In this paper, dynamic capabilities are defined as the abilities to steer through stormy waters. This simplified and metaphorical definition can remove some of the ambiguity in the dynamic capability construct. Dynamic capabilities are better named dynamic 'steering' capabilities. Business executives are sea captains and steer boats (small businesses) or ships (big businesses). In high-velocity environments like stormy seas, executives are required to exercise special steering skills in order to avoid sinking or failure. These skills are the dynamic (steering) capabilities and different from those needed in ordinary times. Paradoxically, speculation using the steering metaphor suggests that dynamic capabilities are characterized by stillness and caution rather than by motion and boldness. Several other implications from such a metaphorical approach are also discussed.

The more globalized corporate organizations are, the more important it is for management practitioners and researchers to understand these multinational enterprises, or MNEs in terms of organizational culture as well as other aspects of organization and management. The MNE represents a cross-cultural setting where its organizational culture stemming from its home country national culture encounters its host country national culture. Its headquarters organization attempts to transfer organizational culture to its overseas subsidiaries and to standardize organizational culture across these subsidiaries in the effort to achieve cultural control and competitiveness abroad as well as at home. Meanwhile, MNEs need to resemble organizational culture to the regional culture so that they can be relevant and avoid the liability of foreignness in the different institutional context. In this research, I will examine the organizational culture of MNEs in terms of its structure (what is organizational culture?) and process (How is it changed?). Then, I will present issues to be explored in regard to the organizational culture of MNEs.

The aim of this study is to identify the current understandings and research gaps on the relations between organizational routine and organizational learning. These two notions are closely related to each other. However, there was no attempt to synthesize the empirical findings about the relations. Therefore, we conducted a scoping review to identify the knowledge gaps as well as to show the effectiveness and limitation of scoping review to organization studies. A total of 3,651 articles were identified from searching Web of Science, and 52 empirical research papers were included in qualitative synthesis. The data were extracted with the assistance of NVivo 11. The results of the analysis show that the aspect of socially embedded organizational learning has been highlighted upon the relations between organizational routine and organizational learning. The literature says learning organizations have their own learning routines which allow to absorb new knowledge and change their actions. We call the process of routinization of learning routines as emerging ‘Ryugi’, which means a way of doing and a style. Meanwhile, we realized as a research gap that there is no research on the social interaction intertwining materials and artifacts in the emerging process of Ryugi.

We investigate that the impact of employees’ bottom-line mentality (BLM) on their behavior. Bottom-line mentality is defined as one-dimensional frame of mind that revolves around bottom-line outcomes. Although previous research on BLM has assumed that BLM leads to employees’ several behaviors, the relationship has not been clarified. In this regard, we examine that how employees’ BLM relates to employees’behavior. Drowning on conceptual arguments of BLM and literature of proactive behavior, we hypothesize that employees’ BLM is positively related with pro-self proactive behavior (directed at facilitating the achievement of one’s personal goals) and negatively related with prosocial proactive behavior (directed at the workgroup and colleagues). We conduct hierarchical multiple regression analysis with data from online survey. Our results generally support our hypothesis. Theoretical and practical implication are discussed.

The focus is on a knife industry, one of the traditional local industries in Seki, Gifu Prefecture. I consider the case of Nikken Cutlery Co., Ltd., one of the small and medium enterprises, whose business successor made innovation using crowdfunding. After working for several years as an engineer at a big enterprise, the business successor joined the company for business succession. After exchanging constructive ideas with younger employees there, the successor developed a new product. Then, utilizing crowdfunding, the person sold the new product in new markets. This action is a thinking process to take advantage of "effectuation", starting actions from means already possessed, acting to positively aim at constructing new partnerships that were not originally anticipated and creating the environment, which I found it to be an inspiring approach. In addition, utilization of crowdfunding may contribute to reform of corporate culture and promotion of new business. Utilization of crowdfunding in traditional industries in the local area can be one of the useful ways in which business successors make innovation and reform an organization.

