Nonaka meets Giddens: A critique

Abstract

Nonaka's recent incorporation of Giddens into the knowledge movement is superficial and problematic. The incorporation accepts uncritically Giddens's controversial conceptions of structure and agency, avoids his concerns of power and domination, exaggerates his elaboration on contradictions, and shares with him the search for an omelette-like theoretical totalising. Using Giddens as an illustrative vehicle, this paper analyses the pattern of Nonaka’s recent borrowing of others’ work and the consequent tensions built up in his simplistic model of the knowledge creating company.

Keywords:

• Nonaka
• Giddens
• theoretical borrowing
• knowledge creating company
• critique

Notes

1 There is an interesting development from Nonaka recently. After the first draft of this paper was submitted to this journal in 2004, Nonaka published a paper in 2005. In that, as if anticipating and replying to criticism, Nonaka acknowledges that ‘the issue of power in organisations needs to be developed further’ (Nonaka & Toyama, 2005, pp. 433–434). Such an acknowledgement is apparently overdue and hence should be welcomed. But to acknowledge an issue under criticism is one thing, to take it seriously can be quite another. It remains, therefore, to be seen what power, domination and politics mean to Nonaka and how they are to be incorporated into his idealist KCC.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Zhichang Zhu

About the author

Zhichang Zhu's formal education stopped when he was sixteen, due to China's ‘Cultural Revolution’. Without a high school certificate and a university first degree, he obtained an M.Sc. in Information Management (1990) and a Ph.D. in Management Systems and Sciences (1995), supported by British scholarships. Zhichang has been a communist Red Guard, farm labourer, shop assistant, lorry driver, corporate manager, assistant to the Dean of a business school, systems analyst, IT/IS/business consultant, in several countries. Zhichang is currently teaching strategic management for MBA programmes at the University of Hull Business School in England, and conducting consultancy for business firms in China. Zhichang also holds visiting positions as Professor and Research Fellow in China, Germany, Japan and the U.S. Zhichang's current research focuses on strategy, systems and knowledge management, all from an institutional and comparative perspective.