Dynamic fractal organizations for promoting knowledge-based transformation – A new paradigm for organizational theory

How can a company become sustainably innovative? We propose that the company needs to have organizational forms that achieve a dynamic synthesis of knowledge exploration and exploitation. In this paper, we present the “dynamic fractal organization” as a new organizational model. This model departs from the conventional information processing paradigm. Instead, we present a new frontier in organizational theory: the “dynamic fractal organization based on dynamic ‘ba’.” Dynamic fractal organizations build and utilize a triad relationship of knowledge that integrates and synthesizes tacit and explicit knowledge and creates a third type of knowledge, phronesis. The triad relationship is an upward spiraling process of converting tacit and explicit knowledge, and propels sustainable knowledge transformation across the diverse boundaries within and between organizations, and their environments.

[1]  Daniel A. Levinthal,et al.  ABSORPTIVE CAPACITY: A NEW PERSPECTIVE ON LEARNING AND INNOVATION , 1990 .

[2]  I. Nonaka,et al.  The Concept of “Ba”: Building a Foundation for Knowledge Creation , 1998 .

[3]  Georg von Krogh,et al.  Enabling Knowledge Creation: How to Unlock the Mystery of Tacit Knowledge and Release the Power of Innovation , 2000 .

[4]  Georg von Krogh,et al.  Perspective - Tacit Knowledge and Knowledge Conversion: Controversy and Advancement in Organizational Knowledge Creation Theory , 2009, Organ. Sci..

[5]  Carl Ebeling,et al.  All the Right Moves: A VLSI Architecture for Chess , 1987 .

[6]  Aaron C. T. Smith,et al.  The Role of Dualities in Arbitrating Continuity and Change in Forms of Organizing , 2008 .

[7]  Alexandre Beaudet,et al.  Fractal Design: Self-organizing Links in Supply Chain Management , 2000 .

[8]  J. Mazziotta,et al.  Grasping the Intentions of Others with One's Own Mirror Neuron System , 2005, PLoS biology.

[9]  Zi-Lin He,et al.  Exploration vs. Exploitation: An Empirical Test of the Ambidexterity Hypothesis , 2004, Organ. Sci..

[10]  Mary J. Benner,et al.  Exploitation, Exploration, and Process Management: The Productivity Dilemma Revisited , 2003 .

[11]  Wendy K. Smith,et al.  Managing Strategic Contradictions: A Top Management Model for Managing Innovation Streams , 2005 .

[12]  Jae-Hyeon Ahn,et al.  Balancing Business Performance and Knowledge Performance of New Product Development , 2006 .

[13]  I. Nonaka,et al.  The Theory of the Knowledge-Creating Firm: Subjectivity, Objectivity and Synthesis , 2005 .

[14]  D. Leonard-Barton,et al.  Wellsprings of Knowledge: Building and Sustaining the Sources of Innovation , 1995 .

[15]  Florian Kohlbacher,et al.  Co-opetition and knowledge co-creation in Japanese supplier-networks: The case of Toyota , 2011 .

[16]  J. Birkinshaw,et al.  THE ANTECEDENTS, CONSEQUENCES AND MEDIATING ROLE OF ORGANIZATIONAL AMBIDEXTERITY , 2004 .

[17]  C. Markides Strategic Innovation in Established Companies , 1998 .

[18]  Mitsuru Kodama Knowledge Integration Dynamics: Developing Strategic Innovation Capability , 2011 .

[19]  V. Govindarajan,et al.  Building breakthrough businesses within established organizations. , 2005, Harvard business review.

[20]  Christopher Rowe,et al.  Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics: Translation, Introduction, Commentary , 2002 .

[21]  I. Nonaka A Dynamic Theory of Organizational Knowledge Creation , 1994 .

[22]  I. Nonaka,et al.  The Knowledge Creating Company , 2008 .

[23]  Marco Iacoboni,et al.  The Mirror Neuron System and Imitation , 2011 .

[24]  Benoit B. Mandelbrot,et al.  Fractal Geometry of Nature , 1984 .

[25]  Herbert A. Simon,et al.  The Sciences of the Artificial , 1970 .

[26]  Mitsuru Kodama,et al.  Project-Based Organization in the Knowledge-Based Society , 2006 .

[27]  Ikujiro Nonaka,et al.  The wise leader. , 2011, Harvard business review.

[28]  I. Nonaka,et al.  Strategic management as distributed practical wisdom (phronesis) , 2007 .

[29]  J. March Exploration and exploitation in organizational learning , 1991, STUDI ORGANIZZATIVI.

[30]  Boris Durisin,et al.  A Study of the Performativity of the “Ambidextrous Organizations” Theory: Neither Lost in nor Lost before Translation , 2012 .

[31]  Mitsuru Kodama,et al.  Strategic Innovation in Traditional Big Business: Case Studies of Two Japanese Companies , 2003 .

[32]  Georg von Krogh,et al.  Exploring social preferences in private–collective innovation , 2012, Technol. Anal. Strateg. Manag..

[33]  Ikujiro Nonaka,et al.  A firm as a dialectical being: towards a dynamic theory of a firm , 2002 .

[34]  P. Drucker Post-Capitalist Society , 1993 .

[35]  Florian Kohlbacher,et al.  International Marketing in the Network Economy: A Knowledge-Based Approach , 2007 .

[36]  Balaji R. Koka,et al.  The Reification of Absorptive Capacity: A Critical Review and Rejuvenation of the Construct , 2006 .

[37]  Arie Y. Lewin,et al.  Microfoundations of Internal and External Absorptive Capacity Routines , 2011, Organ. Sci..

[38]  John S. Edwards,et al.  Managing flow: a process theory of the knowledge-based firm , 2008 .

[39]  Marianne W. Lewis Exploring Paradox: Toward a More Comprehensive Guide , 2000 .

[40]  M. Tushman,et al.  The ambidextrous organization. , 2004, Harvard business review.

[41]  I. Nonaka,et al.  Leadership in Organizational Knowledge Creation: A Review and Framework , 2012 .