Many traditional industries have matured and declined. However, some companies have changed their business system and have survived for a long time. This paper investigates the business system and innovation of traditional industry. We specifically focus on the Knife industry. This industry has grown up based on traditional production system, which has made by wholesalers. In these days, they face big challenges for survival. However, some companies which have entrepreneurship for unique strategy and have made new cooperative organization or new business system have grown up and survived for a long time. We conducted a case study of two areas of knife industry, which have unique strategy for competitive advantage. It is need to have entrepreneurship to make innovation and new business system for a long survival.

A definition of Service learning in university education has been argued for a long time, but the point of view caught from the angle of the civic engagement has been strengthened in recent years. Community based learning (CBL) is defined by 4 points ; (1) strong educational engagement and between the community and university, (2) tightly sharing an educational goal and community activities goal, (3)innovative and advanced learning methods offers community innovations, and (4)long term commitments before and after the educational project. The Shape the Dream is the educational nonprofit organization which students of an MBA course in business school has started, which program shows for students athletes how to draw their carrier and how to advance a life of the sports field. The Shape the Dream program satisfies the definition of CBL. And it suggests that a university needs the higher dimensional education which produces such innovative leaders for the community.

Penrose (1959) says that resources are not always visible and usable in situ. Inspired by her work, Fukushima and Kweon (2009), proposed the resource creation model with 2x2matrix (the newness of the subjective resource recognition and the combination of resources). However, it has not been studied enough how to discover and combine potential resources to create new value in a concrete manner yet. “Otomachi Project” of the Yamaha Music Japan Co., Ltd., an affiliate company of a worldwide music instruments maker Yamaha Co., would be an instructive case for developing the model. Otomachi is the series of consulting services focusing on the grassroots music festivals held in various Japanese cities. Otomachi is unique in the visualization of potential resources through shifting perspective on music and regarding it as a connector for people, in the social value creation through community buildings uniting the disconnected people into communities using music as “catalysts”, and in the economic value creation through the new speaker development project, in which the festival organizers were involved and unused resources in Yamaha were exploited and used.

This paper is a study of organizational capability theory which focuses organizational capabilities as a key concept. Especially this paper emphases practical aspects of organizational capability and clarifies how organizational capability concept is used and capabilities are developed. The purpose of this paper is to a) define what organizational capability is based on previous study and set hypotheses for the empirical study, and b) conduct survey and validate the hypotheses to reveal the actual reality of organizational capabilities of the enterprises. Through analysis of how enterprises identify, embrace and strengthen their capabilities, this allows to reveal not only the actual shape of organizational capabilities but also development such capabilities.

This study aims to uncover how care workers shape their Kaigo-kan (caring perspective) under harsh working conditions. We conducted a qualitative case study using the grounded theory approach based on 31 personal interviews of care workers, caregivers and their families, medical care professionals, the service managers of learning therapy, and some nursing home executives. Our preliminary findings, based on field reports of different case studies, showed that the usage of learning therapy has enabled care workers to shape their Kaigo-kan during their career development process as a common language of theory in use, and to better engage with caregivers and other professionals; while the role of care workers is unstable and quite diverse because of the role ambiguity caused by the harsh working environment. A possible explanation of this situation is that the major health care institutional logic might be dysfunctional and that there is a necessity of a human-centered and proper working rhythm at nursing homes where many care workers are forced to try to understand competing institutional logics. In that sense, care is not simply evaluated as a “service product” in a cost-benefit analysis; it is analyzed in terms of communal and human proximity. Future research should thoroughly examine the effect of Kaigo-kan shaped by learning therapy on organizational quality of care.

