Knowledge Communities in Japan
- Sivan Halevy
- May 1, 2004
- 8 min read
Recently, I came across an article written by Dr. Hideo Yamazaki from Japan. Dr. Yamazaki is a central and leading figure of the Knowledge Management Society of Japan (KNSJ) and one of the "tone-setters" in promoting knowledge management in general and knowledge communities in particular in academia and the business community in Japan. The article he wrote discusses case studies of knowledge communities that have emerged in recent years in Japan. The fascinating article succeeds in tracing the differences between communities built in Japan, which he calls "Knowledge-Communities," and knowledge communities built in Western countries, which are of the "Communities of Practice" type. Throughout this discussion, we have addressed critical characteristics of Japanese culture.
Here is a summary:
The author attributes the loss of competitive ability of Japanese industry in the early 1990s to the traditional structure of Japanese companies. Characteristics of this structure include closed companies with rigid hierarchical structures, long-term employment conditions (lifetime employment), and outdated management methods developed through narrow specialization. Today, in the current era, narrow professional (frontal) knowledge communities that characterized the previous era are no longer suitable, and a significant disintegration of them is evident. Thus, the "BA" culture - a Japanese concept formulated by Nonaka, which means developing relationships (elaborated in the December 2000 issue of the 2know newsletter) - is being replaced by a culture supported by "weak ties" (a concept the author borrowed from a theorist named Granovetter who wrote an article about the strength of strong ties and the weakness of strong ties).
The knowledge communities being built at an increasing pace in Japan are more similar to internet communities, such as "Askme." The primary difference between the two types of communities is that while membership in professional communities is based on role, membership in knowledge communities is open, broad, and not limited to the type of position within the organization.
In the fascinating encounter between traditional culture in Japan and the advanced technology that the 21st century brought with it, several critical characteristics of communities in Japan can be identified that differ from the classical model of professional communities:
Most professional communities in Japan (90%) are virtual rather than face-to-face. Japanese companies are becoming more transparent and open to their employees in response to the demands of young employees. Through this, Japanese companies manage to harness the learning power and knowledge of young employees, bringing the company to advancements, innovation, and the freshness of knowledge.
The communities preserve accepted patterns of shared decision-making and broad consensus-building.
The community uses nicknames (as is common on the internet) - this is definitely an innovative and interesting point. The use of multiple identities and nicknames is completely contradictory to what is accepted in Japanese culture, and precisely because of this, it has become extremely common. The use of nicknames enables employees to exchange opinions and participate with greater ease, disregarding organizational hierarchy.
There is a preference for one large knowledge community over several small ones. For example, at Mitsubishi, the knowledge community includes 90,000 employees from all organizational units. This aligns with the Japanese paternalistic tradition, which views all company employees as part of one extended family.
Communication is both vertical and horizontal; in Japan, many individuals move to work independently in the field. For example, a salesperson from a Japanese sales company uses a mobile phone and a personal computer to work with clients and can spend an entire day without visiting the company’s offices. In such a work environment, senior managers begin to manage employees directly through the knowledge community, which enables them to exchange opinions, conduct online conversations, and transmit messages while on the move. Thus, once the establishment of such communities became technologically feasible, managers naturally showed great interest in them and often played a central role in establishing them. Knowledge sharing between senior managers and employees is a primary role of knowledge community founders. The community empowers employees to make independent decisions and access critical information for their work. Thus, the virtual knowledge community serves everyone, and within it, managers and employees behave as full partners. This is in contrast to the old bureaucratic role system, which was often expressed in traditional face-to-face meetings.
Below, I will present several test cases of establishing communities in Japan as they appear in Dr. Yamazaki's article:
Ricoh, the Japanese company that manufactures copying machines, was among the leading companies in MAKE 2003. The company initiated knowledge management by distributing an electronic newsletter that contained specific and useful knowledge, such as articles and insights on how to persuade customers to purchase copying machines. The virtual newsletter was distributed to more than 10,000 members, who were invited to respond to the knowledge presented on the first page of the company's intranet. Within the framework of distributing the virtual newsletter, any member who wanted to contact another community member only had to send a request to the newsletter editor. These requests became email exchanges between community members. Subsequently, this simple and easy solution that began as an initiative by one of the company's middle managers (who gained management recognition and was promoted to a very senior position in the company) served as a catalyst for building more than 300 professional knowledge communities containing discussion groups and for developing a sharing culture in the company.
Sumitomo Life Insurance is one of the leading companies in business and industrial insurance in Japan. The company established a knowledge community in 2001. Today, 6,000 members are active in the community, exchanging opinions, questions, and answers through discussion groups (similar to the classic community). The community is a single, inclusive community open to all 12,000 employees. That is, about half of the employees participate in the community by choice, and more than 400 discussions take place each month. Below is a breakdown of some of the success factors:
Content experts and role holders in the community were appointed directly by senior management.
