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- Takahashi, Masayasu, et al.
(författare)
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"Dojo" as a space of learning and inheriting tacit knowledge
- 2013
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Up until now there has been plenty of debate about tacit knowledge. The SECI Model of Nonaka & Takeuchi (1995) is well known, but there is reason to believe that the argument that the conversion of tacit knowledge to explicit knowledge is knowledge creation is overly optimistic. This is because tacit knowledge is indeed tacit for the very reason that it is unable to become explicit knowledge, which exposes a logical contradiction in the first instance. Tacit knowledge needs to be acquired or inherited as tacit knowledge, and a hint for how to accomplish this may be said to lay with the attention paid towards learning through participation in social practice and the social world that supports this (Takahashi & Lennerfors, 2012). Here, the proficiency of knowledgeable skills found within practices for learning tacit knowledge is achieved in communities of practice, which embody a creative process that generates the future, and which become institutionalized socially and culturally in places of activity (Lave & Wenger, 1991). The learning of skills is the positioning of learning within the process of participating in social communities in this manner.Furthermore, in Japan this manner of learning has since olden times been called “Shugyō”, which may mean “Ascetic” or “Spiritual Practice”, “Apprenticeship”, or “Training”. As can be discerned in expressions such as Judo, Kendo and the Way of Tea, traditionally the place of learning was the “Dojo”, and the learning of proficient skills, that is to say the process of learning tacit knowledge, was referred to as the “Way”. This type of traditional learning of tacit knowledge has been inherited within contemporary Japanese corporations, and in fact at many Japanese companies such as KDDI, including Toyota Kyushu, internship centers and education centers are referred to as “Dojo”. In certain cases, the workplaces of Japanese corporations that fundamentally employ OJT are also referred to in the same manner.These “Dojos” are communities of practice. They are groups of people who share a concern, a set of problems, or a passion about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge and expertise in this area by interacting on an ongoing basis (Wenger, McDermott, & Snyder, 2002). Knowledge is tacit as well as explicit, and sharing tacit knowledge requires interaction and informal learning processes such as storytelling, conversation, coaching, and apprenticeship of the kind that communities of practice provide (Wenger, McDermott, & Snyder, 2002). This space is the “Dojo”, and the “Way” is the process of “Satori” which is to understand the real significance of our world (Takahashi & Lennerfors, 2012).Our research engages the concept of the “Way” for a Communities Based View of Organizations (Takahashi, 2012) and discusses about learning and inheriting knowledgeable skills, that is to say, the learning of tacit knowledge in Japanese firms.
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- Takahashi, Masayasu, et al.
(författare)
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From "mieruka" to "satoruka"
- 2011
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Ingår i: Standing conference on Organizational Symbolism.
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- The Japanese philosophy of Kaizen, or continuous improvements, has been accepted and adopted all around the world. A central concept in kaizen which is extremely well-known in Japan, but somewhat less acknowledged in Europe and the U.S. is mieruka (見える化), which means visualization or visual control. Mieruka is a central component in the shopfloor practices that have undergone Kaizen. In Annual reports of Japanese companies, for example Toyota, mieruka practices are brought forth. Being part of a management philosophy, mieruka is said to lead to fast problem identification, increased efficiency, and organizational knowledge sharing.Playing just a little with words, and entering into opposition to mieruka, we will launch the concept satoruka (悟り化). Satoru, or the noun satori is based in Buddhist thinking meaning enlightenment. Satoruka means a process, or moment, of transition to enlightenment (ka means change, or transition), in other words to become enlightened. In our paper, we intend to explain what satoruka is and how it can be understood to understand organizations. The major consequence as we see it is to counter the functionalist and practitioner-oriented semantic space in which mieruka is situated. This might sound counter-intuitive to a "Western" audience, but indeed enlightenment (and other concepts such as Truth) in Buddhist thinking is not related to the Enlightenment movement in the West. Enlightenment should therefore not be seen as a way of reaching some kind of objective, quantifiable, truth, but about reaching a state of true understanding. In the Japanese lexicon Kojien, satori is explained as "to understand things clearly" or "to transcend the heart's doubts and gain mastery of the mind". Satori has not only been used for Buddhist enlightenment, but also in other well-known philosophico-cultural movements in Japan, for example in Bushido, where it does not only mean the "functional" or "practitioner-oriented" aspects of "slashing and chopping", but rather to understand the true meaning of the "way" of the sword and the true nature of things by becoming one with nature. Once again, remember that the meaning of "truth" radically differs from Western conceptions of truth. In this paper, we will discuss satoruka, its relation to the traditional concept of satori, and show how it is relevant to the study of organizations (especially we will explore the relevance for the community based view on organizations, which we draw on) and in what context satoruka might arise.
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