Traditionally, Japanese companies have selected senior executives from managers who had joined the firm as freshmen and worked there ever since. Today, however, Japanese companies face difficulties brought on by the population decline and the fourth industrial revolution, and some have started filling their senior ranks with so-called “professional managers” whose careers entailed progressively responsible positions with a series of companies. Increasing numbers of foreign-affiliated companies and publically traded start-ups have made professional managers more commonplace. As in the United States, a career as a professional manager seems to be emerging in Japan. This study aims to examine the career development of professional managers focusing on chief financial officers (CFOs) and especially their behavior with relation to their job changes. Data were gathered through semi-structured interviews with eight participants who had served as CFOs and were analyzed using the Modified Grounded Theory Approach. Findings revealed that CFOs’ job changes are supported by three common factors: (1) development of a long-term strategy to survive the uncertainties of a career not assured by a single company; (2) establishment of the job change process as a routine pattern; and (3) utilization of the characteristics of accounting as a common base among the career community.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between responsibility of career and job-autonomy. Responsibility of career is defined as an attitude to control events occurring in career by oneself, simultaneously accepting uncontrollable influence on own career. It was found that the relationship between responsibility of career and job-autonomy is not direct but indirect, and that job-autonomy has an important roll in growth of agency of career formation.

This study constructs an endogenous growth model using the framework of New Keynesian dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models and evaluate how disruptive and sustaining innovation interact with macroeconomic variables. We incorporate a Schumpeterian approach that generates seemingly sticky prices and wages and estimate the model parameters using Japanese economic data. Given the estimates, we evaluate the relationship between disruptive and sustaining innovation and macroeconomic variables. In particular, we are interested in evaluating the effects of both disruptive and sustaining innovation on several macroeconomic variables. The results demonstrate that while sustaining innovation has positive effects on most of the macroeconomic variables and disruptive innovation, disruptive innovation has negative effects on almost all macroeconomic variables and sustaining innovation. This contrasting effects of disruptive and sustaining innovation should be taken into account in formulating innovation strategy at the firm level as well as macroeconomic policies focusing on facilitating innovation in an economy as a whole.

Although prior research has discussed the relationship between subsidiary performance and headquarters-subsidiary relationships in MNCs, few studies have focused on the relationship between subsidiary performance and subsidiary-subsidiary relationships, especially internal competition among subsidiaries in MNCs. Therefore, this article investigates the relationship between subsidiary performance and levels of internal competition among subsidiaries and the conditions under which levels of internal competition have a positive association with subsidiary performance. This study conducted logistic regression analysis based on a questionnaire survey of 269 Japanese manufacturing subsidiaries in Southeast Asia. As a result, we show that levels of internal competition among subsidiaries are positively associated with subsidiary performance only when the subsidiaries are acquired subsidiaries.

Managing strategic change is one of the key concern in the field of strategic management research. Researchers tend to assume that strategic change is necessary and basically beneficial for firms. However, some studies claimed that strategic change has negative aspects. Therefore, this study investigates strategic consistency. In contrast to strategic change, effects of strategic consistency are not explored enough. In the present study, I focused on research and development strategy in Japanese chemical companies. Based on Belderbos, Faems, Laten and Van Looy (2010), I classified their research and development activities using explorative versus exploitative dimension and solitary and collaborative dimension. The strategic consistency was measured by the approach first suggested by Lamberg, Tikkanen, Nokelainen and Suur-Inkeroinen (2009). In comparison with emphasizing the importance of strategic consistency, planning strategic change tend to be used to gain legitimacy from organization members and external institutions. Reconsidering the significance of strategic consistency will contribute to understanding of the mechanism of firm survival in dynamic environment.

