Creating and duplicating new knowledge (hybrid knowledge) that combines internal and external knowledge of organization is important in promoting knowledge evolution. Existing studies on intra-organizational diffusion of knowledge have asserted that it is difficult for knowledge creators, knowledge users, finders of users, presenters of knowledge values, and knowledge users to have the same consciousness for the duplication of knowledge. This study clarifies the organizational mechanism that enables the duplication of new knowledge through a case study from the perspective of sharing legitimacy among multiple staff members. In this case, staff members of the Japan Red Cross Medical Center duplicated and used kaizen knowledge introduced from Fujitsu Limited. After examining how multiple staff members replicated the new knowledge, it became clear that two factors constitute a mechanism to promote it. First, it is important to combine legitimacy from cross-sectional and cross-sectoral perspectives using existing hierarchies and systems. Second, in order to maintain overall consistency, supporters inside and outside the organization who can overview knowledge replication are useful. These results show that difficulties in sharing consciousness can be overcome by rethinking how legitimacy is shown to staff participating in knowledge introduction.

Online communities (OCs) as a new form of organizing are emerging with recent technologies such as digital platforms and social media. Although OCs are recognized as generative spaces for knowledge collaboration and innovation, we still know little about how OCs are created and sustained over time. To address this issue, this paper conducts a longitudinal field study of a healthcare online community hosted by a Canadian medical association. Building on the field observational data (before and after the launch of OC) and the digital trace data of the OC platform, this study explores how the OC evolves with the imbrication of design and emergence over the course of community development. This study contributes to novel understandings of OC development and provides practical implications on how to manage and sustain online communities.

Japanese firms’ compliance activities have developed and become the norm to a certain extent. However, many firms’ compliance systems are surprisingly similar. This is because, the institutionalization of compliance activities among Japanese firms has advanced under the influence of the Japan Business Federation and the Japanese government, and in fact, the mechanism of DiMaggio and Powell’s institutional isomorphism is at work. We believe that this is because the isomorphism in compliance activities that has developed independently of performance or of the ability to prevent scandals. On the other hand, in surveying firms that have experienced corporate scandals, we found that firms could generate their own activities.

Basic research that had until now been left to researchers at universities and other institutions has come to be conducted at companies as well. The creation of innovation has largely surpassed MOT that has followed the trajectory of technology that uses science as data. This study is a meta theory that refers to the general concept of sociomateriality. Using the general concept of agential realism as a descriptive framework for case analysis, we will study the practices of businesses tackling basic science, and consider the differences between them and university researchers that have been traditionally perceived as the bearers of science (whose practices have been put into a black box). Specifically, we will conduct an analysis of Toyota Motors, which used SPring-8 to develop a lithium-ion battery, and consider the new form of the industry-academic science trajectory based on the results of that analysis.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the aspect of closeness in communities of practice. Both the positive and negative of the close nature will be explored. From the inception of the concept of community of practice, most articles or researches have been written with a one-sided point of view either applauding its virtues or denouncing its shortcomings. This paper will provide a bilateral perspective of communities of practice that considers both the positive and negative aspects of the concept of closeness, and discuss the importance of having this bilateral perspective. This paper will also explore the role of routine activities, as they are an integral part of any communities of practice, especially in a business environment. A close examination of routine activities in their formation and evolution will contribute to the bilateral perspective of the closeness of communities of practice. Moreover, the paper will identify signs and events when the routine activities should be adjusted.

In Japan’s rapidly ageing society with its acute labor shortages, increasing productivity without impairing the quality of care at intensive care home for the elderly (kaigo roujin fukushi shisetsu) is critical. Managers expect their subordinates to be motivated towards customers, to be willing to undertake new initiatives. This research is a pilot study of nine employees at one intensive care home for the elderly in eastern Japan. It is designed to ascertain how employees’ aspirations develop differently from their organizations’ expectations of customer orientation. For this study, I conducted one hour long semi-structured interviews, and analyzed the data by using qualitative research method. Preceding studies of front-line employees have argued that front-line employees tend to have a strong customer orientation, and that these employees practice ‘Organization Citizenship Behavior’ (OCB). By contrast, this study revealed the process that some employees have been motivated to work more for their co-workers rather than for their customers.

