In this paper, I examine the process of how entrepreneurs acquire subjectivity in creating new businesses by using the concept of agencement. In recent years, the concept of "institutional entrepreneurship" has been gaining attention in the field of entrepreneurship research, in which the entrepreneur is not regarded as an "elite individual who brings novelty to an institutionalized stable state from outside" as Schumpeter puts it, but as a being who creates innovation by utilizing existing institutions as a resource. This is an important perspective because it opens up the possibility that anyone can become an entrepreneur by taking a systematic approach to the concept of the entrepreneur from an institutional perspective, rather than relying on the transcendental qualities of the individual. However, this approach does not fully explain where the subjectivity of the entrepreneur, who is the in fact subject that ultimately aims to realize the new business, comes from. In this study, by examining the case of intrapreneurs (intracompany entrepreneurs), I use the concept of “agencement” to argue that the subjectivity of intrapreneurs does not come from transcendental personal qualities, but rather from the diverse relational networks that surround intrapreneurs and give them a role as subjects.

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The research examines the relationship between the planning fallacy and estimates of task duration. The planning fallacy refers to a prediction, in which people underestimate the time it will take to complete tasks, despite the knowledge that tasks have taken longer than planned tasks. This study tested two hypotheses concerning people’s predictions of task duration time. The first hypothesis is that good time managers accurately estimate task duration. Study1 attempts to analyze the relationship between the planning fallacy and time management by the time management behavior scale. The second is that a person with high levels of self-efficacy does not tend to underestimate task duration time. Study2 attempts to analyze the relationship between the planning fallacy and self-efficacy by the generalized self-efficacy scale. The result of study1 supported the first hypothesis slightly (r = .344), but study2 was unsupported (r = .103) the second hypothesis. This result suggests the possibility that those who tend to do time management improve the underestimation of task duration time. It will require more systematic research.

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Inter-organization collaboration has been attracting attention to overcome the issues of declining innovation of Japanese firms. It is because inter-organization collaboration brings in external knowledge and increases the diversity of knowledge to create opportunities for new combinations (Schumpeter, 1934). On the other hand, inter-organization collaboration may have negative impacts on innovation because it increases transaction costs (Williamson, 1975) and information leakage due to openness. However, few prior studies empirically examine any impacts of collaboration on innovation. Therefore, this study examined the relationship between joint patent application (collaboration) and innovation productivity by analyzing patent data of the eight Japanese chemical firms. There are two findings. First, the firm's resources increase quantitative productivity of innovation, but too much inter-organization collaboration declines innovation productivity. Second, innovation productivity increases as firms collaborate with other firms in different industries (not with universities or other research institutes). In conclusion, firms can improve their capability of innovation by controlling the scale of collaboration and increasing collaboration with other firms in different industries.

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The purpose of this report is to identify distinctive efforts in Xiaomi's technology development based on an analysis of patent data from Xiaomi in China. In just four years since their founding in 2010, Xiaomi has achieved the top sales share in the Chinese smartphone market. The issue of this report is as follows. “Can customer interaction be accelerated by technological development”, and “What kind of technological development can be leveraged to accelerate the customer interaction? In this report, we use Xiaomi's patent data to analyze the company's technology development trends from three perspectives: (1) IPC ratio analysis, (2) co-occurrence network analysis, and (3) issue and configuration map analysis. Analysis shows that Xiaomi's invention uses friendship information as input data, and further combines personal content information and personally identifiable information to process information and develop technology to accelerate the customer interaction.

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This research aims to hypothetically present business environment factors that promote user innovation in the die and mold industry based on the suggestions from a case study. Focusing on two factors of business environment, namely period of model change of end product and period of recession, this research dynamically analyzes the user innovation made by a Chinese die and mold company. With the results of the research, three hypotheses are put forward. During a period of model change of end product, a time when the needs information becomes increasingly uncertain, H1-1: the enterprise user closer to the source of the needs is more likely to innovate; H1-2: the enterprise user close to the source of the needs tends to innovate with its cost advantage brought about by its high absorptive capacity on needs information. H2: during a period of recession, the enterprise user tends to use their solution information at hand to innovate. However, more case studies are needed to make a comparative analysis of other business environment factors like periods of model change, maturity of product design, boom and recession.