We sometimes use the concept of leadership in explaining influences of others. Leadership is influence to promote goal attainment for individuals or groups and a dynamics between a leader and follower. This study was conducted to ascertain what influence a leadership style cognized by a member of an organization has on a member’s psychological characteristics. We review situational leadership theory in leadership styles and set the concepts of motivation and job satisfaction for psychological variables. We applied a normality test, and a nonparametric multiple comparison test (Steel–Dwass method) to analyze differences based on cognition of leadership styles (N=396). Results confirmed the following: (1) A statistically significant level (1%) of difference was found in work content satisfaction (tied rank corrected H value=12.8735>11.3449=χ2 (0.99); tied rank corrected P value=0.0049<0.01). (2) A statistically significant level (1%) of difference was found in management satisfaction (tied rank corrected H value=27.0649>11.3449=χ2 (0.99); tied rank tied rank corrected P value=0.0000<0.01). The analyses revealed that organization members had awareness, with emphasis on “the level of supportive behavior in interpersonal relationships” for leader behavior. Furthermore, a qualitative analysis based on an additional survey was conducted, which demonstrated that “cognition of leadership styles has a certain level of influence.”

Organizational change is important not only for organizational behavior study but for practical demands in modern society. This paper clarified the level of organizational activation on views of individual intention and awareness, in addition to organizational structures and institutions, using oractika questionnaire on an institution. The tendency of change was evaluated with indexes of activation and satisfaction, in explanation with game theory.

Japanese and Western approaches of the "modularization strategy" of automobiles industry are analyzed from the viewpoint of organizational knowledge creation, taking the case of Volkswagen (VW) and Nissan. VW's "modularization strategy: MQB" is oriented explicit knowledge of design rules, and it can be said that it is a typical "western organizational knowledge creation" which is formal intention oriented. Management is "top-down" management. In the contraly, Nissan's "modularization strategy: CMF" is a strategy that combines both "modularization" and "integration", emphasizing tacit knowledge, and combining it with the formalization of design rule. It is a typical "Japanese organizational knowledge creation" that is tacit knowledge-oriented. As for management, it is a hybrid type management that combines the features of "top-down type" and "bottom-up type". The difference in this modularization strategy affects EV development apoaches.

In Edo Japan, “hanko," schools in prefectures called “han," had an external knowledge network of academic disciplines in a hanko. This study focuses on expence types of “yugaku," a system of studying outside a han. There are two types of expence for yugaku such as public and private. This research collects 10 sets of hanko and han panel data (from 1736 to 1835). In the analysis, this research employs network analysis, random-effects model analysis and geographically weighted regression. The result demonstrates that the geographical factors of a han influence the relationship between the expence type of yugaku and the efficient knowledge acquisition positioning in a network. Furthermore, the different types of the expense for yugaku have the different effects on the network position in turbulence environment.

Nonprofit organizations were included in the target of organizational theory, but their definition was provided by nonprofit research, not organizational theory. This study tried to examine the most representative definition of nonprofit organizations which was used by the Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project and present one of integrated construe of the definitions of nonprofit organizations in previous studies. Therefore, it was found that the nondistribution constraint is the only unique definition of nonprofit different from for-profit. Thus it is important that the future research will require the examination and investigation of how the nature of the nondistribution constraint affect the defining characteristic of organizational structure and motivation.

In this paper, through the case study of Calbee Co., Ltd., we clarified the conditions of companies that can respond to the paradigm shift of organization management. Calbee has produced hit products such as Kappa-ebisen and potato chips, and now boasts the largest share in the snack industry, but the stagnation period continued for more than ten years since the 1990s. Although the snack market had already been thought to have matured, sales have increased dramatically after Mr. Akira Matsumoto became chairman in 2009, and now Calbee has experienced the second growth period doing. Calbee was able to grow into a productive company by 1) introducing thorough performance outcome, 2) realizing empowerment. In recent years, attention to Calbee is high even in working way reform required nationwide. However, the reform by Matsumoto was a practice that produced results only after the potential developed up until that time. In companies that can respond to the paradigm shift of organization management, creation, communication and sharing of working meaning are thorough. In accordance with the progress of information technology, changes in the external environment have intensified, and it has been considered that "organic organization" is more suitable than "mechanical organization". Bryjolfsson (2004), who discussed the relationship between machinery and human beings, concretely showed "digital organization" as an organic organization. Based on the seven principles of the digital organization, Calbee's management innovation is analyzed, and the importance of empowering employees is clarified, in particular.