The purpose of this study is to clarify the process through which various ways of working can be realized by analyzing the case of Cybozu, Inc. and presenting hypotheses about the process. In recent years, this working have been receiving attention as the working environment has evolved. Previous studies have shown how to implement this working as a part of work-life balance studies. However, Cybozu, Inc., a leading company of this working in Japan, has realized this working using a different approach than those found in previous studies. Therefore, we conducted an exploratory qualitative analysis of this company. We used books written by the president of this company, corporate materials released to the public, records of employee interviews, and newspaper articles related to this company. As a result of our analysis, we propose the following hypotheses. Various ways of working can be realized by introducing after considering personnel policies according to specific circumstances of individuals while involving employees, under the leaders’ decision. Various ways of working cannot be achieved through a single personnel policy, but by sequentially combining multiple personnel policies from the perspective of individual work styles. Personnel policies are instilled into employees when the leaders themselves use them.

This study investigates the factor that promotes technological breakthrough by the established firm, focusing on the individual behavior of inventors. Especially, I hypothesize the effect of “deviant behavior” of inventors on the radicalness of technologies invented by those inventors. Using patent data of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation, I show the effect of deviant behavior depends on the reference point of the newness of technologies. This study highlights the role of deviant inventors as a source of technological exploration for the focal firm, not technological breakthrough which has high impact to other firms.

It is little known about how and when contradictory institutional logics can be complementary to each other. By quantitatively comparing whether difference practices of Shinkin banks would bring a different degree of complementarity between the communities’ common interest and Shinkin banks’ self-interest. I argue that how contradictory institutional logics were instantiated in practices would influence the complementarity between them. Furthermore, I argue that the complementary effect of different types of instantiation would be influenced by the proportion of different types of instantiations in the total cases of instantiations of the field.

This paper examines the relationship between trust building, role execution and rapid internationalization when external experts support the rapid internationalization of SMEs with long domestic experience, through covariance structure analysis on questionnaire survey data. As a result, it was found that trust building gives a positive influence (indirect effect) to rapid internationalization through role execution. On the other hand, the direct effect from trust building to rapid internationalization was not significant. Therefore, the process that experts build trust with companies, fulfill the role of “providing information according to the context”, “introducing the network", “mental support”, and “learning support”, leading to the realization of rapid internationalization was quantitatively verified. In the international business field, it became clear that utilization of external experts as external resources is an effective means when SMEs with long-term domestic experience rapidly internationalize. And the process of experts carrying out their roles after establishing trust has been generalized to some extent. This point is the academic contribution of this paper. Also, as a practical contribution, experts can also apply to the practice of supporting the internationalization of SMEs. Furthermore, contribution to the further progress of internationalization of SMEs is also expected.

In recent years, many firms have started to introduce social media or social network sites (SNS) into the organizations. In this article, the author described how enterprise social media and enterprise SNS were being applied and making impacts in manufacturing firms. From the four cases in the article, it clearly demonstrated the differences in using enterprise social media and enterprise SNS in different organizations. In conclusion, I created a hypothesis about the factors that made the differences in these cases.

This paper uses case study of water leak problem-solving which I observed at a Japanese automotive transplant in China. It identifies the characterized behaviors by examining the process of the problem-solving activity and reveals the organizational learning culture influencing on the problem-solving capabilities. Water leak problem in this case supposedly had multiple sources and needed to be resolved with cooperation among individuals from multiple functional departments. The individuals in the problem-solving cooperation team include shop floor supervisors and engineers from different functional departments. They get the problem information from the inspection members directly as soon as the problem occurred and act totally based on the “Go and See” and Logical Verification Principle which is a kind of culture in the Japanese plant. I also found that they showed the interpersonal trust and mutual respect to each other, and no one hides information related to the problem, no one blames members or department for the mistake in the problem-solving process. This kind of climate is defined as psychological safety. Psychological safety in this cooperation team is generated from the learning culture transplanted from the Japanese plant, which has been infiltrated into the individuals at the transplant.

New product development is deeply influenced by environmental changes in markets and technologies. To achieve success, companies must adapt their products to these changes during the process of product development. Previous research has been conducted from the perspective of the flexibility, mainly explored how to flexibly adapt to environmental changes. With the servicization of product, the project of product development has increasingly become a long-term continuous process, which enabled multi-temporal interactions with users during the project. However, the product development management literature is not enough to explain the management of flexibility in these processes. Therefore, the paper intends to investigate strategies and managerial practices in continuous process of product development and provide important insights into the role of flexibility, by examining the cases of two online game development companies in Japan, which are characterized by the continuous development process. Focusing on the process of game development, this paper provides exploratory hypotheses that the improvement of the flexibility may not contribute to the product performance. Moreover, the paper shows the possibility that two different development strategies and styles exist in online game industry.

