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This paper investigates customer knowledge management activities of Taiwan’s plastic industries. The results demonstrate that the bulk of customer knowledge comes from data related to customer purchase orders and complaints. Furthermore, marketing, production, and research and development are the main departments that developed and reuse customer knowledge. The benefits derived from knowledge management for enterprises do not vary with the position of the vendor on the business scope. In addition, the benefits derived by customers from knowledge management are directly related to the benefits gained by the five major business functions, while the benefits derived from the customer knowledge management are also directly related to customer satisfaction. Summarizing the above results, an Acquisition‐Development‐Reuse (ADR) model is proposed and can provide the enterprises with a systematic reference model when the business attempts to construct a customer knowledge management system.

This article aims to point out the essential role of knowledge flows when studying new ways of organizing in a knowledge‐intensive service sector where organizations operate in rapidly changing markets. The purpose of this article is to analyze the concept of self‐organization and its basic characteristics from a knowledge flow point‐of‐view.

A conceptual analysis and literature review are provided.

The article offers a way to understand how self‐organization emerges from lower‐level or local interaction, i.e. knowledge flows. The results of earlier studies indicate that if experts working in customer interface are empowered to make independent decisions and to adjust their working according to the ongoing situation, i.e. to self‐organize, co‐operation with customers becomes more active.

The article presents a new way of looking at self‐organization and its basic characteristics as managerial tools in knowledge‐intensive organizations. The article brings up the fundamental role of knowledge flows in a self‐organization process.

Outlines how human competency engineering can be used as a change maangement or organizational development tool, based upon studies conducted in Canada, Hong Kong and Indonesia. Suggests that a change model based on the practical application of social science and physical science concepts can be applied over several cultures.

WE have, of course, been fighting a losing battle. By now it appears that all of the three major political parties are in favour of worker participation at board level. Prettywell everybody is convinced that it is bound to come. So let us, too, assume that that is so and take a look at the implications.

MAKE no mistake about it, when a government enacts legislation it does so firmly believing that the new law is in the best interests at least to the majority of the population it is supposed to serve. (This may not be wholly true in some dictatorial regimes, but it holds for democracies.) So it is a pity when, as happens far too frequently, the effect differs from or sometimes is completely opposed to the aims in the minds of the legislators.

IT was in September that we asked “What do Bullocks Produce?”. Well, now we know; and a right mess of controversy is the result. Or is it a result or, rather, a cause the result of which may well sound the virtual end of British business as we have known it and it has been built up over the years? It could also sound the death‐knell of the Mother of Parliaments; for power is being given, irrevocably, to the Unions.

This paper discusses a programme of work being carried out jointly by the British Aircraft Corporation and Hawker Siddeley Aviation, into the design of flight decks for future civil transport aircraft. The programme is aimed at exploring all aspects of flight deck design, in sufficient depth to enable decisions to be made as to whether or not significant changes could, or should be introduced into aircraft scheduled to enter service in the 1980s. Some of the information now presented has been published previously by my colleagues engaged on the programme. I make no apology for this, since any story worth telling is also worth repeating — and perhaps embellishing in the process.

RECENTLY we were at a garage. A customer had, during the night, left his car for repair. The instructions were stuck on the windscreen and repeated on the wing: REPLACE NEARSIDE WING ONLY.

The main objective of this study is to investigate an impact of organizational culture on supply chain risk and strategic sourcing. It also examines the relationship between organizational culture and strategic sourcing. By collecting 159 survey responses from supply, executives and managers of U.S. manufacturing firms, it provides empirical evidence that organizational culture and strategic sourcing mitigate supply chain risks. Organizational culture also makes a positive impact on the implementation of strategic sourcing. This study emphasizes the importance of cultural impacts to supply executives and managers in supply chain risk management.

This paper aims to unfold the path of how the complexity of culture issues leads to a rising pressure for paradigm changes in the research on culture in international management. In terms of academic debate about culture, the crucial paradigm shift has not yet happened. Research and writing are still dominated by a mechanistic-rational approach which does not quite know to handle cultural phenomena which by nature are mutuable, often transient and invariably context-specific. Rising pressure is observed for paradigm changes through three main trends: integration of West-East dichotomy, coexistence of convergence and divergence; and dynamic vs static perspectives. It is argued that the unresolved debate on the culture construct and its measurement, the epistemological stance by researchers and associated methodological choices in culture studies reinforce these trends pressuring for a paradigm shift.

This paper reviews the knowledge based on culture studies to establish the contributions of culture studies in international business and the foundation of its knowledge base. The conceptual foundation of culture, its multi-level and multi-dimensionality and critical issues in research epistemology and methodology are analyzed to discuss emerging trends in the process of an imminent paradigm change.

By unfolding the nature of abstract and high-order definition of culture, the focus is on deciphering the complex construct and multi-level and multi-dimensionality in measurement, which, in turn, interact with the epistemology of culture researchers and the choice of methodology used to carry out culture studies. Eventually the interaction of the three studied elements drives the proposed three paradigmatic changes in the evolving business environment.

The identified trends in existing culture research keep the importance of culture studies in international business management thriving as we point to their relevance for the envisaged paradigm shift.

The three paradoxes discussed challenge researchers who aim to contribute to the knowledge base of culture in international business. In addition, the debate cannot be ignored by international business managers as culture is a key informal institutional driver that influences international business performance.

The review of the knowledge base on culture studies in management contributes to a better understanding of the envisaged paradigmatic shift of the discipline. The debate on the complexity of culture studies is extended to three tendencies for potential paradigmatic change, with implications discussed to suggest future research.