知の伝達の成否 : 技術情報の事例

Abstract

Knowledge transfer is not an easy task; particularly when the initiator takes that knowledge for granted, a failure severely puzzles him or her. In this paper, I will discuss the three cases of knowledge transfer inside manufacturing companies, some of which are successful and the others are not. The first case is an incident at a factory outside Japan. A Chinese worker was not able to figure out how the Japanese supervisor really wanted to get the job done by a particular instruction. I will discuss how different their ways of thinking are. The second case occurs at a business division in Japan. My main concern will be how a critical knowledge from R&D division fails to reach to the top management. The third case is a scene from a board of managing directors. I will follow how thoughtful a director was to be considerate of an engineer who files a request for investment, and not to be ungenerous to ask captious questions. These cases bring a lesson that, for a successful knowledge transfer, at least one of the followings could be more crucial than rationality: a common way of judgment, a mentoring relationship and/or a shared organizational goal.