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Mentoring is an essential aspect of entrepreneurship development, especially in university settings. However, there is a lack of research on entrepreneurship mentoring. This study aims to understand how the level of entrepreneurial motivation of students receiving mentoring in entrepreneurship education influences the tendency of challenges. This paper reports preliminary findings on entrepreneurship mentoring based on data. We compared the entrepreneurial motivation and barriers of two groups from different institutions. Results revealed that perceived challenges were discrete among highly and lowly motivated students and that impediments do not linger between stages of motivation. After clarifying the tendencies of perceived challenges at different entrepreneurial motivation levels, this study’s findings can contribute to practical practice in entrepreneurial education: specifically, differentiating class content, creating curriculum, and teaching materials according to the group’s characteristics.

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The aim of this paper is to theoretically examine the structures that give rise to reluctant staying in the workplace, focusing on the individual's intention regarding career choice. In existing research, individuals who remain in an organization despite having the intention to leave are referred to as reluctant stayers. Previous research on individuals in this situation has attempted to identify antecedents that lead to the intention to leave, focused on the effects on the organization, and attempted to clarify the situation of unwillingness to remain by comparing it to those who remain because they want to. However, the accumulation of studies explaining the mechanisms that give rise to unwillingness to remain and the reasons why such conditions persist is not sufficient. Therefore, this study examines the research potential of reluctant staying in the workplace in the theory of organizational behavior, focusing on the individual's willpower that cannot resolve unwillingness.

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To reveal the relationship between "storytelling" and "financing", this study replicates Martens's (2007) paper, which analyzed the prospectuses of 168 companies in the biotechnology, semiconductor, and Internet service provider industries listed on the U.S. securities markets during the five-year period from 1995-2000. This study used data from 95 companies in the "information and telecommunications sector" listed on the TSE Mothers or JASDAQ during the four-year period 2016-2019 to determine whether the same argument holds true for the Japanese market. Results of this research partially support the hypothesis that the "identity" constructed for the firm in the entrepreneur's narrative influences the acquisition of external resources "more than the factual asset information". The results of this follow-up study suggest that the effect of communicating "identity" through entrepreneurial "storytelling" may have an impact on "funding" for startups.

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This study conducts preparatory work to verify the effectiveness of the “open and closed strategy” for capturing value from innovations. Structural adhesives, which are increasingly being introduced in automotive production, are selected as the subject. Patent data from 1990 to 2019 is used to analyze trends in technological development. An analysis of patent citation networks revealed the following. First, the number of patent applications for structural adhesives in the automotive sector has increased rapidly since the beginning of the 2000s, with European and US adhesive manufacturers, in particular, dominating over the entire period. Second, the density of the citation network is low and divided into a number of clusters, suggesting that segregation by specific technical themes has occurred. Third, backward and forward citations are highly asymmetrical. There are a small number of patents with a vast number of forward citations, while the majority of patents have no citations. Further research is needed to develop criteria and indicators that distinguish closed and open strategies, to examine the relationship between the type of intellectual property strategy, industrial context, and management outcomes, and to explore the source of technological capabilities of firms with strong patent citation networks.

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This study examined the effects of risk-taking on divergent thinking in individuals, dyads, and triads. A simple Q learning model was adopted to estimate risk attitudes, exploitation, and exploration parameters, and the results showed that in dyads, risk-taking, exploitation, and exploration did not affect divergent thinking whereas in both individuals and triads, risk attitudes and the inverse temperature as a ratio between exploitation and exploration were significant, but with the contrasting effects. For individuals, risk-taking and exploitation played a critical role in divergent thinking. For triads, risk aversion and exploration were significantly related to divergent thinking. However, the results also indicated an importance of taking some balance between risk and exploitation/exploration is critical in enhancing divergent thinking in individuals and triads. These results could be interpreted consistently with the related literature such as the odd- vs. even-numbered group dynamics, the Kuramoto model of chaotic behavior and the representational change theory in insight problem solving.

