The Clarification of the Tacit Knowledge to Assess Non-Profit Organizations in Japan

: A support center for non-profit organizations is a kind of intermediary focusing on the information and consultation in non-profit sector in Japan. This paper examines organizational assessment to Japanese non-profit organizations with the explicit knowledge transferred from the tacit knowledge in one grant-making foundation, The Nippon Foundation. In particular, while such evaluations are based on the more explicit evaluation criteria of (1) the characteristics of the organization and (2) the characteristics of the leader from evaluation data of 24 support centers in Japan, the more tacit and critical evaluation criteria of (3) planning ability and (4) organizational capability determine the total evaluations. This paper concludes that self-business approaches are important for the autonomic growth of non-profit organizations.

say that figurative language, such as metaphor and analogy, is prominent to articulate institutions and insights, while ambiguity and redundancy are essential to enhance knowledge-creation process. In short, Community Services staffs have shared some sort of tacit knowledge throughout the screening process. In the course of the discussion, it is proved that they wished to make a grant aid which would promote autonomic growth of non-profits. Consequently, this research on their tacit knowledge will provide some clues to the autonomic growth of non-profits in Japan.
By the way, The Nippon Foundation still emphasizes organizational assessment on the practical level though they have not aided non-profits on organizational basis but on project basis. Organizational assessment has certain advantages. For instance, organizational assessment will avoid katte-shugi (Tao, 1999), which means arbitrary doctrine; the unique tendency hating intervention of a third-party in voluntary organizations, while project assessment faces it. Werther and Berman (2001) stress organizational assessment as making organizations function better.
However, there are not many studies on organizational assessment. Cutt and Murray (2000) proposed the application of Balanced Score Card (BSC), and Mie Community Institute for Evaluation (a non-profit organization existing in Mie Prefecture, http://www.hyouka.org/) developed organizational self-assessment tools. Other studies are generally mere classification or feature extraction of non-profit organizations rather than organizational assessment (e.g., Inada & Kosaka, 1998;Kojima, 1998aKojima, , 1998b).
There will be much less studies on tacit knowledge of external assessment to nonprofit organizations.
After all, the purpose of this paper is to investigate organizational assessment factors of non-profits through the process transferring their tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge and to discuss the ideal non-profit organizations toward autonomic growth on the basis of Matsumoto and Takahashi (2002).
Concretely speaking, this research deals with 24 support centers for non-profit organizations. A support center for non-profit organizations is a kind of intermediary focusing on providing information and consultation with non-profit sector in Japan.

2.
Clarification of the Tacit

Knowledge
External stimuli are useful for knowledge creation within groups (Sasaki, 2002). Setting up a place in a group is one of the important phases in knowledge creation (Nonaka, 1990 (2) externalization, (3) combination, and (4) internalization. According to Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995), socialization is to share experiences and create tacit knowledge of a group, externalization is to transfer tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge, combination is to combine individual explicit knowledge and create common explicit knowledge, and internalization is to embody explicit knowledge into tacit knowledge. This operational process corresponds to externalization which is to transfer tacit knowledge of organizational evaluation into explicit knowledge.
As the result of the operational process, 16 items could be extracted from discussions with Community Services staffs basing on the notes. They were relatively conscious of eight items (Table 1).
These eight items are classified into two axes; (1) "characteristics of organizations," and (2) "characteristics of leaders." The staffs shared explicit knowledge because they have experienced numbers correspond to it. In other words, they made the progress on their own to externalization and combination as in Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995).
On the other hand, as the interaction between tacit and explicit knowledge works on the real organizational knowledge creation, they must make the progress to socialization and internalization (Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995). As a result they are relatively unconscious of the other eight items (Table   2). These eight items are classified into two axes; (3) "planning ability," and (4) "organizational cpability." This tacit knowledge has been formed through common experiences.
In addition to the extraction, all 16 items are investigated and checked in each of 24 observations.
For example, when an organization is three years old, D1=1 (Yes ) is noted.
While 16 detailed items are checked, we also gained the total organizational evaluation. The evaluation consists of three measures, such as good, bad and neither to say. There were two patterns of organizational evaluations. One was an individual evaluation combining the results determined by four staffs. Another was a collective evaluation determined after consulting four staffs from the viewpoint of the adequacy of the granted organization.
First, we applied discriminant analysis on individual evaluation with 16 components (Table 3).  It is striking that total organizational evaluations are determined even by four individual staffs. It implies certain common tacit knowledge among them because the total evaluation was based on individual judgments.
Second, we applied discriminant analysis on collective evaluation with 16 components (Table 4).
The collective organizational evaluation is fully discriminated by 16 items. This fact proved the possibility of mechanical reconstruction of the organizational assessment using 16 items.
On the other hand, there are two conscious axes and two unconscious axes in 16 items. Which is more critical to the total evaluation? Discriminant analysis applied to the total evaluation only by each two axes in the same way. The misclassified probabilities in the research come down in Table 5.
The comparison of misclassified probabilities seems to suggest no difference between conscious axes and unconscious axes. In fact, conscious axes take both 'good' for 'bad' ( ) and 'bad' for 'good' ( ) in individual evaluation in spite of the absence of such radically incorrect prediction in other cases (  Note: misclassification probabilities are 0 %.  critical than conscious axes so as to predict the total evaluation.

Toward the Autonomic Growth
According to the above-mentioned research, it was proved that four axes of 16 items could reconstruct the total organizational evaluation. It, however, is not enough to understand the feature of ideal non-profit organizations. It is required to clarify their knowledge of the organizational assessment including the tacit knowledge such as unconscious axes.
Thus principal component analysis was applied to the data which consist of four axes of 16 items.
The result of the analysis is shown in Table 7.
In addition, the first component can be named "organizational advocacy," and the second component can be named "business adhered to administration." What do the two components imply? We need to think of some facts as follows to clear the question.
At first, in Japan, many people may have felt the change of the third sector's movement. It was the transition from "citizen's movement" to "civil activities." In origin, citizen's movement was associated with a negative expression, which refrained from, opposed and fought against some target. Today there are non-profit organizations to solve the problem in the society and bear useful public goods. Also frequency of usage of the word civil activities in the media has apparently increased in the 1990s (Nakamura, 1999).
Secondly, Yamaoka (2000) pointed out correspondingly that non-profit organizations have two types of movements and businesses (Table 8).
Yamaoka also says, "non-profit organizations will be  more and more business-oriented along the time even if they are set up as movement-oriented. A movement-oriented non-profit organization will become business-oriented in the long run." In the United States, many similar cases are reported such as commercialized non-profit organizations, socially-oriented businesses and development of community businesses (Tanimoto, 2000). In short, they hope for non-profit organizations not to become business-oriented organizations adhered to administration, but to develop into self-businesses. Thus it is desirable that

Conclusion
The clearer the tacit knowledge of assessment in non-profits, the clearer the image of ideal non-profits toward autonomic organizations. At first, "planning ability" and "organizational ability" are more important and essential for non-profits to be independent toward autonomic growth. Secondly, support centers for non-profit organizations are inquired to make self-businesses develop in remaining "organizational advocacy." On the other hand, many people in the non-profit sector are likely to form horizontal organizational structure rather than hierarchical structure. It is doubtful that such an attitude toward management would bear "planning ability" and "organizational ability," which would lead to true autonomic growth.
Non-profit sector is called "independent sector" in the United States (Imamura, 1993). Perhaps, non-profit organizations are expected to be fully independent from both state and for-profit organizations. Genuine independence cannot be realized unless non-profits have proper ability with organizations management and businesses.