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The distinctiveness of Japanese management practices offers invaluable insights for the strategic development and operational excellence of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) worldwide. Recognizing this, the purpose of this study is to explore an extensive review of the literature on Japanese SMEs. The aim is to reveal previously explored research domains and to systematically categorize the unique factors contributing to the success and challenges of SMEs. This investigation not only illuminates the peculiarities of Japanese SMEs management but also sets the stage for applying these insights globally to SMEs across diverse industries.

Using a systematic review approach, 63 studies on Japanese SMEs from 1996 to 2021 were identified and analyzed.

This analysis identified six critical themes in Japanese SME management: nuanced firm management practices; forefront innovation and technology; internationalization; supportive government policies; commitment to corporate social responsibility and sustainable development; and vibrant entrepreneurship. The authors also spotlight challenges like navigating global competition and adapting to rapid technological changes. These insights, alongside noted methodological gaps in existing literature, suggest fertile grounds for future research and hold significant implications for SMEs globally.

The investigation of Japanese SMEs in this study highlights valuable insights for SMEs, policymakers and scholars, as it represents a rich and distinctive research phenomenon with various organizational, cultural, economic and political implications.

The term “fashion” triggers images of frivolous symbolic production with a particular impact on women, quite a world apart at first sight from high technology and mobile telephony that traditionally tend to be associated with science, rationality and masculinity. Surprisingly, we show in this paper that the field of mobile telephony has, for a number of years now, been impacted and significantly transformed by the transposition of fashion logics. We deconstruct the process of logic transposition, considering key moments and key actors, key modes and mechanisms. The comparison of multiple case studies within the mobile telephony industry also points to the limits of transposition and to varying degrees of hybridization and logic co-habitation. This process of logic transposition is, we argue, profoundly transforming the mobile telephony industry, bringing it closer, on many counts, to “cultural industries”. In the end, we draw a number of theoretical conclusions on logic transposition as an important mechanism of institutional change.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the early implementation of a model of mathematics teacher development in Italian schools, inspired by Chinese lesson study (CLS), focusing on similarities and differences.

A research lesson study on fractions in the fourth grade was conducted. The approach was designed based on the theory of semiotic mediation (TSM) enriched by means of quaternary analysis and the variation pedagogy of CLS. In this study, qualitative methods were employed involving the collection of data including lesson plans, observations and post-lesson analyses.

The purpose of this study is to determine what works and what does not work in the Italian context. Answers to the following research questions are provided: How did LS incorporate quaternary analysis and variation pedagogy in the TSM? How and why were changes introduced in the structure of the lesson plan with respect to the CLS? How did members of the Italian Mathematics Teaching Research Group increase their knowledge of teaching methods and content?

The issues to be considered in further studies include the possible conflicts emerging between the cultures of teaching in China and Italy and the way to overcome them.

The main ideas of CLS are consistent with the general indications of the Italian Ministry of Education for the three-year program (2016-2019) of mandatory teacher development.

Reporting the findings of an Italian LS is aimed at exploring the differences and similarities among the different forms of LS, under the influence of cultural and institutional constraints.

The aim of this paper is to describe teachers’ professional development in Lesson Study (LS) as processes situated in Semiosphere and generated by the unevenness due to different cultural traditions. The authors characterise teachers’ professional development in two LS experiments as processes generating new knowledge to point out their products, i.e. new professional frame teachers produce after these experiments. The authors use Hybridization, a particular form of Networking of Theories (NWT).

The authors collected video-registration of several Italian LS meetings. The authors analyse two LSs, where time emerged as a conflictual aspect. Through Hybridization components, the authors show how teachers make sense of LS and how teachers revise their professional frame.

In NWT different theories are deployed to study the same problem. To grasp the issue of unevenness in our LS, we use Hybridization of a Theory, a form of NWT characterised by a structural asymmetry. It is given when a construct c is introduced coherently, operatively and productively into a theory T, obtaining a hybridized theory T'.

Hybridization lens allows to describe potentialities and limits of LS as a tool for teachers’ development. The two analysed LS are different: in one of them Hybridization process produced a new theory T', whilst in the second one it was limited to the awareness of a gap between LS and initial teachers’ professional frame.

Identifying links between different Hybridization components is a helpful tool for teacher educators/researchers to foster the shift from one another. For instance, through this tool, teacher educators could keep track of what happens in successive LS and mirror the dialogue between teachers, moving towards group-shared metareflections. This initiates the advancement of a new theory T', where asymmetries are interpreted.

