In a review of the existing literature dealing with organizational change, Weick and Quinn (1999) asserted that the contrasting organizational changes of episodic change and continuous change reflect the perspective of the observer. That is, an organizational change can be explained and described as being an episodic change or a continuous change; however, no specific examples were given. The example of change in the Rakuwakai Otowa Hospital discussed in this paper is explained by a leader as being an episodic change, but the same situation is described by a staff member, who is a follower, as being a continuous change.

Many small and medium-sized enterprises' managers hesitate to launch new businesses for the diversification or business change. In the case of new business launching by Yamato Industrial and Yamaguchi Kasei, decline of their existing businesses was a threat, and simultaneously, it has become an opportunity for launching new business, just as the saying “tough times bring opportunity.” In addition, the experience of launching a second business, rather than experience at startup, will motivate managers to launch businesses continuously.

Allen and Gerstberger (1973) reported that non-territorial offices improve privacy. In actuality, however, a view of the office layout after an experiment showed that the office used in the experiment was not just simply made into a non-territorial office, but had various zoning done such that zones could be selected according to circumstance. With that idea in mind, this study analyzes the impact of non-territorial offices on privacy as well as the effect of various zoning, based on data of 6,592 individuals obtained through internet surveys. Results of the analysis showed that 1) non-territorial offices themselves do not have a major impact on privacy (they neither improve nor worsen privacy); 2) rather, various zoning is what improves privacy; and 3) further, of note is that privacy dramatically worsens in non-territorial offices without any various zoning, and vastly improves where various zoning has been thoroughly implemented. These results give one solution for the disputes over non-territorial offices and privacy, and provide suggestions for a new type of office (activity-based working, or an activity-based office).