How will the emergence emphasized in the creation of new business be incorporated into intention and effectuation theory? Also, what is the need for university research venture company, how university research adapts to needs with high uncertainty and forms new business concept? In order to find the answer to these research questions, this paper conducted a case study of university-originated venture company N. As a result of qualitative analysis and tentative review, it is found 3 different types of needs. Also, this research shows that external human resources such as advisors gradually and emergently show adaptive needs at appropriate timing without losing the possibility of future research, and gradually form business creation concept by collaborating with main actor such as researchers. With these processes, they create a product and business and respond to markets with high uncertainty.

This paper discusses the relationships between technology and the organizational structures in supply chains of the processed products. In terms of product architecture, previous studies have discussed them under the assembly type of product rather than processed product. This paper analyzes them in supply chains, taking steel products as examples of processed products and responds to the following two research questions. First, regarding steel products, is the relationship above consistent with the viewpoint of the previous study, "Mirroring Hypothesis"? Secondly, does the organizational formation of the supply chain vary depending on the type of steel products? With regard to the first one, "Mirroring Hypothesis" proposed by Colfer and Baldwin (2010) can be conceptually applied to the processed products. Regarding the second question, comparing the cases of nails and valve springs, the formations of the supply chain are different from each other, depending on the level of customers' quality requirements. Accordingly, when JIS standard becomes a tool for quality assurance, a supply chain formation similar to the one of assembled product is observed. On the other hand, in the case of specially ordered products such as valve springs, JIS standard does not function effectively, under the strong inter-firm cooperation.

As product innovation tends to be more flexible format, such as smartphone and apps, product development organization needs to collaborate with users and stakeholders to create appropriate product concept in an on-going process. This study focuses on co-creation process of flexible product with ambiguous situation by applying Karl Weick's Sensemaking theory. The study investigates newly developed consumer targeted IoT products with high flexibility of customization as a case study. The product development team had less certainty towards product concept at the begging of product development, and they co-created with users and stakeholders throughout product launch process. The study found that there is dynamic update of product concept by enactments such as workshops which involves user's and stakeholder's interaction. Thought this enactment, product development organization expose to social interaction, which bring them cue and plausibility that let the organization keep updating product concepts. The study shows Sensemaking theory is applicable to co-creation process. As product innovation is to embrace IoT and servicing in near future, further development of Sensemenking framework in co-creation process is expected.

This paper investigates the difference in patterns of knowledge transfer between firms in Japan and the U.S. We conduct the two level of case studies of polyallylate fibers: firm-level and individual-level. We found that the Japanese firm made a success in its commercialization while the U.S. firms could not, which is consistent with the Florida & Kenney’s argument. We also found from the individual-level analysis, however, that the U.S. inventors transferred the basic knowledge of fibers to different organizations and then accomplished the commercial success from explorative application, which would not be achieved if they remained within the firm.

Previous studies have found whether the cooperative strategy creates value or not depends on the characteristics of the cooperative strategy employed. Based on the previous findings that creating value can be considered as acquiring or creating the source of competitive advantage, and the characteristics of cooperative strategy as a combination of determinants of cooperative strategy, this research aims to analyze the cooperative strategies of Japanese companies. Specifically, the author proposes a strategy formulation model, where interdependence (with whom), strategy level (what range), and association relationship (how) are the determinants of competitive advantage source and cooperative strategy. The relationship among the four factors are demonstrated by quantitative analysis. As a result, characteristic combinations are discovered in three relationships: (1) source of competitive advantage and interdependence relationship, (2) interaction between source of competitive advantage and interdependence and strategy level relationship, (3) strategy level and association relationship.

As modern companies are separating ownership from control, they have established various corporate governance systems. However, in recent years, executive fraud has become a major issue which raises a primary question. Will corporate governance work effectively with regard to those at the highest level of management? In this study, I empirically verified whether or not corporate governance effectively regulates executives. The purpose of this study is to investigate the extent of corporate governance effectiveness by focusing on the main actors who committed accounting fraud. A multinomial logistic regression of accounting fraud cases committed in quoted Japanese companies between 2006 and 2015 indicates that increases in executive shareholding percentages actually decrease the numbers of accounting fraud committed by non-executives and increases the number of frauds committed by executives. Furthermore, the findings indicate that increases in shareholding percentages of directors, other than executives and outside directors, decreases the numbers of accounting fraud committed by non-executives. Nonetheless, it still has no effect on fraud committed by executives. This indicates that corporate governance does not equally affect all the main actors. It also shows that its scope of influence is limited, which provides a new perspective on corporate governance based on equity approaches.