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Recent organizational ambidexterity studies have discussed the importance of achieving a balance between exploration and exploitation. However, existing studies have not distinguished the detail of exploitation, this study breaks down exploitation into repetitive exploitation and incremental exploitation. Our study contributes to ambidexterity studies by analyzed the impact of the combination of this two exploitation and exploration in firm performance. Using Japanese video game industries' 674 observations from 1997 to 2019 as panel data analysis, like the existing studies, we proved that firm performance is increased when exploration and exploitation balance is achieved. At the same time, we found that firms with a lower exploration had higher performance when the rate of incremental exploitation was high. The results of our study suggest that even when the firm's ambidexterity is imbalance, different results can be expected when the details of exploitation are considered.

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The present study examined the effects of planning and reflection on performance. Ninety-four undergraduate participants responded to the three online questionnaires. Questionnaire 1 (Q1) was placed three weeks before the exam of Decision Making. Questionnaire 2 (Q2) was placed a week before the exam. Questionnaire 3 (Q3) was placed within the exam. Two attributes of the plan were investigated. One is the planned preparation time for the exam(PT), and the other is the detailedness of the plan(DP). Related questions were included both in Q1 and Q2. One of the questions of Q3 was, “Describe the gap between the preparation plan for the exam and its execution.” Reflection (RF) was measured by the number of characters of the response to that question. Structural equation modeling (SEM) revealed that PT significantly acted on the preparation time, and preparation time significantly acted on the performance (exam score). DP did not significantly affect preparation time, so it did not affect performance consequently. RF slightly affected performance (p=.09). The model fit statistics indicated GFI=.993, AGFI=.949, and RMSEA=0.

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In Kyoto, universities play a key role in providing local and/or national enterprises with human and intellectual resources. Based on the 2015 Input-output table for Kyoto Prefecture and data of human and intellectual capital collected from a survey on a cluster of universities in Kyoto, we analyze what role does a cluster of universities play in the local economic growth and innovations. We find a sector of research and education industries and that of electric devices industries are positioned at the top of the economic value-chains of Kyoto inter-industry network although the latter is short of labor supply from local universities. We also discover industrial sectors positioned at structural holes enjoy transactional growth between 2015 and 2019 while university start-ups do not necessarily contribute to transactional growth in a short term. Kyoto, already rich in traditional cultures and abundant in academic resources, needs more science students both college and graduate to be successful in regional innovations, which eventually leads to the most creative city in Japan.

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There is a growing consensus that knowledge creation at universities and other research institutions is the engine of the economy and society. Industry-academia collaborations began in earnest with the enactment of the Bayh-Dole Act in the U.S. in 1980, and in Japan, technology transfer organizations (TTOs) have been established nationwide in anticipation of the enactment of the Law for the Promotion of Technology Transfer from Universities in 1998. The purpose of this study is to focus on management research within the overall research on industry-university collaboration, and to gain an overall picture of the research field through a systematic review. The results of this preliminary survey indicate that management research in the field of industry-academia collaboration as a whole is an unexplored topic. In addition, it became clear that there is a lack of accumulated research on intermediary organizations in particular. Implications for future research are to systematically organize findings on the positioning and role of intermediary organizations and identify valid perspectives for management research, taking into account the pathways to commercialization of university-originated technologies and the diversity of research fields.

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Regarding public private partnerships (PPP), Machida(2022) demonstrates how organizations change to establish the practice of implementing public private partnership projects in the public organizations procuring the projects. Contrastingly, the existing literature has not explored the formulation process of the contributing factor of the implementation of public private partnership projects from the private sector’s perspective. Meanwhile, in Japan, revitalizing the local economy by implementing public private partnership projects is discussed as a crucial issue. To this end, it is among the effective options to formulate networks of SMEs in a local community since the bidding consortium must consist of various industry categories such as design, construction, and operating.Therefore, this article aims to explore the process of formulating networks of small and medium enterprises in a local community and the consequent results regarding public private partnership projects through the case study of a PPP platform in F City. This article is expected to contribute to exploring the formulation process of the contributing factor of the implementation of public private partnership projects from the private sector’s perspective.

