The knowledge base of companies is increasingly seen as underlying a firm's performance, and the role of knowledge workers within this framework is seen as strongly associated with a firm's competitive performance. This perspective views the effective management of knowledge workers as crucial in sustaining an organisation's competitive advantage. The paper views the financial industry as a knowledge intensive sector which nurtures the idea that financial firms rely on specialists' knowledge or expertise relating to a specific technical and functional domain. It is an exploratory study that aims to investigate the motivational needs of, and organisational environments best suited to, company analysts within the Japanese financial system. It identifies three key motivators as having an impact on the company analysts: monetary incentives, human resource development, and job autonomy. The paper concludes that the traditional Japanese management system is incompatible with the expectations of company analysts in the Japanese financial industry.
This paper investigates the process of cross-national diffusion of work systems to affiliate firms of three Japanese MNCs in the UK. It examines the degree to which structural, cultural and control-related work systems of the source company are adopted by the recipient. The case studies highlight the interplay between institutional forces and organizational action through a process of work systems translation. The study is based on a systematic comparative analysis of the ways in which Japanese work systems are implemented and sustained in the given firms. It concludes that firms attempt to translate alternative work systems rather than submit to environmental pressures towards isomorphism. The process of diffusing work systems is not driven by pre-existing legacies alone. There is room for social action in that actors, through their interaction, contribute actively to shaping the work organization.
The vital importance of change management in today's competitive climate has been widely investigated. While the need for successful change management is intensively proclaimed by 'expert' consultants, the response for some time has been regarded as
This exploratory study discusses the way in which knowledge is shared in one of Japan's commercial banks. In particular, it highlights the social factors which act as catalysts in the knowledge sharing process, and considers the impact of HRM practices and the low level of interaction with outside institutions. It acknowledges the embeddedness of knowledge in social relations by adapting the community model of knowledge sharing.Contrary to the belief that traditional bureaucratic people management practices have a limited ability to support knowledge management, this study reveals an HRM system that is able to strike a balance between those practices and a 'paternalistic adhocracy' approach to sharing knowledge through collaborative task sharing, trust building and personal social networking.
This study adopts a multilevel comparative approach to investigating the degree to which Japanese work systems are implemented and internalized in the UK business system. The focus is on the limits to accepting continuous improvement schemes of Japanese multinational corporations. The paper addresses national and local institutional factors and firm-level organizational factors affecting implementation and internalization. It is based on in-depth case studies systematically comparing the adoption of Japanese work systems in two UK subsidiaries and in an AngloJapanese technical collaboration. The study concludes that firms face a double barrier to the internalization of work systems in the form of, first, institutional embeddedness at national and local level, and second, embeddedness of tacit work systems at firm level. Firms attempt locally to interpret work systems transferred from the source company.
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