Research on traditional and long-established enterprises (Shinise) in Japan had appeared in 1990’s and most of the studies in this realm have long been preoccupied with inductive examination of long-term survival factors. In contrast to most of the extant literature, the purpose of this study is to clarify what kind of causal configurations lead to firm’s longevity. Reorganizing the existing propositions for the long-term survival from strategic perspective, I conduct the fuzzy-sets qualitative comparative analysis (fs/QCA) by using 22 cases of listed companies which are divided into two groups; and I use condition variables derived from the propositions. The findings indicate that vertical integration or diversification without changing firms’ main business from their original one, may not be a proper strategy to overcome environmental difficulties. Thus business development as antecedent provision for pivotal strategic change is vital to remarkably prolonged prosperity of a company. Yet, additional analysis shows that lacking such strategic decisions is significantly affected by keeping firm’s head office in its hometown.

It was often witnessed that institutional voids and lack of public infrastructure prevented many emerging entrepreneurs to start their ventures in emerging economies where the transition to the market economy is under way in order to increase the economic growth. There are increasing number of scholars has recently made research about them. (Yamakawa Peng & Deeds 2008) At the same time, we can see growing number of research papers on the entry strategy of the developed multinational enterprises (“DMNE) in the fast growing emerging market. (Canabal & White 2008) But these two schools of researches activities are independently conducted, and joint activities of emerging entrepreneur and DMNE in the creation of new businesses has rarely been focused except in the regions pf China and Eastern Europe so far. (Hoskisson Wright & Filatotchev 2013, Yang Zheng & Zhao 2014) Objective of this research is to shed a light on the interplay to solve a common challenge between motivated emerging entrepreneurial actors under the institutional voids and DMNE who sought for entry in the emerging market. Emerging entrepreneurial actor in Thailand could transform the institutional voids to an opportunity space (Mair & Marti, 2006) and was successful in creating the first frozen packaged food business in 1988 without a traditional foreign direct investment through a hybrid approach utilizing an alliance with DMNE. At the same time, DMNE were able to secure an alternative source of products other than China through alliance to transfer their technological advantage to emerging entrepreneur. This research was conducted through a single case study with semi-structured interview with the entrepreneur and secondary data to analyze the originality of the business model. This report would contribute to the scholars and practitioners with a new view-point for interplay between entrepreneurship and DMNE and also its scalability and flexibility in the other emerging economies.

The purpose of this study is to construct new research agenda for the shared value creation strategy in the context of regional revitalization. In order to clarify the regional company’s shared value strategy in the context, we conduct a single case study of Nippura, Co Ltd and Yashima aquarium in Kagawa prefecture, Japan. This paper reports preliminary findings on the dilemma of regional revitalization. The regional shared value creation strategies could capture opportunities for regional revitalization in the condition of the interdependency with core business. We examined the formation and negotiation process among key actors in the points of organizational institution level, technology-market domain. As results, we delineate the key to maximizing synergies for corporate core business and reducing adjustment cost. The common value creation strategy, aiming at regional revitalization, has a dilemma of regional restraint and in order to overcome it, it is necessary to form a consensus by conducting developmental dialogue (engagement) between the regional administration and the other stakeholders.

Past research has investigated the effects of socio–organizational factors on psychological empowerment, whereas only a limited number of studies have investigated the influence of individual characteristics on psychological empowerment. The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of personal growth initiative on psychological empowerment mediated through three types of job crafting. The results of a longitudinal survey of 320 employees indicated that personal growth initiative had an indirect positive influence on psychological empowerment that was mediated through (1) increasing structural job resources; (2) increasing challenging job demands; and (3) increasing social job resources, which subsequently leads to increasing challenging job demands. These findings contribute to the literature by showing the importance of self-initiated change processes at work.

This study extracts hypothetical components to build an M&A reference for top managers of small to medium-sized enterprises through case analyses of 43 business units (BUs) acquired by five small to medium-sized headquarters (HQ) in mature industries. Special attention is paid toward the unintended outcomes of the M&A application. This comparative approach explains why the same HQ succeeded in utilizing its competences in a BU, whereas it failed in another. It also explains why for one HQ, the same BU generated bounties, whereas for another HQ, it remained barren. First, in order to determine useful resources in a newly acquired BU that can become future core competences for the HQ, the HQ must be furnished with the capabilities of optimizing its resource allocation across organizational boundaries. Second, in order to apply its competence(s) to a newly acquired BU, the dominant logic of the HQ must suit that specific business.

