This paper discusses institutional change through a detailed analysis of the innovative diffusion technique. Previous studies on institutional change have depended largely upon the concept of the ‘institutional entrepreneur’. While these studies’ perspectives often regard an institutional entrepreneur as an agent with causal impact on our social world, they also have a tendency to regard others as not having any causal impact. However, because all people have autonomy to a certain degree, even within already-established institutions, such perspectives oversimplify today’s society. Based on the awareness of the above-mentioned problem, this paper tries to delineate the theoretical framework of emergent institutional change brought on by various people who have some autonomy and various interests in the causal impact upon an institution. From the framework’s point of view, institutional change can be understood as a kind of warfare between one social group comprising people who are satisfied with an existing institution’s policies and another group unsatisfied with current policies. To further illustrate that theoretical framework, we showcase the results of our analysis concerning the diffusion of the innovative slope reinforcement technique, a technique also known as the ‘Non-frame method’.

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Design-Oriented Innovation aims to pursue toward the future of a world where people live by in-house designers in the characteristics of manufacturing firms in Japan. This paper addresses the effectiveness of product innovation theory through case study, Socialization of tacit knowledge by the in-house designers in collaboration with external designers, that in between the New Product Development members born in collective intelligence. Japanese firms specific designer-centered methodology brings added value creation idea is with diversity in collaboration with external designers. It is assumed that this information helps to determine when the in-house designer of new product development team as coordinator. Finally, the pattern to which the collaboration with external designers thinking movement as a business strategy will implicate the closed collaboration ‘Elite Circle’ of new products development (Pisano & Verganti, 2008, pp.82) .

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Uncertainty concerning pharmaceutical industry R&D continues to grow, which is making it increasingly difficult to introduce new drugs to market. This paper presents a hypothetical exploratory analysis of factors that affect the translation of new drug discoveries to clinical research.The first factor is organizational capability to maintain propriety throughout the drug development process, either through technological superiority or the accumulation of organizational capability. Second, Patent protection is important in order to avoid the follow from other companies. Third, within the pharmaceutical industry, technological superiority is more important than accumulating organizational capability as a factor for promoting protection through patents. However, it was shown that the accumulation of organizational capability affected organizational capability to build technological superiority.These findings point to future research directions that incorporate cross-sectional data across multiple industries. Moreover, further studies could explore in detail how accumulating organizational capability builds technological superiority.

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With the increase of decentralization, local governments are left to solve their own policy problems more than ever. Existing research focused on the decision making process of local government are scarce and fails to consider both organizational hierarchy and many participants. Based on these point, the purpose of this article is to investigate the decision making process of local government by expanding upon the Garbage Can Model of Cohen et al. (1972). I did both interviews and questionnaires targeted at staff in the Affairs Department of local government X. I found postponement of problems that the Section did not tackle problems and interruption that the decision making process went back former stage. This postponement had an effect to tackle important problems to be solved in the short term inside of the Section. In addition, in the situations where decision making process was in progress, postponement was to develop decision making process related to other important problems, and to solve these problems. Interruption had an effect to tackle important problems that the Section overlooked. The result shows that postponement of problems and interruption played an important role in the decision making process of local government X.

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From April 2012 to March 2013, the author performed participant-observation research at a small-scale (less than 50 employees) Japanese automotive supplier. During the period of observation, this supplier has introduced a new production-management system under the guidance its largest customer. The paper presents the findings of this research at this supplier as a case study to analyze the process (what was transferred) and the result (what was the effect on manufacturing performance) of the transfer of manufacturing capabilities up the supply chain. A notable characteristic of this case is how the capability-transfer process was continually centered around improving the ratio of work-in-process that was finished on-time at a station. The paper findings suggest that such a focus on Delivery (which inherently contains the fastest feedback loop) as a trigger for transferring capabilities may be particularly potent at Small and Medium-size Enterprises (SMEs). While the supplier system in Japan has been highlighted as a contributing factor to the high global competitiveness of the Japanese automotive industry, there is a notable lack of research on lower-tier suppliers. This paper contributes to understanding the transfer of capabilities to lower-tier SMEs. Transferring capabilities further up the supply chain is an increasing focus of Japanese automotive companies, as they face increased cost pressure caused by heightened global competition and other factors.

