The article reviews “institutional logic” and “institutional logic multiplicity” and derives future research questions. The article suggests below implications: In order to pursue the significance of institutional logic, it is necessary to assume institutional logic pluralism or institutional logic multiplicity. In addition, the article focuses on the innovation management literature as a theoretical issue for examining the institutional logic multiplicity, and derives additional research questions.

This is a case study of a service robot maker, “tmsuk co., ltd.”. “tmsuk” shows the excellent product development capability by making full use of open innovation, and is seen as a forerunner of the industry. The core competence of “tmsuk” is the capability of integration and practicalization. The capability is based on its superior mechatronics technology, with which the company is attracting a lot of partners (mainly, university researchers) and is constructing a large-scale innovation network. Based on the innovation network, the company is also receiving a lot of product development orders from many clients/users including famous large companies and public organizations. In other words, the innovation network becomes a matching place between technological seeds from universities and needs from various users, then, enables the company to develop many different types of robots in spite of its limitation as a small-scale enterprise. Their human resource development seems, at first glance, less systematic and of the self-made manner, but in reality, it effectively nurtures “producer-type” talents who are able to manage a complicated robot development project including different types of expertise.

Existing literature on radical organizational change represented by Plowman, Baker, Beck, Kulkarni, Solansky, and Travis (2007) indicates that continuous emergent process occurring unintentionally causes radical organizational change. Prior literature has not examined the possibility of this process occurring through strong leadership in major inertia, however, Machida (2017) demonstrates this process in the case of Yokohama City. This research aims to indicate two points: First, the causes of continuous emergent process occurring through strong leadership in major inertia through a cross-case comparison analysis of Yokohama City and X City. Second, a new model on radical organizational change, which combines the process indicated through the cross-case comparison analysis and existing literature.

This paper explores the concept of industrial competitiveness and gets insights on its dynamics and typology through a series of simulations based on the logic of survival analysis. Competitiveness here is defined as a subject’s ability to be selected, including (i) profit performance of firms selected by capital markets, (ii) market (surface-level) performance of products selected by product market, and (iii) productive (deep-level) performance of sites or “genba” selected by firms, which compose a multi-layer structure of competitiveness. We made a set of simulation models based on survival analysis and examined if there are any specific set of parameters that can reproduce the predicted patterns of the four cases mentioned above. We also analyzed the relations between the above-mentioned simulation parameters and found that, as the value of competition intensity increases, genba’s survival rate rapidly decreases and approach from 1 to 0, apparently following cumulative exponential distribution curve. We also found that, when international competition is not intense, the survival rates of genba in the country that is on average less competitive in Ricardian cost competition increases—— what we may call “border-crossing.”

We clarified the following three points about the success factors in crowdfunding by analyzing the data of the Japanese reward-based crowdfunding platform “CAMPFIRE” and comparing it with the research of U.S. “Kickstarter.” Firstly, it was confirmed that the increase of target amount and duration were negatively associated with the success rate, and the increase of publicity was positively associated. Secondly, it cannot be said that videos were positively associated with the success rate in Japan, which is in contrast to the existing empirical research about U.S. Thirdly, projects by founders in greater Tokyo area have a high success rate in Japan. These results will contribute to the understandings of the development process of crowdfunding in Japan.

Recently, the government promotes work style reforms. In the movement, “diversity” gathers attention as a key word. As personnel such as women, senior citizens, and foreigners get utilized, diversity studies would become more important. Although the government sheds light on the positive side of diversification, there is also the negative side. In diversity studies, researches on faultlines show us such an aspect. Therefore, we introduce Lau and Murnighan (1998), which is said to be the pioneer of the field, and explain the concept of faultline and its activation, which tends to be overlooked.

This study analyzes the decision making process of a local government, paying attention to interruption on incremental decision making model proposed by Mintzberg, Risinghani, and Theoret (1976). Different from the interruption that this model pointed out, the results show interruption after decision making that happens to be consistent with other decision making after a rough policy has been decided. This phenomenon can be understood by the model that add sequence of decision making and effect of other decision making on incremental decision making model. This model enables a theoretical consideration of the decision making process of local government based on actual conditions.