This research is an exploratory single case study that aims to clarify the transition process of entrepreneurial epistemology. In particular, we focused on resilience of entrepreneurs who utilize crises and reorganize the organization. The verbatim record of dialogue between the business founders and the researchers was primarily used for analysis. The results of the analysis revealed the following two points. First, the perception of the relationship with peers was changed before and after the business failure. Before this change in perception, the perception of the success and survival of the venture had changed. Second, the entrepreneurial perception was shifting from "formation of an organization that regards the self as the starting point" to "formation of an organization that connects after having approved others." With this transition, the perception of what resources can be mobilized from other persons changed.

This research presents ways in which companies engaged in industry-academia open innovation manage risks. Recently, importance of industry-academia open innovation is increasing. Universities, in particular, find it difficult to administrate risks; such as, information leakages, breaches of contract, conflicts of interest, etc. One of the reasons for this is multiple organizational structures of universities, which include bureaucracies, collegiums, enterprises, and corporations. In contrast, corporate governance is comparatively easy to administer because the organizational structure is bureaucratic basically. Therefore, companies that introduce industry-academia open innovation should manage their risks, including the ones mentioned above.

What roles can university start-ups play in the industrial life cycle? Since prior research on university start-ups has not addressed how their typical characteristics or the technological path dependence of companies contributes to industrialization, we examined the long-term significance of their roles by observing the development of two such start-ups focused on advanced materials—specifically, organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs). At present, the industrial structure for OLEDs is shifting as new, aggressive players enter the market and manufacture of OLEDs. Our findings revealed that the university start-ups established diverse cooperative relationships with leading companies with the purpose of investigating opportunities to enter the OLED market and with the results of driving both incremental, sometimes radical innovation and the industrial life cycle in general. The university start-ups were thus highly influential at the turning points of the industrial structure for OLEDs. In the future, researchers should scrutinize the specific management-related issues involved in start-ups for advanced materials at earlier stages that present considerable ambiguity for commercialization, including for the governance structure amid turbulent market conditions.

This study aims to analyze the influence of various supportive management systems for working mothers on their behavior; i.e. positive action measures, work-life balance practices. Questionnaire survey was conducted to two types of working women with children. One is women who continue to work at the same organization after having children, and the other is those who gave up their work once, and now working at another place. The result of t-test shows that the supportive systems are effective on woman continuing working. However, it also shows they feel less work rewarding than women who quit and rework after having children. Regression analysis tells that this is related to the decrease of their income. It suggests that even though current supportive systems provide continuous working, they are not effective in keeping their work rewarding high.

Although employment for the elderly and the disabled has been a serious issue in many countries, opportunities for work are still not widely available to them. This research focuses on how these workers make decisions in the face of limited opportunities, and identifies a certain behaviour on their part that is designated as “vicarious agreement”. When an elderly person wishes to continue working and to do so in the same company, or a disabled person wishes to join a new company, they realise at the same time that people around them, such as their colleagues or family, expect them to do what they do not really wish to do, namely, to retire, move to another company or give up the idea of joining this company. In the end they choose to do what is expected of them, rather than what they wish to do, often believing that this is a decision they have taken of their own accord. Such behaviour seems to come not from any innate sense of ambition or selfishness but from a sense of fairness instilled in their minds during the time they have spent in workplaces, at school and at home; and it has become part of their brain function. This phenomenon, commonly observed not only in Japan but also in other countries, suggests: 1) that it may bring about a labour market equilibrium and re-allocation of elderly and disabled workers; and 2) that it will undermine the effectiveness of any law or policy intended to promote the employment of such workers.

Previous findings on the relationship between psychological traits and procrastination are inconsistent. Same applies to the relationship between procrastination and performance. Some researchers have reported negative influences of procrastination on performance, some researchers have reported positive influences, and the others have reported no influences. It is partly due to the fact that prior research has explored only each of the two relationships. Additionally, the relationship between psychological traits and performance remains hidden from view. In order to overcome these limitations, this study investigates the relationships among psychological traits, procrastination, and performance. Steel(2011) presented a scale of procrastination and scales of three psychological traits (expectation, value, and impulsivity). I translated them into Japanese language and made some modest amendments in order to improve the suitability for Japanese students. Respondents were 160 sophomores (82 females, 78 males) of a university in Tokyo. Students answered the questionnaires and described their GPAs, which were used as the indicators of their academic performance. Structural equation modelling (SEM) revealed that impulsivity acted on procrastination and that procrastination acted on performance. Expectation and value did not have significant influences on procrastination. None of the psychological traits had significant direct influences on performance. The model fit statistics indicated CFI=.864, GFI=.806, and RMSEA=.058.

