Tacit Knowledge Management in Craft-Art Manufacturing Enterprises

Cases in China and Japan

Abstract

In this paper, craft-art manufacturing industry was selected as a research object to analyze performance excellent in contemporary manufacturing enterprises, by the reason that tacit knowledge management is especially important in manufacturing process in this industry. Two enterprises, a doll manufacturing company in Shanghai, China, and a agriculture company in Tokushima, Japan, which provides special decorative leaves for restaurant business, were analyzed to describe the characteristics of leadership and management of organization in tacit knowledge dominant enterprises. Although those characteristics strongly depend on the aspect of tacit knowledge dominant industry, they can be some significant implications for most of contemporary enterprises that have some degree of tacit knowledge element.