著者
神谷 宜泰
出版者
企業家研究フォーラム
雑誌
企業家研究 (ISSN:24340316)
巻号頁・発行日
vol.15, pp.1-23, 2018-07-20 (Released:2021-08-25)
参考文献数
42

The Issues around the Initiative of Introducing Technology by Organizational Newcomers : A Successor-led Innovation in SMEs in Manufacturing Industry by Yoshihiro Kamiya Business succession is one of the opportunities for innovation. A successor may take advantage of it for introducing new technologies and implanting them in his/her firm to renew its organization, processes, productions, and management. LPP (Legitimate Peripheral Participation) theory discusses the learning process of new technologies as a situated activity and the technological transfer as situational in organizations. This paper focuses on the initiatives of introducing technology by business successors as organizational newcomer to a community of practice, the field of situational learning. Those successorled initiatives bring three major changes in the communities of practice : generating contradiction in its members’ learning process, harming old-timers’ identities, and losing an embodied model of full participation. These changes might have impact on succession of existing technologies and organization.Exit of a predecessor and derived conflicts between the successor as a newcomer and old-timers might lead structural changes in the organization and require managing conflicts derived from those changes. The changes also may harm the opportunities for newcomers to learn the skill and tacit knowledge from old-timers. These conflicts and tensions will remain until the successor becomes a full participant and the organization is stabilized.This paper discusses that old-timers’ emotional resistance and organizational inertia disturb the initiatives of technology introduction by business successors. It suggests that “new comers learn from old-timers”, one of major concepts of LPP, should be reexamined. However, the emerged situation in successor-led companies in this research shows processes of generation and stabilization of communities of practice. The experience as a core element of developing skills tells “situated learning” in LLP still has its validity. Business successors are required both pursuing technological innovation and utilizing accumulated knowledge in organizations. The challenges for new comers are to develop new skills swiftly and to maintain previous skills and practice as long as possible.