Hannan, Pólos and Carroll (2007) provided a new approach to basic logics of organization theory and sociology. They listed important obstacles to formal theory building in social sciences as (1) partiality of available knowledge (2) stochastic process (3) fuzziness of the boundary of social units. To overcome these defects they introduced fuzzy set theory and modal logics. From this approach we can expect the possibilities of (1) elaboration of study of social category formation (2) contribution to study of innovation (3) contribution to study of conflict (4) evaluation of generalizability of qualitative researches.

The objective of this paper is to gain implications for measuring and visualizing employee engagement instantaneously by using AI called "A; " (Laboratik Inc.). Currently, employee engagement scores in Japan only attains the half of its universal average score while some study concluded that employee engagement impacted on its corporate performance. Therefore, the aim of this study is to contribute for improving current employee engagement score in Japan by seeking for a possible solution to measure and visualize employee engagement more instantaneously without survey questions in the future, specifically, utilizing technology. The research hypothesis is that there are correlations between changes in sentiment scores with "A;", and the change of employee engagement survey scores before and after coaching sessions. We conducted this research toward 2 groups of 6 employees in each within targeted period. The research result supported our hypothesis. In addition, we found that two teams employee engagement factors that correlated to the sentiments' changes were different. In conclusion, the findings implied the possible utilization of A; to a real-time measure of employee engagement score though it is mandatory to accumulate results with larger samples.

This study tests the hypotheses that flight attendants’ emotional labor aspects moderate the decreasing propensity of job satisfaction in the changing industrial environment where psychological contract violation is likely perceived by the employees. The questionnaire survey was administrated to a total of 414 flight attendants working for a European airline. A 5-point Likert-type scale was employed to assess the aspects of psychological contract violation and emotional labor. The results indicate that, first, psychological contract violation perceived by the human service employees decreases job satisfaction. Second, affective delivery (an emotional labor aspect) moderate or recover the decreasing propensity of job satisfaction. High successful human service organization offers high quality of service by the employees. The way to offer the human service make differentiates a company from others, particularly in the recent trend that IT and automated machine substitute jobs that used to be done by employees. Emotional labor and emotional competence of employees make it possible to execute the quality of service with hospitality in the organization. Emotionally competent employees provide an organization with harmony and integrity and can increase the competitiveness of the company because the employees effectively adapt its strategy and work efficiently.

The purpose of this research is to study Work-Life Balance Policies in the childcare support companies in Tohoku District, and also to study the characteristics of WLB (Work-Life Balance) policies in companies acquiring both Platinum Kurumin (next generation support certification logo) Certification and Eruboshi (women’s active participation certification logo) Certification, and to clarify effective efforts leading to acceleration of women’s activity promotion. In conclusion, the factors which made it difficult to acquire both Platinum Kurumin Certification and Eruboshi Certification were revealed. There are two factors in WLB policies: the undeveloped of organizations promoting WLB, and insufficient measures for various methods of work. Similarly, there are two factors in promoting women’s activity policies: the undeveloped of the organization for promoting women's activities and insufficient reform of corporate culture. Therefore, establishing a special acceleration organization system is one of effective efforts to enhance effectiveness of WLB policies and accelerate the promotion of women’s activity.

This paper explains text mining and it’s practical uses according to three types and stages of data science: 1) VISUALIZATION , 2) ANALYSIS, 3) Predictive analytics (MODELING).VISUALIZATION is visualization of the characteristics of the data, and these include: web analysis, co-occurrence tables, and (reference) frequency analysis. ANALYSIS uses statistical techniques for the results of text mining. Predictive analytics (Modeling) uses a variety of techniques from machine learning to make predictions about the future. There exists author discrimination by decision tree and neural network, and Text classification by modeling method.

Existing research often cites continuity as a characteristic of organizational identity. In today’s world of dramatically changing business environments, however, how are organizations to maintain continuity? This paper uses text mining to analyze 14 years of annual reports, from 2002 to 2014, of FUJIFILM Holdings Corporation to understand changes in characteristic terms. Results showed that even as the market for FUJIFILM’s primary business, photographic film, shrunk dramatically, the term “film”continued to be used in various contexts, and the meaning of the term updated in response to changes in the company’s business structure. The company’s management used this process to deliberately keep continuity in an effort to maintain organizational identity.

This study clarifies the link between organizational identity and strategy by constructing an organizational self theory based on G. H. Mead’s social self theory. Mead demonstrated that an individual self is formed socially and composed of two aspects—the social “me” and the personal “I”—formed through modes of communication that utilize significant symbols among a society’s members. This study assumes that a firm’s organizational self is formed through communication with others in a market in the way that an individual social self is formed in accordance with human society. The organizational self that is constructed in this study is a metaphor of the individual social self and extends from Mead’s social self theory. In this case, human society corresponds to the market; others to buyers, competitors, or sellers in the market; and individuals to organizations. Furthermore, the individual “me” corresponds here to an organizational identity as an organizational “us,” and the individual “I”corresponds within organizational culture as organizational “we.” This study shows the close link between organizational identity and strategy by adopting the business model as the significant symbol of communication between organization and market.