This paper investigates an industrial design activity after a radical technological change through the case study of Fuji Film's “FinePix700”. We reveal that such a technological change might make it difficult to maintain a popular industrial design even though these existing designs still had superiority. We also discovered that firms can create the qualified product with high technology and new industrial design together by co-existing novelty of appearances and rationality from the functional perspective. This paper contributes to both consumer behavior study and technology management study by suggesting an effective relationship between technology and design.

As a success factor of Harley-Davidson Japan (hereinafter referred to as HDJ), other motorcycle manufacturers point out there were regulated distribution networks without resales and parallel imports, and customer community activities by HDJ and its dealers. However, HDJ does not possess any directly operated dealers under its command and has promoted distribution system integration by the authorized dealer system by all others capital, and has built a sales network. Even though these dealers are in proxy relationship with HDJ, not only are they still in a relationship of trading. Most of dealers do family business seeking current sales rather than future profits and they do not take actions without logical and emotional consent. To such dealers, it was not easy for HDJ to be deeply committed in the management and sales process, and it was necessary to take a corresponding process. In terms of institutional factors (front management) and human factors (back management), this paper explains the background in the distribution system integration which made HDJ's sales network agile by HDJ being deeply committed in dealers who are other capital.

In contrast to the slump in the electronics industry, Japanese electronic parts industry shows positive business performance. However, its profitability differs widely according to the type of supplier. In comparison with a generalized supplier, a specialized supplier tends to realize higher profitability. Why a specialized supplier is securing competitive advantages than a generalized supplier with synergy effects? To this question, this paper considers the fit between architecture strategy and product development system of a specialized supplier. Then, through in depth case study of Iriso Electronics, this paper demonstrates that competitiveness and profitability of a specialized supplier is not necessarily attributed to only one architecture strategy, which means that a specialized supplier develops multiple architecture strategies and establishes product development system and process that fit to these strategies.

Entrepreneurship Education in Gothenburg of Sweden has produced many academic spinoffs since it started 20 years ago. The number of high performers reaching exits is more than ten. And the incubation program accommodates about 100 startups. The success of Gothenburg is known as the number one entrepreneurship education city in Nordic Countries. The supply of technology seeds, investment, and management support is well provided in the region (enlarged city) where there are 900,000 people living. We want to introduce the overview of our fieldwork, which we have conducted since 2011. The essential elements of entrepreneurship are opportunity recognition and team building. We show how students can learn two elements in the course work and proceed toward commercialization after their graduation.

This paper reviews prior empirical studies on the effect of product design on firm performance, by classifying them into three areas: (i) firm level, (ii) product level and (iii) design organization level. These studies support product design positively affects firm performance through the complex mechanism with mediation and/or interaction effects. These empirical results suggest further studies regarding (1) strategic context and product design process, (2) consumer cognition as mediation variables between design process and firm performance and (3) organizational mechanisms and key factors in design management.

The objective of this paper is the present the gaps in theories of knowledge transfer after intensive literature review in its related research domain. It starts from presenting the major researches on transfer of management systems and describes how the arguments were developed since the 1950s. Then the focus will be on the knowledge transfer discussions based on the strategic management and present the major gaps in previous studies. It was found that previous studies on knowledge transfer mainly discuss the dyadic transfer between the single organisations or departments. However, not many researches are focusing on knowledge transfer to an organisation community. This paper discusses that under certain circumstances, knowledge transfer to community may work better than the transfer to a single organisation.

It has been pointed out that consumer behavior is different when time pressure is felt from that when not. Previous researches point out that it is necessary to distinguish between the time constraint given externally and the time pressure consumers feel inherently, however, quantitative analysis trying to capture both at the same time is insufficient. Focusing on this point, this research measures the time pressure felt by consumers when, after manipulating the presence or absence of time constraint and length of time constraint, consumers were asked to evaluate the quality of an electric kettle. Analysis results revealed that time constraint does not directly affect the quality evaluation of consumers but indirectly influences it via time pressure. As a result, the necessity of analysis with emphasis on time pressure that consumers feel inherently is shown.