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The purpose of this study is to disclose the building process of suppliers' development capabilities through the patent data analysis under rapid technological system conversion of the automobile. Recent computerization of cars has urged the improvement of the technology of arranging wire harness and lightening. The role of wire harness in a car is a linking of electrical components, so it means that wire harness is to define the electrical functions of the car. Namely, wire harness is suitable as a subject to observe recent improvement process of development capabilities of auto parts suppliers. In order to visualize research results, we use a patent data analysis of the wire harness area. Research subject is wire harness department of the Sumitomo group (Sumitomo Electric Industries, Ltd., Sumitomo Wiring Systems, Ltd., Auto Network Technology Institute), which has extended global market share over the last two decades, while comparing with the Yazaki Group (Yazaki Sougyou), a top supplier of wire harness. In analyzing the patent data, we regard a company as a bunch of technology and analyze from 3 viewpoints, which are companies, engineers, and invention. Our study revealed the following mechanisms.Mechanism 1, Analysis of Company unit: “Building development capabilities starts from the patent application by wire harness manufacturer alone.”Mechanism 2, Analysis of Engineer unit:“The key to build development capabilities is the reciprocating motion between single application and joint application by core engineers.”Mechanism 3, Analysis of Invention unit: “Building development capabilities accelerates by reconstructing the predecessor's technology.”We present a conceptual model that organizes the mechanism as the conclusion of this study. "Building development capabilities starts from patent applications by wire harness manufacturer alone and returns to the evolution path of the invention by the reciprocating motion of the core engineer as an interface, and accelerates by reconstructing the predecessor's technology."

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Recently, Japanese car manufacturers and automotive components suppliers have been making efforts to increase the supporting capabilities (e.g., product and process engineering) of their production facilities overseas. As a result, the attention paid by both academics and practitioners to the tasks and functions of manufacturing engineering, and to the overseas transfer of these tasks and functions, has increased. However, compared to Japanese car manufacturers, we could find few academic works in English or Japanese that address the tasks and functions of manufacturing engineering in Japanese automotive component suppliers. Also, these academic works have not provided the reader with "the big picture", an overall view or perspective on the position of manufacturing engineering in the business administration science. In this paper the author argues that there are hints in the literature showing that the formation of the tasks and functions of manufacturing engineering may represent a strategic decision based on the characteristics of the manufacturing process (level of automation, use of manual labor, etc.). The preliminary results of the research from two cases of Japanese suppliers of automotive components: one supplying final assemblies and another supplying sub-components for these final assemblies, show that there are differences in the organization and some of the tasks of manufacturing engineering, which could be explained by the different characteristics of the manufacturing process in these two suppliers.

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By using an in-depth and chronological case study of the social welfare corporation Hokkaichoseikai, this study examined interaction among institutions, values, activities and resources and dynamical changing process of them. This case study provided three findings. First, the tight interconnection among institutions, values, activities and resources provides high organizational performance. Second, there are two types of interconnection, which are the top-down type of connection and the bottom-up type of interconnection. Third, the top-down type of interconnection encourages the bottom-up type of interconnection.

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Research on proactive behavior has identified proactive personality and antecedents of several behaviors that are considered as proactive. Recent research, however, raises concerns about absence of research on management of proactive behavior. Many of research on proactive behavior had focused only employee’s behavior. They doesn’t consider about the relationship between proactive behavior and organization whole or organizational output. It means that existing research lacks a view point of the management of these behaviors. Without perspective of the management, proactive behavior will become selfish and dogmatic behavior, in turn, have negative effect on organization. This problem causes a problem that is called “Initiative Paradox.” This problem explains that manager or supervisor does not always support proactive behavior. In turn, we have to identify what kind of proactive behavior will have an impact on organization. The inquiry of theoretical and empirical relationship between proactive behavior and organization is next challenge to be addressed by future research. In this research, we develop a theoretical perspective on the proactive behavior in organization. In order to integrate proactive behavior to organization, we revisit original goal of proactive behavior research firstly. Secondly, we employ system theory as theoretical foundation of proactive behavior research. Drawing from system theory, especially from socio-technical system, we discuss how proactive behavior is defined in organizational context and how proactive behavior can be a resource of organizational adaptation. Considering this theoretical premise, we conclude by offering future research directions.