Although there is an increasing concern about the issue of identity in the organization and management, how individuals socially construct their identities through the influences of internal and external contexts has been neglected. Drawing on previous research proposing that there are multiple levels of self-identities, this study focuses on relational and collective identities, and examines how different identities are constructed in the organization. Using sample of 278 Japanese employees working in Chugoku region, results indicate that effective organizational training could contribute to both relational and collective identity construction through prosocial and intrinsic motivations. Furthermore, environmental dynamism moderates the influences of training on relational and collective identities construction through prosocial motivation. These findings suggest that work motivation is an important mediator in understanding how individuals construct and construe and their self-identity in the organization. Further practical and theoretical implications are discussed in terms of how to apply the results to the business management and how to push forward the identity management theory in the future.

Catching the diffusion of User Generated Contents is difficult. It is because the quality of UGC varies and there is little mass marketing in Consumer Generated Media. These days many researchers model the diffusion with the network effect, where some researchers claim importance of dividing diffusion into trial and repeat. We modeled diffusions of VOCALOID movies in niconico by trial-repeat model, and we find that sometimes network have different effects on trial and repeat.

In recent years, information systems have been widely used by many companies, but not only IT that constitutes the information system is rapidly evolving, but also commoditization rapidly progresses. Therefore, it is expected that the more contributes the information system on the competitiveness, the more difficult to maintain competitiveness against imitation by other companies. Even in such a business environment, a few leader companies maintain high competitiveness within the industry by pursuing real-time integration of business activities through the path dependent improvement of the information system and utilizing rapidly evolving IT.

Is Toyota, a global leader in hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs), falling behind its competitors with battery electric vehicles (BEVs)? This study addresses this question through a real options reasoning (ROR) approach. ROR is heuristics of decision-makers to recognize and exploit options in investments in real assets under uncertainty. Using the ROR as a lens, I distinguish three option values in Toyota’s hybrid system. First, at a vehicle level, it has an option to switch driving modes between an internal combustion engine and electric motors depending on driving conditions. Second, it has an option to expand portfolios of HEV models by equipping the Toyota Hybrid System II (THS-II) with existing models. Third, the carmaker has compound options to develop plug-in HEVs, BEVs, or fuel cell vehicles (FCVs) by adding or withdrawing relevant components to/from THS-II. I also argue potential risks that could lower the option values of Toyota’s hybrid system. The design rules of Toyota New Global Architecture may restrain conversion from HEVs to BEVs or FCVs. Cognitive as well as behavioral aspects of uncertainties about the alternative powertrains may lead to option traps, that is, under-utilization or over-commitment of particular options, which in turn lower the value of the options.

The existing multi-faceted notion of social capital is insufficient to analyze the behavior of a type of community whose boundary and exclusionary membership are clearly delineated. Conventional approaches to social networks, moreover, are fraught with the inability to deal with hierarchies, weak nodes or lack of precise wiring diagrams. Drawing on the prospering examples of Toyota’s supply chain and China’s Wenzhou entrepreneurial networks, this paper proposes “community capital” as an alternative limited concept of middle range. Well-functioning communities are apt to foster community capital as an exclusionary property of their own. The process proceeds in a cyclical manner. “Commensurate trust” emerges as a consequence of shared success experiences “imprinted” on the minds of community members, which in turn induces them to collaborate through “quasi-ties” with or without prior acquaintance. Once thus established, successful communities are likely to be embedded in distinctive community capital. As this process cycles it entails on the part of the community members acceptance, co-engagement, solidarity, and reinforcement learning.

This paper is an exploratory research aiming to grasp and analyze how small-and medium-sized startups (in the medical equipment manufacturing industry) operate, on the basis of their management philosophies, in order to adapt to harsh business environments and continue as going concerns, and to gain wisdom therefrom. In particular, the study examines a single case study of a company implementing a creative knowledge-management method aimed at making the company a part of the knowledge industry even as its operations are based on an industry–academia–government collaboration scheme. The study examines how the process can be understood as regards creating a sense of organizational unity and promoting consistent behavior among members as a manager pursues a strategy to boost workplace morale in keeping with the company’s management philosophy. This research revealed a true picture of institutional (representative) leadership that a manager, as the executor of innovation, displays at all levels—from policy formulation to the demonstration of creative ingenuity on the work floor.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how an actor builds an industry ecosystem by strategically developing an open digital platform. In the cloud service industry, the open digital platform is enabled by technology standards which are shared by the industry members. In order to establish the open digital platform with the standardization, actors in the industry need to coordinate multi-stakeholders who have conflicting interests and build a consensus about how services and technologies work on the platform. In this study, we investigate the case of HTML5 standardization and explore how Google develops the cloud service ecosystem building on the HTML5 as an open digital platform. Google harnessed multi-sided market structures that involve developers of HTML5 standards, cloud service developers, and end-users by adopting technologies developed by others, supporting collaborative software development in the ecosystem, and promoting benefits of the open digital platform (HTML5) to developers and end-users.