In this approach teachers are protagonists of the construction of a new professional frame. LS is a tool for teachers’ professional development, allowing teachers to question their own educational intentionalities. Hybridization components provide a tool to analyse such a process.

This paper seeks to understand how a new elite, known as the cork aristocracy, emerged in the Bordeaux wine field, France, between 1850 and 1929 as wine merchants replaced aristocrats. Classic class and status perspectives, and their distinctive social closure dynamics, are mobilized to illuminate the individual and organizational transformations that affected elite wineries grouped in an emerging classification of the Bordeaux best wines. We build on a wealth of archives and historical ethnography techniques to surface complex status and organizational dynamics that reveal how financiers and industrialists intermediated this transition and how organizations are deeply interwoven into social change.

The aim of this paper is to explore the rationale and findings of the implementation of a Chinese lesson study (CLS)-informed model of mathematics teacher education in Italian schools. The study focuses on the modifications and invariance when introducing CLS in a different culture.

In a previous work (Bartolini Bussi et al., 2017), the authors focused on a single case of activity inspired by the CLS in Italy, and identified some conflicts emerging between the cultures of teaching in China and Italy and explored the way to overcome the conflicts. In the following years, the authors implemented lesson study (LS) experimentations with dozens of in-service primary school teachers and pre-service teachers who were gradually introduced to the model of CLS. The tensions/constraints occurred prominently when extending the experiments with many dozens of other in-service teachers and pre-service teachers.

The authors highlighted how the process of deconstruction allowed the participants in the study to either appropriate or reject some features of the CLS, linking this process to the cultural differences.

The authors believe and argue that LS, and CLS in particular, must be modified in the transfer from one culture to another, considering the cultural beliefs of the involved teachers.

The authors claim that the features of CLS compels the Western researchers to adopt local and culturally determined choices and to be aware of the rationale of these choices.

The issues of culture and leadership in the Asian context are discussed and the cultural perspectives related to Asian management style are reviewed. A qualitative research study is presented in which two different groups of Asian managers describe their best or worst leader. The results indicate that leadership behaviours are better indicators of effective leadership than are leadership characteristics. This sample of Asian managers prefers leaders who are both task‐and people‐oriented. They prefer participation to direction.

The cultural industries consist of those organizations that design, produce, and distribute products that appeal to aesthetic or expressive tastes more than to the utilitarian aspects of customer needs such as films, books, building designs, fashion, and music (Peterson & Berger, 1975, 1996; Hirsch, 1972, 2000; Lampel, Lant, & Shamsie, 2000). Less widely acknowledged, but as critical, cultural industries also create products that serve important symbolic functions such as capturing, refracting, and legitimating societal knowledge and values. For example, educational publishers influence what concepts and theories are promoted to students by the books they publish. Architects shape the sensibilities of interactions at work, home, and play by their choice of technologies, space design, and material resources. Music producers discover and promote vocal artists whose lyrics shape our understandings of age, gender, and ethnicity. Because of the societal impact of these symbolic functions, cultural industries have continued to interest both popular writers and sociologists alike.

Although CLS has been implemented in China for over a century, it is barely known to educators internationally. The purpose of this paper is to synthesize the salient characteristics of Chinese lesson study (CLS), introduce the major themes of this special issue, and invite dialogues about the theories and practices of CLS.

The authors of this editorial paper conducted an extensive literature review on CLS, analyzed the contents and methods of the existing research categorically, compared CLS with other models of LS globally, and present this special issue articles and their major contributions thematically. The theoretical framework of the paper relies mainly on cultural theories and theories on research paradigms such as improvement science, which explain why and how CLS functions in Chinese education system over time.

Existing studies suggest that CLS is a deliberate practice for developing instructional expertise, a research methodology for linking research and practice, and an improvement science for instruction and school improvement system wide. In addition to the theorization of CLS, this special issue also introduces some adaptations of CLS outside of China such as the USA and Italy.

This paper, for the first time, spells out some salient features of CLS, and discusses issues in adapting CLS in other parts of the world. It will enrich the understanding of LS theories and practices in China and promotes trans-cultural development of LS internationally.

Argues that performance management techniques and practices developed in US organizations cannot be successful in the developing country context to gain competitive advantage unless the issue of culture‐fit is addressed adequately. “Culture‐fit” can be ensured when managers adopt human resource management strategies to overcome the cultural constraints and build on the strengths of the socio‐cultural environment.