organizational development for a global manufacturer

The essence of rapid growth of the global manufacturer is a series of actions to accumulate daily effort of creative improvement, while improving the quality of each management and each result, in order to build the company which prospers in the 21st century. In this paper, we introduce a TQM organizational development plan of a global manufacturing company. One of the authors won the Deming Prize for Individuals in 2007 for his efforts in TQM globalization and has led the global organization to win quality awards, including the Award for World-Class Total Productive Maintenance Achievement, Japan Quality Medal, and several Deming Application Prizes.

Email network analysis for organizational management

In this turbulent business environment of global recession, traditional organizational structure is reaching its limits. In order to accommodate itself to these changes, managing informal communication beyond old framework is indispensable. It is critical for innovation management to recognize communities of practice and informal leaders. In previous studies we have demonstrated our method was effective to indentify informal communities and potential leaders from one month email log data collected in September 2008 within an organization through a case study of a global manufacturing company. In this paper we collect the second set of one-month email log in June 2009 so as to chronologically compare with the first set of data collected in September 2008 and to analyze changes before and after major organizational changes triggered by the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers. Email network analysis helps management systematically view its organization as a whole.

Critical practices in TQM Human Resources Development

Total Quality Management (TQM) is a series of organizational actions. In this paper, we analyze the critical practices in TQM leadership development of a global manufacturing company. We surveyed 142 departmental managers with self-evaluation questionnaire on leadership development and analyzed the data with factor analysis and an Automatic Interaction Detection (AID) method to find critical behavioral emphasis. TQM leadership with vision, high aspiration, and scientific quality control made difference for effective leadership development.

Bibliometric analysis of power grid research: Identifying knowledge domain

The concept of Power Grid is significant for innovation and economic development. However, since the term “power grid” represents a broad sense, there does not exist common understanding about what does the study of power grid consist of. We apply a methodology to determine the structure and geographical distribution of knowledge, as well as to reveal the structure of research collaboration in such an interdisciplinary area as power grid by performing journal information analysis, citation network analysis and visualization. Knowledge in these areas has been growing rapidly in recent years. Research competency of each field show some characteristics by subject and well distributed among USA, EU, and Asia. With knowledge structure analysis non-technical policy makers understand the fields of study and focus resources to necessary technologies.