Knowledge Works

Managing Intellectual Capital at Toshiba

W Mark Fruin author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Oxford University Press Inc

Published:28th Aug '97

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

Knowledge Works cover

This book offers a close-up look at a factory in Japan that is typical of what the author calls `Knowledge Works'. Like so many Japanese factories, this one - the Yanagicho works of the Toshiba Corporation - is highly productive, efficient, and flexible. While the factory is ordinary looking on the outside, its workers are anything but ordinary as they strive to improve the way they work and the quality of the products they produce. The key to this is the continuous creation and application of knowledge throughout the factory, from workers on the shop floor, to research and development engineers, to top management. The author explains how Japanese culture and religion prepare workers for their role in this process of creating and disseminating knowledge.

a valuable, in-depth look into the specific manufacturing practices of a Japanese electronics firm ... a welcome demonstration of how over-abstracted concepts such as 'organisational knowledge' and 'organisational learning' translate into real-world settings. * Kendall Hoyt, Asia Pacific Journal of Management. Vol.17, Issue 2. *
I found this case study very interesting ... The book succeeds in gathering excellent quality of information and in analysing it at a very high level ... As an academic output, it works extremely well. There is also a lot of value in Knowledge Works which western business people would do well to understand. * Managing Information *

ISBN: 9780195081954

Dimensions: 238mm x 159mm x 27mm

Weight: 575g

288 pages