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This study explores how learning network affects on learners’ process of reflection including forms of external/internal representation and frequency of feedback by conducting a questionnaire survey among professionals and their candidates of Korean traditional music and dance (N=127). As the result, the learners who are expanding their network tend to represent what they learn explicitly and objectively, and iterate feedback loops of reflection frequently. It was also observed that the boundary-expanding learners were related with community of traditional practice by birth and they tend to make much of tradition.

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The purpose of this study was to develop a scale measuring multi-faceted as well as multi-dimensional work motivations in Japanese organizations. It also sought to verify the scale’s validity and reliability. In study 1, items of the scale were developed based on Barrick, Stewart, and Piotrowski’s (2002) work on a prior scale, and included additional content on motivational aspects of learning. These items were further elaborated and examined in two preliminary investigations to determine whether each reflected three core dimensions: directivity, persistence, and strength. In study 2, web surveys comprising the items were administered to 600 Japanese employees whose responses were later analyzed. An exploratory factor analysis was performed to ascertain the scale’s validity and reliability, which revealed 4 factors: accomplishment, competition, cooperation, and learning-oriented motivation. This factor structure was confirmed in Study 3 with two samples of 209 nurses and 467 system engineers. This final phase of our research also demonstrated that competition-oriented motivation was associated with decreased negative job performance among employees of Japanese hospitals.

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As international competition increases, management of overseas affiliates of Japanese companies is an increasingly important subject matter for both practitioners and management scholars. The present paper focuses on the role played by boundary spanners in the management of overseas affiliates. Boundary spanners are defined as those individuals who bridge physical and other factors that separate a multinational corporation’s headquarters and its overseas affiliates, as well as bridge separations between overseas affiliates.We employ a case study research approach, and focus on the single case of Toyota’s affiliate in Taiwan, Kuozui Motors, Ltd. Our findings show that boundary spanners from both Japan and Taiwan worked to (1) increase the sharing of ways of thinking between Toyota’s headquarters in Japan and Kuozui, and (2) improve the Japanese language skills of employees of Kuozui. Two processes that were found to have contributed significantly to the achievement of these results. First, in the act of jointly pursuing TPS at Kuozui authority was delegated in a particular way from Japanese top managers to Taiwanese managers. Second, Kuozui managers translated numerous exceptional books related to the Toyota Production System (TPS) from Japanese and English into Chinese. As a success indicator, we focus on the high performance of manufacturing engineering at Kuozui, which has reached a notably high level within the Toyota Group.

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In this research, I explore the process of punctuated equilibrium model, using the case of NISSAN MOTOR Co., Ltd. (NISSAN). Punctuated equilibrium model depicts organizations as evolving through relatively long periods of stability (equilibrium periods) in their basic patterns of activity that are punctuated by relatively short bursts of fundamental change (revolutionary periods). Punctuated equilibrium model has developed in both theoretical and empirical studies. The remaining question is, however, how organizational activities transform in periods of convergence and of reorientation. In other words, punctuated equilibrium model has not been discussed about change process. Meanwhile, the foundation of process research is the three-step model by Lewin, which expresses the process model of change as unfreezing, moving and refreezing. From this model, large amounts of process model have been emerged. Since 2000, various organizational activities have been built process model independently in each activity, such as the change process in organizational identity. Thus, it is extremely difficult to generalize process model from the flow of process research. Consequently, to clarify the process of punctuated equilibrium model requires the theory building from case studies. In the previous research, punctuated equilibrium model has been assumed that most of organizational activities change simultaneously. In this research, however, the process of organizational activity details as the key findings with the case of NISSAN. That is, this research can show a sequential change process, such as the role of leadership to creating strategy and organizational culture, and to spread the change to members in the end.