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Alliances between companies are formed to acquire resources that the companies need but do not possess in order to survive and grow. About electric vehicles (EVs), Panasonic and Tesla Motors have alliance since 2009 to develop and produce lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) for EVs. The inter-organizational relationship is complementary to EVs and LIBs for EVs from the perspective of resource dependence, and is bi-dependent. In “Gigafactory”, Tesla shared factory preparation and management, while Panasonic produced LIB cells. No capital relationship may have affected the inter-organizational relationship. Later, with Tesla's expansion into China, the dependency on Panasonic declined and the power relationship changed. The dependency changed when Tesla announced the in-house production of LIBs for EVs. Conflicts of interest may arise in the future. From the perspective of management strategy, Tesla, as a venture company, focused on "exploration" of disruptive technologies, but has evolved to "ambidexterity management" with the successful launch of the Model 3. Furthermore, in the in-house production of LIBs, Tesla will conduct "exploitation" of disruptive technologies of "4680" cells, "tables" structure, and "dry electrode technology." Panasonic needs to increase its value to the same level as Tesla's plan, and is expected to evolve from "exploitation" to "ambidexterity management."

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The vertical keiretsu in the Japanese automotive industry, once heralded as a source of competitive advantage, has been losing its foothold since the late 1990s. Yet there remains some argument that some of keiretsu suppliers continue to serve as competitive and indispensable partners for some OEMs. This paper empirically examines the roles of keiretsu suppliers and their changes in the Japanese automotive industry, drawing on a panel data set on 8 components, 12 OEMs and 1,256 transactional dyad units over 32 years. We conduct statistical analysis to examine how keiretsu relations, along with supplier’s competitiveness and prior transactions, affected OEM’s decisions on procurement allocation among suppliers. It reveals that while most OEMs have no longer procured more from keiretsu suppliers since the early 2000s, Toyota continues to procure more after controlling for supplier’s competitiveness and prior transactions. Based on the results, the paper discusses the process in which keiretsu suppliers could survive and gain more procurement from OEMs.

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The purpose of this study is to identify the dilemmas faced by managers who practice servant leadership in organizations. For this purpose, this study adopted leadership contextual approach with servant leadership theory as theoretical foundation and managerial work study as contextual foundation. Specifically, this study utilized fragmentation, emotional inertia, boss management, and organizational type as managerial work’s contexts, and rubbed them against servant leadership mechanisms. This study shows that servant leadership by managers is an extremely paradoxical process that is fraught with constraints in multiple aspects, including workload, anxiety about uncertainty, and relationships with manager’s boss and the organization. In addition, it suggests that practicing servant leadership in real organizations and workplaces is a process that requires overcoming various constraints.

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Recently, management theories such as knowledge creation, ambidextrous organization, and dynamic capability have gained attention. However, an issue is that there is no structured way to understand and apply them in an integrated way in practice. Similarly, narratives are used in management as a method of envisioning strategies and uniting organizations. An issue is that narratives do not contribute efficiently due to limited understanding of the structure of narratives and method of creating them. In this paper, the narrative matrix theory will be presented as a new framework that integrates these theories and enables to utilize narratives in practice.

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Material procurement could have a key role in originating and leading innovations. Firstly, new materials and suppliers can be searched and sourced by material procurement to reduce their own product price. Then, the consideration and coordination to introduce those new materials generate pressures to bring innovation for other parts of the product and manufacturing technologies as chain reactions. Responding to these pressures, finally, innovative products can be created. These phenomena are highly possible to occur logically. However, to our knowledge, the study attempting to elucidate the theme of this study has hardly ever been seen. In previous studies, though “technology push” and “demand pull” have mainly been focused as origins and causes of innovation processes, material procurement has hardly been focused. In the 21st century, modularizations and globalization of supply chain have been progressing in various industries. Under the circumstances, activities in material procurement for originating innovation are being intensified especially in practitioners such as in electronics industry. Accordingly, in this study, an abstracted hypothesis of innovation process originated with material procurement is proposed as the result of the introductory study.

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The purpose of this study is to clarify how and why quality management in Japanese companies is evolving in the middle of drastic environmental changes. This study analyzed and discussed case studies of three Japanese companies in the automotive industry based on the result of interviews with people familiar with quality management in these companies and analysis of company-related documents, while mainly focusing on the implementation method of quality management. As a result, this paper drew two tentative conclusions. First, the interaction between the diversity, ambiguity and uncertainty of the quality standards required by consumers and customers, internal quality awareness (ostrich policy), and overly strict industry quality standards lead some Japanese companies to develop quality standards that are higher than those required by consumers and customers. Second, the interaction of the globalization of the business activities, the development of digital technology, and changes in the labor market require a shift in the implementation method of quality management from people to equipment utilizing digital technology. But factors such as the financial resources of the Japanese headquarters, the awareness and determination of managers, and the awareness and actionability of employees are impeding this.