Japanese corporate law requires that boards have three or more directors, and thus makes group decision making obligatory within firms. But according to some observers, boards of directors are often a mere formality in Japan, especially for non-public and small-to-medium-sized firms. The literature of behavioral science shows that group decision making does not necessarily produce better outcomes than individual decisions. The three-or-more requirement was formed with path dependency dating back to the late 19^th century, when Japan transplanted legal systems from overseas, but it was by no means the standard. Giving managers flexibility in organizational design is desirable in that it can facilitate the establishment of startups, new subsidiaries and joint ventures both by existing firms and entrepreneurs, and can also address potential labor shortages in an aging Japan.

This study explores how multimodality and team members' diversity influence on creative performance through observation of design-thinking and digital storytelling workshop practices. Multimodality including narrative enables team members to understand new meaning, and helps to spur empathy among team members, users and other stakeholders. Positive functions of diversity, on the other hand, are information acquisition, multi-functional integration and perspective-taking. Polyphyletic cognitive empathy that members can take the perspectives of various stakeholders would mediate the effectiveness of multimodality and perspective-taking function of team members' diversity on creative performance. It is necessary to incubate the climate and the routines of polyphyletic empathy in organizations to improve creativity.

The objective of this research is to clarify empirically the influence of the network structure between companies on research and development (R&D) in Internet of Things (IoT) business. In IoT business, R&D beyond the border of a company becomes important. Furthermore, advantageous positioning in the network is thought to enhance the result of R&D, and ultimately contribute to profit. In this research, the relationship between the network structure and the result of R&D was analyzed with a method of social network analysis. Joint-application patents related to IoT business were extracted from the intellectual-property database. As a result, the difference in the network structure of a company was related to the result of R&D and profitability in IoT business.

In the evolution process of a long-term market, "Reactivation phenomenon" means re-growth of the demand by some kind of action from stagnation or the state that declined. We try to perform a dense description about the mechanism of the reactivation through publication data about trends of the market around the aero-engine and the market concerned. And we also try to act for the construction of the theoretical hypothesis not to be kept only in the viewpoint to defeat other brands by offering a product with the competitiveness to the customer, and to acquire the demand for our product by arguing from a point of view called competition and the cooperation by the convention company group. In other words, we consider new development of the generic marketing to collaborate while convention company group works together in competition in order to bring up demand for whole product category about definition of the market. The demand for aero-engine market was delayed, and this study became clear that Japan and European and American convention company group developed new jet engine which joint. We tried to clarify a factor to motivate joint development which need the investment of large-scale fund and facilities while demand fell.

In recent years, it is said that the quality of service in Japan is high. However, there are not many studies referred to service employees and their careers. And it remains not to be elucidated how to foster service professionals and how his careers are formed in Bar which provide high added value. To determine how to acquire the three skills required of a bartender and how to influence from master and regular customer in his career, I conduct an interview survey on a man working for 4 years at the bar in Shinjuku. As the result, this paper pointed out that at the beginning of the career, the master emphasizes understanding of the norm rather than mastering basic skills, and regular customers contribute to promoting understanding of norms. Furthermore, it shows that there is a mechanism for training young personnel among peers.

The working age population is decreasing rapidly in Japan. Therefore Japanese companies have to develop themselves into companies which harmonize with not only male workers but also diverse workers such as female and older workers. In other words, the importance of diversity management further increases. There are a few researches which analyze Japanese companies in diversity management field. In fact, Taniguchi (2005) and Henmi (2018) address Japanese diversity management. Both suggest that diversity causes organizational transformations in Japanese companies. Therefore this paper specifies theoretical differences between Taniguchi (2005) and Henmi (2018) and issues to develop Japanese diversity management.

