In the 2020 Annual Meeting, the Japanese Academy of Business Administration kindly offered me an opportunity to explore my ideas regarding globally-standardized research practices in the field of management studies. In my presentation, I made the following four points: (1) what is the globally-standardized research practice?, (2) how did it start and develop?, (3) how should we assess its superiority compared to other research approaches?, and (4) what would be potential implications for scholars in Japan? In this paper, I present a brief summary of my presentation and reflections of conversations with other presenters and participants at the meeting.

 The truth of management is supported by two things: existence which is ever-changing reality, and theory what is cognitive and currently in place locally. No “standard theory” can be established in management studies, because the reality of the business is continuously changing. Therefore, approaching truth is accomplished through knowing both theory and reality. Looking at the world business administration academia from this point of view, we can say that the academia has a certain level of soundness in terms of the fact that criticism of the theory-centric view appears from within the academia and the academia places great value on the search for the reality of things. In this respect, the world management academia has established the “standard normative” that both theory and reality have values to reach the truth. However, here we criticize that both the management societies in the world and Japan fall into the stuck that most of academicians rush into myopic research for the sake of journal acceptance or getting fame in academia, while they are losing their original philosophy and raison d’etre of pursuing the truth of management.

 Is Japan falling behind in management research? This paper compares the strategy taken respectively by management scholars in Japan and the United States to argue for a clear answer ‘No’. It is found that Japanese scholars have taken a ‘vertical integration’ strategy – they attempt to establish a new field and devote their whole career to make it prosper, where they first build concepts of their own, then derive hypotheses through case study to test them empirically, and revitalize the theory after it becomes mature.

 On the contrary, American scholars have adopted a ‘horizontal expansion’ strategy – they seldom start from building concepts of their own, but instead continuously search for conceptually well-established fields, where measurement is clearly agreed upon and quantitative attempts are therefore made feasible.

 Business model research, as a result, has made larger progress in Japan than in U.S., because lack of consensus in its definition has greatly hampered the hypothesis-testing attempts in this field but hardly posed any obstacles to researchers starting from building concepts of their own. Business model researchers in Japan has advanced the field by developing their original definitions to address the problems faced by industrial policy makers and business owners.

 This paper discusses the question of whether Japanese management studies lags behind the world in terms of global and local. The global and the local in management studies can be considered from three points of view, and the significance and meanings of local research in global studies is discussed. It also discusses the possibility that Japanese management studies can contribute to global management studies through the pursuit of local research, rather than just the figure of the local lagging behind the global.

 Based on “organizational economics” or “new institutional economics”, we can explain the strange phenomenon that human beings fail rationally rather than irrationally. Such a rational failure could be called “absurdity”. This absurd phenomenon cannot be avoided or solved only by economically rational management. Above all, in order to solve this problem, it is necessary to study a philosophical field called “philosophy of management”, which has received little attention from scholars in the United States. It is a philosophical field of study related to Peter F. Drucker, Konosuke Matsushita, and Yukichi Fukuzawa. According to Hideo Kobayashi, a well-known Japanese critic, this is a field that can be called “business administration based on a Japanese mind.” Today, many Japanese managers and scholars are interested in and consider this philosophical field of management to be important. Therefore, I think Japanese business scholars should contribute to the maintenance and development of this philosophical research field of management ahead of the rest of the world. Moreover, I think that such philosophical research on business administration is not behind global standard based management studies in the world, but rather beyond that. These things will be explained.

 In the field of management research, although the number of quantitative studies has grown, we lack a robust theoretical and conceptual framework. Thus, we need to develop and advance theoretical construction in this area. In this paper, I suggest that we reconsider the scientific qualification of quantitative studies in management research and understand the usefulness of mixed methods for developing research.