Meeting a need - the company has several small and disconnected offices with one or two employees. The need for these in the community turned them into active participants.
Participation of formal sub-units in the community - once the community began to flourish, formal sub-units within the community began to participate. Then, questions that a single employee could not answer were answered by entire departments that formed opinions on the matter.
Use of nicknames - this pattern has full management backing. Thus, even the prizes distributed by management to knowledge contributors were given to employees who used nicknames.
The broad knowledge community (low context) existed under one umbrella with traditional face-to-face professional meetings (high context).
Johnson & Johnson, Japan. The core department, which deals with pharmaceuticals and is the most profitable, established a knowledge community at the end of 2001. The salespeople in the department (fewer than 200) operate in a wide geographic dispersion throughout Japan and work from home. Therefore, a clear need arose for a virtual knowledge community. One of the disadvantages of working disconnected from the office is that insights generated and discovered by the individual are not easily shared with other sales managers. Therefore, one of the department's goals was to find and bring to the surface that tacit knowledge and channel it internally within the organization. Once the knowledge community was established, all members of the pharmaceutical company, including the support team, joined. There are several interesting stories regarding this knowledge community:
At the establishment stage, it was decided that each member would write an essay or poem and publish it on the community's homepage. Perhaps this seems like a waste of precious resources, but in Japan, this type of exchange with a personal and human touch is very common. This was a good way to introduce the participants and familiarize them with the community. Subsequently, this information was translated into high-quality knowledge and transferred to the community. As mentioned, knowledge transfer with a personal touch is a characteristic of the traditional approach in communities with high context (face-to-face), and it is surprising and refreshing to find an update of the tradition in the new working method within the framework of virtual communities.
At the beginning of the community's journey, participation in discussion groups was by name, and during this period, very few discussions were opened. Then, it was decided to implement the nickname method, and as a result, the number of discussions increased five times the number of discussions that were previously opened.
Senior management has a distinctive approach to engaging with the community. First, the department manager used to alternately use two names according to different contexts. When he gave official instructions, he used his real name and his real position. He also contributed managerial publications to the community. In contrast, when he participated in the discussion group, he used a nickname such as "an Extrading Champ." Second, when a senior manager writes a strategic document or work plan, he publishes the drafts in the community discussion group. This way, every employee can express their opinion and suggest changes. One of the secondary benefits is that through the discussion, employees gain a deeper understanding of the plan, its spirit, and the rationale behind it, and as a result, its implementation is faster and smoother. Here again, we can see the interesting combination between the traditional culture of conducting open discussions and achieving broad consensus and the contemporary method of managing a virtual community.
The department has a very successful knowledge manager who, as part of his role, initiates personal face-to-face meetings with community members throughout Japan (this is not something I wouldn't volunteer for). The meetings take place within the framework of dinner or drinks at a bar. And here, too, we can see an expression of traditional culture that is reborn through the combination of the virtual knowledge community and the face-to-face social community.
Q.P. Corporation. It can be said that there are two approaches to building knowledge communities in Japan. The first step is to cultivate social capital and an atmosphere of partnership, and then implement knowledge sharing. The second is to "break the ice" by immediately establishing a community that exchanges knowledge within the framework of discussion groups. In any case, it is clear that knowledge sharing must be placed under one umbrella, along with cultivating social capital, in order to avoid the risk of project failure. Q.P. is a company with an 80-year reputation, numbering about 2,000 employees and manufacturing mayonnaise and salad dressings. The success of the community established there lies in the fact that initially, the company built one large community, including all company employees. Only after conditions matured (two years later) did they begin to build professional sub-communities. The large community began as a virtual newsletter publication accompanied by a bulletin board. Every employee could express their opinion and respond to pieces of knowledge that appeared on the site, making the knowledge interactive. In the first stage, all content was published by the knowledge management team. At a later stage, some of the publications were sent by community members voluntarily. Today, senior managers and employees participate in knowledge communities. For example, managers often ask for the help of members in experimenting with products and promoting them in the neighborhood, or in answering nutrition surveys by their family members. It appears that the knowledge community within the organization has fundamentally changed the culture.
In Summary, given the Japanese cultural tradition of holding high-context meetings (meetings on narrow professional matters usually face-to-face), it is very interesting to observe the process of building virtual communities (which have low context). The communities in the new era (which Dr. Yamazaki calls the "post-Nonaka approach") manage to combine critical characteristics of traditional Japanese culture with contemporary characteristics of Western culture. In addition, the article appears to offer insights into the benefits of anonymous participation, the value of implementing preliminary stages in community building, such as utilizing newsletters, and the significant importance of management support. We have something to learn.
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