This paper elucidates a relationship between the career development and the spirituality. L. S. Hansen(1996) discusses an importance of spirituality in her model of Integrative Life Planning. But she does not thoroughly analyze how the spirituality influences people’s career development. Therefore, in order to elucidate how the spirituality has an influence on career development of Taiwanese potter, I interviewed Taiwanese potters. As a result, I found that skilled potters improved a technique and a skill to express a soul of the self in the making of ceramics, and they wanted to raise spirituality to above all while developing their career as the potter.

The purpose of this research is to examine the impact of clients on knowledge and organizational performance. The research question is how breadth and depth of client relationships affect breadth and depth of organizational knowledge and organizational performance. We collected data of the top 100 patent-law firms in Japan for 5 years to construct panel data and employed fixed effect panel regression. The results of empirical analysis show the following three points. First, breadth and depth of client relationships increases breadth of organizational knowledge. Second, depth of client relationships enhances depth of organizational knowledge, meanwhile breadth of client relationships does not. Third, breadth and depth organizational knowledge increase organizational performance, but client relationships have no effects. In sum, client relationships do not directly contribute to organizational performance but they affect organizational performance through accumulated organizational knowledge.

In recent years, it is often said that while the closed innovation paradigm with technologies kept within individual companies is no longer sustainable, the open innovation paradigm is important for companies to improve R&D efficiency and drive corporate innovation. However, the resource-based view, or more specifically dynamic capabilities argue that internal resources and capabilities are important for companies to sense and seize external knowledge and opportunities. Due to the significant role it plays in sensing and seizing knowledge and opportunities, R&D is considered to have an impact on corporate performance. Meanwhile, previous studies have not necessarily found a clear relationship between R&D investment and profitability. Possible reasons are the short timespans for analyses in the previous studies and the accounting practice that treats R&D expenditures as expenses, resulting in a negative impact on profitability. Given this context, this paper aims to analyze how R&D investment impacts profitability from a long-term perspective by industry. Fluctuation cycle of R&D intensity, operating margin ratio, and sales has been also analyzed to deepen understanding on unbalanced corporate growth expected from the resource-based view. This paper reveals that increasing R&D intensity leads to higher profitability with time-lag from a long-term perspective in the industries where R&D plays a significant role, and the timespan of fluctuation cycles for corporate performance indicators is approximately four to five years.

In the organizational science, it is necessary to approach the complexity of the object of organization by an interdisciplinary approach such as business administration and sociology. However, has recent "organizational science" been able to play its function appropriately? In this paper, we focus on "organizational culture" as a point where business administration and sociology "reunite" and return to the fundamental question, "what is organization", again. Organizational culture studies are is filled with diversity similarly to organizational studies. It has been shared between researchers of organizations that diversity of organizational research was clarified by the research of G. Burrell & G. Morgan in 1979. However, they crossed the two dimensions of subjective-objective, regulation-radical change, suggesting that subjective and radical change organization studies were still in a germinating stage. Despite the potentiality in a name of "anti-organization theory", they pointed out that the subjective and radical change-oriented research indicated that it was not found at all in organizational research based on sociology back then. In this paper, possible organizational culture studies are clarified while reconfirming significance of their schema. For that purpose, we refer to the concept of cultural dopes advocated by Critical management studies(CMS).

This study examines the following two hypotheses: 1) a large part of eWOM (electronic word-of-mouth) is posted by a limited portion of people, 2) there is a greater tendency for people who have just started using a service to write an online review, and short-term impressions are mostly included in online reviews. As a result of the empirical analysis, approximately 80% of eWOM were written by approximately 4% of internet users. In addition, users had a greater tendency to write online reviews immediately after a download in comparison to other active users, and the rate of this was approximately 5.59 times in Japan and approximately 8.76 times in the United States. Furthermore, from an estimate of a breakdown of online reviews on the basis of this result, it was understood that the percentage of online reviews written immediately following a download was approximately 28% in Japan and approximately 59% in the United States, so that short-term impressions were mostly included in the online reviews. Moreover, we found that this tendency was strong in one-star reviews and low performance apps. Considering the above, both hypothesis 1 and hypothesis 2 were supported.