Open innovation and open R&PD (research and product development) have been popular in recent literatures and practical business worlds, especially high-tech industry. Yet, it is still to be discussed in the healthcare industry that to what extent firms should open and with whom they should collaborate. Hence, the paper addresses the issue of an innovative healthcare-related product development to explore the characteristics of “openness” of open innovation and the role of “users.” In general, a firm hesitates to disclose the core technology due to appropriability, if it is in fact not so hard for competitors to imitate. On the other hand, the firm’s final product is elaborated with know-how input from externals, they need to collaborate with outsiders. In this case, that is doctors. We have interviewed to 3 peoples of Intuitive Surgical Inc. which designs, manufactures and sells the robotic assisted surgery “Da Vinci.” The company has been showing the top sales in the surgical robotics industry. We also survey the secondary materials. After analyzing the result form those data, we conclude that open innovation occurs owing to the closed collaboration with users and the depth of feedback after usage.

In industries characterized by network externalities, management scholars have clearly emphasized the crucial importance of establishing dominant designs. This research focuses on the process of establishing dominant designs, especially on how firms interact with each other and how firm’s recognition of its product, technology, and market affects the established dominant design and the diffusion of the innovation.

This paper aims to suggest a new perspective so called ‘home country adaptation’ in addition to existing one in order to design or analyze emerging market strategies. A phrase of ‘home country adaptation’ is created by the author. It means that an adopted strategy in a foreign country matches with economic system of home country. The home country means a country where a targeted enterprise was born. Insistence that emerging market strategies need to be considered home country adaptation sounds paradoxical rather than insistence of the importance of local adaptation. However, according to the result of my case study, I found that a perspective of home country adaptation is useful. I explain this case study in a last half of my presentation. On the other hand, in a first half of my presentation, I review previous studies from different angles of strategies and discuss the difference between existing perspective and home country adaptation.

" A Case Study on Japanese Entrepreneurs in ASEAN Five Countries " investigates 13 Japanese entrepreneurs in ASEAN 5 countries, and generalize the new business trends. As an analysis tool, the research focus on verification using 3 innovation concepts such as "The 7 sources of innovative opportunity", "Schumpeter's 5 types of innovations" and "The 3 Startup innovations (time machine, leap frog, pivot)". The three declines of youth 'entrepreneurial spirit' 'overseas desire' 'creativity' 'and the loss of corporate growth power in Japan are one cause of ‘the lost 20 years’ Long-term stagnation of the economy in Japan. All of these 3 problems are overcome and solved by overseas Japanese entrepreneurs and this research will be the prescription of the above-mentioned Japanese problems.

There have been boundaries between sellers and buyers, but SNS blurs its boundaries. I analyzed the Instagram posts and revealed how one unknown housewife who is a buyer, launched the apparel brand and has become a seller. She was unknown when she started Instagram. In two years, she has become a popular Instagramer. She started by opening an online shop, where she did not sell original clothes but purchased clothes. Her followers were willing to become her customers, because they love her fashion sense. Finally, she succeeded in launching an original brand for that customer. The factor of success is considered to be very good targeting and positioning strategies. Much of her followers are mothers who are very interested in fashion as well as her (segmentation and targeting). The brand got a position that she can be "cute mom" when she wears the brand's clothes (positioning). And she continued communicating with customers using SNS (promotion). Buyers can now become sellers by using SNS.

In this research, we aimed to give new findings to marketing strategies for flowers. Especially purchase of flower plants is decided not with functional value but with sensibility value. Therefore, we quantitatively and structurally analyzed the sensitivity of subjects' preferences using Kansei Engineering method. Furthermore, based on cognitive neuroscience method, fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) was used to evaluate the impression on the way of presenting flowers and the effect on brain activity. Based on the results, this paper explores the possibility of applying the neuromarketing which integrates the fields of marketing, psychology, and neuroscience to the flower business in the future.