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The model developed here explains the diverse exit strategies of academic ventures while these firms have different various stakeholder compositions and its distinctive development paths. I argue that venture survival and exit strategies are not strictly a function of economic performance but also depends on a firm's own threshold of performance. I apply the EVLN model to the study of academic venture survival, in which two thresholds of economic and social index are determined by the key stakeholders' ownership influence such as the leading academic entrepreneurs. Utilizing four case studies, I find the some supportive evidence for the model. The findings suggest that the reason why academic ventures' exit strategies may choose to continue or survive despite comparatively low economic performance.

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In recent years, the number of MBO (management buy-out) of listed companies in Japan has been increasing year by year. MBO is a form of acquisition where a company's existing managers acquire a large part or all of the company from either the parent company or from the private owners. In the previous studies of MBO, focusing on the improvement of management performance and changes in the ownership structure of post MBO (Smith 1990,Kaplan 1989,Tsukioka 2011). In many previous studies, however, it has not been observed in detail schemes and processes, or what problems occurred after MBO of each company. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to clarify the issues and realities of MBO in Japanese companies, and to show the way of MBO strategy in the future by comparison case analysis. As a result of the analysis, the concept of "non-continuity and continuity" has been revealed as the key factors of success of MBO. In the case of a failure, in spite of MBO, executives did not carried out most of the buy-back of shares, and "mismatch of ownership and management" has occurred. In other words, "ownership and management" has become discontinuous relationship. Therefore, the President was swayed by the intention of the fund, and could not manage as desired. On the other hands, in the case of successful, executives buy-back of the shares of all, and realized the management that does not depend on the intention of the fund. Therefore, the firm and fund were able to build a cooperative and continuous relationship. In conclusion, this paper showed that after the MBO, firms and funds continue to eliminate the non-continuity is the key to success.

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Despite a severe market environment over the past decade, the Toyota dealership, Nets Toyota Nangoku, has maintained superior customer satisfaction. This dealership has ranked number one in customer satisfaction among 300 Toyota dealerships every year for the last fourteen. To investigate the dealership’s success, we interviewed a number of Nets’ managers and arrived at the following conclusions about its success: (1) Altruism plays an important role not only in terms of customer satisfaction but also for employee satisfaction. The purpose of sales representatives is not primarily to attain sales incentives, but, instead, to cater to and satisfy customers. (2) Relations of cause and effect between customer satisfaction and employee satisfaction are reciprocal. Generally, employee satisfaction causes customer satisfaction and vice versa at Nets Toyota Nangoku. (3) Employee satisfaction is a major goal or purpose of organization. Nets Toyota Nangoku created the single composite goal of achieving both financial success and employee satisfaction. (4) A high level of internal service quality factors within an organization such as Nets Toyota Nangoku empower employees greatly, develop employee’s potential capabilities, and increase employee satisfaction.

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In the perspective of microeconomic, R&D expenses are fixed costs, it has been considered companies that can be worked out is a wealth of development costs as to be advantageous to innovation (Kamien and Scuwartz, 2003). In addition, the competitive environment that promotes innovation, it has been pointed out in various studies (i.e., Numakami, Asaba, Shintaku and Amikura, 1992).In these conventional discussions, it is assumed that the unlimited environment promotes innovation, and there are discussions of “How do we eliminate the limitations?” for promote the innovation (i.e., Nonaka and Tokuoka, 2009; 2012). On the other hand, taking advantage of the fact limitations, lead to the promotion of innovation as inducing factors of competition them (i.e., Kusunoki, 2001; 2006 and Osanai, 2006; 2012), but in general, the severe development environment and limited resources has been recognized as a factor that inhibits the innovation activities of the company. Porter and Takeuchi (2000) analyzed the relationship between innovation and government, and revealed the industries that have received the protection and limitations of the country have failed most, and vice versa, the industries placed in competitive environment have been successful.Thus, in the discussion competitive environment and to promote innovation is commonly shared, in the military industries a variety of "limitations" are large, for example, such as in a development case of F-2 fighter, CFRP processing technology it is produced, and had brought the competitive advantage as a technology for carbon fiber technology of Japan is essential in the development of commercial aircraft today. The military industries of United States and United Kingdom that were the leader in early stage of the carbon fiber development, in huge budged and free R&D environment. But these industries gave up the application to aircraft of carbon fiber technology finally.In this study, we had analyzed the cause and process why the Japanese industries in large limitations have been leader not only in this market in the world for business but also in technical.