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This study compared creative process of three tasks: business planning (n=400), hardware development (n=424) and software development (n=364). A model of improving creative performance including team diversity, external network, and multiple-perspective-taking (Takeda, forthcoming) was examined with the three task groups, and no significant differences were found in the mechanisms. The levels of creative performance, multiple perspective-taking, external network, and team diversity, however, were different among the group. Both business planning and hardware development achieved higher creative performance than software development. Multiple perspective-taking, variety of external network, and functional diversity of team were the highest in the business planning, followed by hardware development and the lowest in software development. Although business planning and hardware development were required a high level of novelty from the organization, the attributes of novelty was supposed to differ between the two tasks. In business planning, strategically positioned taskforces were required to explore new business possibilities with rich communication, while hardware development was required to meet the needs of existing customers and reduce costs with close communication. Software development tended to be operational teams with the lowest novelty requirements and the smallest amount and variety of communication.

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Existing studies cleared that previous change of a given type increase the probability of similar change in the future. This momentum change is based on organizational routines. This view emphasizes that previous change allows organizations to create change routines. This study find that change routines is not statics but variable by reviewing the way of the command tower to the way of respecting independence of autonomy. The variable process of change routines is as follows. The Bureau in charge displayed leadership and presented the vision of this Bureau that supports the organization. The sense-giving of presenting this vision influenced the sense-making of section chiefs regarding their reform of working practices through repeated discussions between manager and section chiefs. Then, through sense-making after sense-giving, the idea of improving operations from the perspective of the entire organization was formed, and the Bureau in charge was able to proactively review operations and systems that affect the organization. By conducting these efforts, the Bureau in charge was able to change previous change routines. This initiative of this Bureau has encouraged other Bureau to take action.

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Little consideration has been given to physical or material influences on the formation or change of organizational identity. Therefore, this article uses the extreme and unique case of Tokushimaru Corporation's mobile supermarket to examine the formation of organizational identity as it is influenced by material elements. In this case study, the identity of the founder was materialized as a business model consisting of a business system and a profit model, and further materialized into a Tokushimaru vehicle for mobile sales. These dedicated vehicles, which were the materials that mediated the mobile sales, became boundary objects and solidly connected the main human actors: headquarters, regional supermarkets, sales partners, and customers. Such a linkage of human and non-human actors comprised a chain of translations that generated new goals while the various actors changed together. As a result, in the case of Tokushimaru, the content of the goals generated during the translation chain was linked to the content of the company's organizational identity. Thus, in the case of Tokushimaru, the materiality of the boundary object, the dedicated vehicle, can be said to have influenced the formation of organizational identity through the linkage of human and non-human actors in the formation of organizational identity.

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In recent years, policy emphasis has shifted from supporting start-ups and entrepreneurs in the early stages of entrepreneurship to fostering a new category of firms: high growth firms (HGFs) or scaleups firms that successfully develop innovative products and aim to expand their scale. The reason is that it has become clear that these firms can have a significant impact on new job creation and economic growth through improved production efficiency and innovation. In the past few years, these companies have been growing faster and bigger, creating unicorns and decacorns. Policy makers around the world compete to create the most unicorns, and some countries have even incorporated them into their policy goals. However, despite these changes in the environment, definitions and conceptualization of HGFs and scaleups have not been fully developed. The questions of what factors are responsible for the creation of these groups of companies and what are the issues involved in fostering these companies remain unanswered. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to organize the scaleups concept, definition and to identify issues in fostering scaleups.

