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 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.