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Many Japanese companies performed new technology development positively and created the business domain with new technologies. In those technology-oriented companies, we can often find that a person from superior engineer becomes a top-manager/middle-manager to lead new business development. In real business, there may be implicit agreement that superior engineers are suitable for technology management, a new business development based on technologies. In fact, they have complexity, difficulty, equivocality on technology evaluation. so it seems that managers are needed to have technological knowledge and skill as professionals. However, superior engineers are not always good business leaders, because leaders are required to have business management skills.So, we’d like to discuss about form of T-Shaped Skill(Iansiti,1993) and the balance of exploration and exploitation(March,1991) on the ability of the individual level. In this study, we’ve focused that non-engineer leader (who has only breadth knowledge ). Non-engineer leader succeeded in new business development, because of three reasons.First, The Non-engineer leader explored the examination of the business domain and academia-industry cooperation in the activity. The Leader accessed outside positively, and transfered new information into his organization. Second, The Leader encouraged cooperation with external expert and outsourcing, and organized a team for managing the technology exploitation process. Third, The Leader integrated the technology development and market.

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The purpose of this study is to reveal the influence of the entrepreneurial perspectives for strategic formation. In the study, I use the case of SoftBank Corp., which was founded and has been managed over thirty years by Masayoshi SON as the representative and CEO. The study analyzes Softbank Corp.’s “Annual Reports”, especially the chapter of ‘CEO Message’, in order to clarify the entrepreneurial perspectives on the corporate domain at the present time and future. For the analysis, the text mining software “SPSS Text Analytics for Surveys 4.0.1” is used. The followings are found in the study. (1) The entrepreneur almost retains clear perspective on the future corporate domain. (2) The entrepreneur changes the corporate domain, through emphasizing on his strategic perspective. (3) The entrepreneur has not present/future strategic perspective on the new business, which were obtained through mergers and acquisitions, until the business are started. However, there is limitations of this paper because the study analyzes the single case of corporation and entrepreneur. In order to challenge these limitations, the analysis for the other companies’ case are required.

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This study discusses the logic behind the selection of product architecture in designing complex products. This study examines the nature of product architecture by looking at the way how a product system is partitioned, the size of modules, and the interface rules defining fixed and variable elements of the product systems. I analyze new product development approaches proposed by Volkswagen (MQB: Modular Transverse Matrix), Nissan (CMF: Common Module Family), and Mazda (CA: Common Architecture). The common logic of these approaches is that they attempt to reduce expost coordination efforts to develop individual vehicles by increasing ex-ante coordination in an advanced development phase. In MQB and CMF a vehicles system is partitioned into smaller subsystems (the size of modules of MQB is smaller than that of CMF), and a variety of vehicle models is created by changing the combination of pre-developed modules. In Mazda’s CA it creates different vehicles by copying the common engineering principles and standard design structures in similar shape or ratio. VW’s MQB defines the modules and the interfaces as fixed elements for designing individual vehicles, while Nissan’s CMF includes both fixed and variable elements within each module, and Mazda treats the engineering principles as fixed rules. The case study illustrates that the selection of product architecture is likely to reflect the differences in complexity of product portfolio and the size of sales volume among the firms. Those firms, such as VW and Nissan, with a large product variation and sales volume may prefer to reduce workloads for developing individual models even though the modularization of the vehicle system would require huge engineering man-hours in advanced development phase. On the other hand, Mazda seems to avoid such an approach because it imposes too much fixed costs. Overall, the nature of product architecture will depend in part on the nature of the firm’s product market strategy.

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The industrial policies for university industry alliances have developed their networks in bioclusters in advanced countries. However, their networks grow through policy pushing although their economic outcomes might not be as much as intended by policymakers. This paper attempts to examine the big gap between joint patent application networks and grant networks in the Kansai Biocluster during 2000’s. However, As Obstfeld (2005) implies, effective interorganizational network configuration for exploitative alliances may be different from that for explorative ones. We found that cohesive ties in university industry alliance networks may be valuable for patent registration and effective exploitation for joint-patenting alliances.

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