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Mention of the entrepreneurship notion often makes it sound like an imaginary creature and does not reflect the reality of the real entrepreneurial realities. Images such as high performance, white male, able-bodied, heterosexual, and cisgender continue to be posited as role models. To “straighten” out the image of the entrepreneurship concept, this study conducted a systematic review of LGBTQ entrepreneurs, a topic that has received little attention in the Japanese-speaking world. In this study, we searched for literature containing words related to entrepreneurship (e.g. "entrepreneur”, "entrepreneurship”, "start-up”, "self-employment") and words related to lgbtq ("lgbt", "lgbtq", "queer", "gay", "lesbian", “bisexual", "transgender", "homosexual", "gender minority", "sexual minority"). Screening was conducted according to PRISMA guidelines, which ultimately obtained 20 references. The results indicate that most of the studies were qualitative studies, while quantitative studies were conducted mainly in North America and Europe. In addition, the purpose of each study were quite diverse, including not only issues of personal identity, but also gentrification and urbanism, keeping space for women and queer people, interdependence with national norms, and re-evaluating/documenting practices from an intersectional perspective with ethnicity and race.

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The purpose of this paper is to propose an approach to analyze a firm's business model from the investor's perspective. Until now, much research has been conducted on business models from the perspective of managers. In recent years, the term business model has been included in accounting systems and has become an important concept for investors. However, until now, business model research has not been conducted from the investor's perspective. This paper emphasizes the significance of discussing business model evaluation from the investor's perspective and identifies key concepts in business model research from the investor's perspective by integrating research in the fields of finance and management. Through a review of existing studies, the paper points out the importance of five axes in investors' business model evaluation: business model content, market content, number of business models, number of markets, and synergy effects. Furthermore, we finally propose a research approach using this framework and an experimental approach. We point out the possibility of new research by using the method of experimentation, which has rarely been used in business model research.

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This study examined the link between personality characteristics and emotional exhaustion among customer service workers. The live survey application S was employed to conduct a web-based questionnaire survey of customer service workers in the United States in March 2021 with 50 questions related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Most respondents (65.78%) reported that they had felt emotional exhaustion. This study used descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, and moderated regression analyses to test the hypotheses. The primary purpose of this study was to relate the basic personality of an individual to the perception of emotional exhaustion. However, the findings led to insights into whether emotional exhaustion perceived by the customer service employees caused personality traits or the social and environmental phenomenon caused in COVID-19. The results suggested that employees’ emotional exhaustion was caused by environmental, situational, and social phenomena such as the COVID-19 pandemic at the time rather than individual characters. The result also indicated that employees with high levels of agreeableness, conscientiousness, and job satisfaction can quickly reduce and control their emotional exhaustion when experiencing conflicts.

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While many companies have actively implemented human resource initiatives to promote employee work-life balance (WLB), some workplaces still maintain old workplace norms against WLB, making it difficult for employees to utilize such benefits. Previous literature has attributed this issue in part to a phenomenon known as pluralistic ignorance, where unpopular norms are maintained due to misperceptions of each other’s beliefs. Existing studies have confirmed that pluralistic ignorance undermines employee WLB, but how to attenuate pluralistic ignorance has not yet been fully examined. Therefore, this study uses agent-based simulation and examines how to resolve pluralistic ignorance. The model also incorporates differences in the nature of norms, particularly the degree of sanction expectations that are assumed to be related to the resolution of pluralistic ignorance. Our analysis confirmed that pluralistic ignorance about the norms with weak expected sanctions is more likely to be resolved by employees’ honest display of their true beliefs. The results also showed that pluralistic ignorance could take various forms, indicating the need to be aware of its different forms when considering intervention strategies in future research.

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This study examined how the Entrepreneurial Alertness (EA) of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) managers affected strategic decision-making efforts and firm performance under COVID-19 pandemic situation. This study simultaneously focused on the managers’ interfamilial successor characteristic to study antecedents of EA which have been calling for further clarifications in empirical research. The data was taken from a questionnaire survey for SMEs in Kita-Kanto region and examined by Structural Equation Modeling. The results showed positive relationship among EA, firm performance, and strategic decision-making efforts. On the other hand, the interfamilial successor characteristic was found to have negative impact on EA. The findings from this study contributed to both academic and managerial fields. For academic field, our results would lead to further elucidation of EA antecedents. For managerial field, there are multiple implications for SMEs struggling to secure and train next generation’s manager with EA.

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This paper investigates why family-managed but not family-owned family businesses can exist, contrary to the general notion that family businesses are managed and owned by a family(s). Based on the analysis of 66 family businesses of this kind listed in Japan, highlighting their board members, shareholders, and other stakeholders from the resource-based view (RSV) perspective, the paper reveals their long-lasting relationship with their stakeholders (financial institutions, vendors, and partners, many of which remain among the major shareholders) constitute their legitimacy of management without ownership influence, with its majority maintaining such a status over 30 years, of which five firms with the longest history has more than one third of the major shareholders over 50 years.