 With reference to discourses regarding the philosophy of critical rationalism, we see that inductive reasoning from a singular statement, such as the description of an observation or experiment, to universal statements, such as a theory, is not logically justified. In contrast, neo-pragmatists insist that the difference between analytical and comprehensive propositions is obscure because it is impossible to define concepts in the former. Therefore, we can use inductive methods in management studies, although we still need to offer logical reasoning for business phenomena.

 In scientific discovery, the method of abduction starts with observations and then attempts to find the most likely conclusion from the observations. It is a logically false reasoning method, but has been adopted by many scientists in the course of the development of natural science. This method has also been adopted by management scholars.

 The mixed methods approach is a way to execute abduction studies, a combination of quantitative and qualitative data collection and analyses. In triangulation design, quantitative and qualitative methods are used within a time framework. Furthermore, while embedded design employs qualitative methods in quantitative methods or vice versa, explanatory design conducts quantitative methods followed by qualitative methods. The latter performs quantitative analyses after qualitative research. It is the only way to conduct research in areas of study which are underdeveloped.

 Japanese scholars in business administration should aim broadly for “business administration as academics” which includes science and recognizes its limitations, rather than “business administration only as science.” At that time, for the time being, it is necessary for us to: (1) understand the complexity of management phenomena exactly; (2) fully consider the transmission medium and destination of research results; (3) avoid an overwhelming research attitude; (4) establish a system to be secured freedom and originality in research activities; and (5) motivate researchers to find the research itself really interesting.

 In the world of academic research, it is not possible to simply certify major current research groups as “standards” at this time. Rather, non-standard or special, individual research that is initially rejected and not recognized by others is the driving force for the long-term development of scholarship. In general, academic research including the natural sciences should have such a character, but in the case of business administration research that includes analyses of society and human beings, the idea that “standards” should be determined and aimed at is dangerous. Needless to say, there are many excellent studies in Japanese business administration research, and even if there are some inadequacy of overseas transmission, just because they are not listed in the “university rankings” published by the Times Higher Education, Japan’s research standards in the study of business administration are by no means behind those of the US and Europe.

 This paper discusses learning in organization enhanced by communities of practice (CoPs). CoPs are defined as ‘groups of people who share concern, a set of problems, or passion about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge and expertise in this area by interacting on an ongoing basis’ (Wenger, McDermott, & Snyder, 2002, p. 4). We suggest two learning mechanism of CoPs: one is derived from the difference between organizational canonical view and non-canonical view in CoPs. The other is facilitated by boundary crossing. Also we suggest four styles of learning to enhance to create practical intelligence: mastery learning, boundary-crossing learning, circular learning, and multifaceted learning. Then we claim that we should distinguish two types of CoPs, and to connect each other for building multi-layered structure of CoPs. We discuss how do communities of practice enhance creating practical intelligence by using four cases of CoPs, and claim that CoPs enhance learning in each case. Finally, some further suggestions are proposed.

 Diversity is a common factor in many organizations. Diversity is categorized into two levels, surface and deep; while the former impedes the performance of individuals and groups, the latter improves it. Although existing research discuss each of these aspects, the effects of their interaction have not been sufficiently explored. In addition, management of the relationship between diversity and performance has not been discussed in-depth. Recent studies have shed light on the concept of “inclusion” in the area of diversity management. The purpose of this study is to examine empirically how inclusion enhances an employee’s work motivation.

 How workplace diversity influences an employee’s behavior and how inclusion works in an organization are explained through the social categorical theory, and we have derived hypotheses based on this theory. Data to test the theoretical model were collected through panel survey to avoid common method bias. The findings are as follows: (1) inclusion behavior from organizational management enhanced the degree of an employee’s identification with his / her organization; (2) when organizational identification was high, both surface-level and deep-level workplace diversity positively influenced cooperation-oriented motivation. Additionally, surface-level diversity increased deep-level diversity. However, when organizational identification was low, surface-level diversity decreased cooperation-oriented motivation. Inclusion behavior enhances organizational identification, and thus indirectly manages employees’ cooperation-oriented motivation.