The paper further points out this legitimacy is made possible at the evolved stage of the stakeholder relationships, based upon the analysis of the extant literature. It finds the evolution of stakeholder relationships starts within the family, then developed to other internal and external ones, and finally to the non-family stakeholders. With the above findings, the paper contributes to advancing the heterogeneity study of the family business which is gaining growing importance while implying the relevance of stakeholder relationships evolution in general.

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Why is the diffusion of new technology delayed even though it has been long-awaited? The purpose of this presentation is to clarify the factors. In product development, it is important for companies and industries to realize functions and performances that existing technologies do not have. However, even if new technologies are developed, they may not diffuse to the market as much as expected. In previous studies, many obstructive factors to delay the diffusion of innovation have been discussed. However, in the general-purpose parts market, the influence of such obstructive factors is considered to be small, the diffusion of new technology may be delayed even though the realization of new technologies has been desired. Therefore, in this presentation, I clarify obstructive factors that delay the diffusion of innovation despite the long-awaited to realize new technologies by case studies of the diffusion process of blue LEDs.

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The Japanese music industry has changed significantly since around 2000, and the music package market has declined by 60% in the last 20 years. It has been said that this is due to the progress of ICT. Meanwhile, the live concert market has grown about five times in the same period. The purpose of this study is to investigate and analyze music fans and the music fan community, assuming that there are changes in both besides the progress of ICT. As for the survey method, I conducted questionnaire for Generation X, Y, and Z each, and a quantitative survey. I adopted the t-test as an analysis method. As a result, I discovered there are many specificities that Generation Z requires. In the past, individual music fans and the music fan community wanted artists and music viewing only, but due to the peculiarity of the Generation Z, the existence of the fan community has become “a place to interact with fellow fans”, "a place where you feel belonging to the fan community”, “a place where you approve your existence”, and “a place where you are". In this way, it suggested the traditional fan community has changed.

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Split-offs, a form of divestiture whereby a parent firm distributes the stock of a divested subsidiary to its shareholders in exchange for their stock holdings in the parent, has the effect of simultaneously executing a divestiture and a share repurchase equivalent in value to the divested subsidiary, while also effecting self-selection by shareholders through their choice of stocks from the parent and the subsidiary. Since share repurchases are an increasingly popular avenue for payouts along with dividend payments, it is worthwhile to introduce tax-free provisions for split-offs in an equivalent manner to those for spin-offs, another form whereby a parent distributes subsidiary stock as tax-free dividends to its shareholders.

Firms have preferred cash sales to spin-offs because the former brings them proceeds, even if only the latter is tax-free. Split-offs, under a tax-free arrangement, would have an effect equivalent to distributing such proceeds in the reorganization of product portfolios. Such a development in divestitures would also affect how firms are viewed, from internally coherent, family-like organizations to businesses structured to allow for possible future divestitures.

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In recent years, the business model concept has been gaining attention in the finance sector. In 2013, the disclosure of business model information as non-financial information became mandatory in the UK market. Following this, disclosure of business model information has been recommended in Europe. The concept “Business model” has become an important concept in management studies and has received a lot of attention in the business world.In this study, we investigate how investors perceive business models. Specifically, we use KH coder to analyze transcriptions from a quantitative perspective to visualize the overall picture of business model concepts as perceived by investors and to explore the multifaceted nature of how they are perceived.As the result, we found that the important keywords of business models that are common to different positions and the interconnectedness of concepts related to business models differ depending on the position. For institutional investors, a business model is a tool used to predict and foresee the future, unlike quantitative financial information that shows past performance. It was also suggested that it is necessary to consider the aspect of value creation and the aspect of value acquisition together.

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Reasons for Retraction:
The author requested that this paper be withdrawn due to the following reasons; duplicate submission may occur when submitting his new paper including the content of the paper to another journal. After considering the above, the Editor-in-Chief has decided at his discretion to withdraw this paper.

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The third-place “TP” characteristics, which are noted from the study of Oldenburg (1998/2013), has not been noticed in existing studies of community of practice. However, TP characteristics are said to increase learning motivation and promote learning. The purpose of this study is to examine the preceding factors of TP characteristics, to present a hypothetical model to clarify how TP characteristics affect cross-border learning of community of practice, and to clarify future research issues. As a result of the research, the following three hypotheses were presented. "The thoughtful leadership of the coordinators of the community of practice enhances the TP characteristics of the practice community." "The informality of the community of practice enhances the TP characteristics of the community of practice." "The higher TP characteristics of the community of practice, the more cross-border learning of the community of practice is promoted." TP can be a key factor in the management of a community of practice.

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Although many studies on learning curves have focused on a group and organizational level, few empirical studies of individuals' direct experiential learning have been conducted. This is somewhat strange, given that individual learning is the foundation for all other levels of learning. This study focuses on the experiential learning of professionals and empirically analyzes the learning effect. While learning curve research has treated the experience as a bundling concept, we divide experience into four subcategories to uncover the detailed effects. They are general experience, task-specific experience, breadth of experience, and depth of experience. We use 722 Japanese patent attorneys who owned individual firms and 701,306 patent data they represented, which constitute a panel dataset from 2002 to 2010. Fix-effects regression is employed to investigate the effect of patent attorney experience on patent grant lag (i.e., time to be granted). The results show that general experience and depth of experience have a negative effect on patent grant lag. This study provides insight into a deeper understanding of learning curve and the underlying mechanism of professionals’ individual experiential learning and extends the narrow focus on Western professionals.

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The purpose of this study is to consider the formation process model of the entrepreneurial microecosystem by elucidating the formation process of entrepreneurial networks. As an exploratory case study, we investigated the networking of 10 new business development teams of large companies located in the incubation base ARCH (Toranomon, Tokyo), and identified the following two behavioral characteristics of the members that form a network with high commercialization speed. The first is taking a "diversification to exclave" (unrelated diversification) strategy and stretching into domains away from the core business; the second is communicating through an attractive "entrepreneurial hashtag" that allows diverse actors to easily share objectives and significance. In this study, we consider our hypothesis by focusing on the second behavior, which is more important for nascent entrepreneurs in the resource search phase.

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The delay in digitization, which was re-recognized through the COVID-19 crisis, is being discussed as one of the factors behind the decline in productivity of Japanese industry. Even though Industry 4.0 is widely discussed as a potential measure, a lack of transparency regarding the benefits is one of the key obstacles to its introduction, especially among SMEs.

As far as we know, there is no survey on how Japanese SMEs understand the benefits of Industry 4.0 and what is the current level of the digitalization among Japanese SMEs.

We conducted a survey with 45 items, and received the responses from 22 Japanese SMEs. The responses revealed that Japanese SMEs' understanding on Industry 4.0 is rather similar to that of the conventional automatization (Industry 3.0). In addition to that, the current digitalization level seemed to be far below from what is envisioned in Industry 4.0 target level.

Finally, the proposal to fill the gap of understanding of Industry 4.0 as well as level of digitalization is discussed.

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This paper investigates how a small community in Japan has maintained its common resources for centuries, shedding light on the leadership of family business members over generations to formulate cooperative activities, which is not researched in-depth. Focusing on the case of Kinosaki Onsen, Hyogo Prefecture, our literature review and interviews with CEOs of family-owned hot spring inns in operation for centuries, reveal this community of 3,125 habitants developed a governance mechanism of shared hot spring resources to solve the social dilemma starting in the 18th century, which was developed into a community resilience system through their experiences with major earthquakes and other crises, under the leadership of community-embedded family business members over generations, based on their generational social capital in the community. We also discover the community’s prompt response to the COVID-19 pandemic is activated by this cooperative mechanism. Our findings not only endorse Elinor Ostrom’s 8 rules for managing the commons, but also exemplify the importance of the family business both in the common-property resource management and community-based resilience from major crises, which haven’t addressed explicitly either in the literature of family business and/or commons management.

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Reasons for Retraction:
The author requested that this paper be withdrawn due to the following reasons; duplicate submission may occur when submitting his new paper including the content of the paper to another journal. After considering the above, the Editor-in-Chief has decided at his discretion to withdraw this paper.

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