Track A-1
Our society is composed of three subgroups: A, B, and C; A- Academia B-Business and
C-Consultants. On behalf of the academic subgroup I would like to review the contributions of recent cognitive studies to knowledge management.
Let me start out my review by defining the concept of cognition. Cognition of a humanbeing is his or her internal. mental process that begins with the reception of information and terminates with action taking. It is possible to see a cognitive process in an organization or communities of people, although the process includes a communicative, interactive process.
Cognitive process consists of various mental processes of using knowledge. 1) Information gathering: People and organizations are not passive receivers of information, but they actively engage in searching valuable information based on their knowledge. 2) Sense-making. After acquiring relevant information, they make sense of the information by combining it with their existing knowledge. 3) Choice: Based on the sense making, people derive alternative courses of action using their knowledge. They compare the results of alternatives and choose alternative that satisfies their goals, using their knowledge. 4) Commitment: People and organizations commit themselves to the chosen course of action.
Cognitive process is the process of using knowledge and driven by knowledge. There is another aspect of cognitive process: it is the process of creating, acquiring, enhancing, mixing, and discarding knowledge, or the learning process.
Management is a field that applies the theories of basic disciplines. Human and organizational cognition have been studied in various basic disciplines. and discarding.
The most important basic disciplines is psychology, or cognitive psychology in particular. deliberative decisions.
* Professor Dr. of Kobe University. Graduate School of Business Administration, Managing Director of KMSJ

The traditional psychology put mental process in a black box seeking to be an objective science like physics. In the late 60's to the early 70's, some psychologists came to take mental process out of the black box and tried to understand the internal mental processes. This change of research paradigm is called cognitive revolution (Gardner, 1985). This evolution was driven by the progresses in computers and computer science. We can not observe the mental process but simulate it by computers. Simulation became a powerful research tool. Various theories emerged from the new paradigm. Most successful was the information processing theory
Cognitive science in a narrow sense and information processing theory emerged as a part of computer science. Some people narrowly view that cognitive theories are a branch of computer science. and this information processing theory as the cognitive theory. The view is too narrow, however. There are other basic disciplines that may contribute to knowledge management.
The second important basic discipline in cognitive theories is the epistemology in philosophy.
Epistemology has a long intellectual history but is not a science in its strict sense.
Although it is a part of metaphysics, epistemology plays a very important role in building cognitive theories, as it provides starting hypotheses for the cognitive theories.
The second important basic discipline in cognitive theories is the epistemology in philosophy.
Epistemology has a long intellectual history but is not a science in its strict sense.
The third important basic discipline is sociology, sociology of knowledge in particular. The traditional sociology of knowledge studied the community of scientists. In the late 1960's, there was a paradigmatic change in the sociology of knowledge. It comes to focus on the knowledge of people (Berger and Luckman, 1976). The new paradigm seriously saw an apparent fact: Not only the scientists but people on the streets were also using knowledge in forming their social action. Their actions are constrained by their own knowledge on society. Based on the three basic disciplines, various studies have been made. Let me review the major research findings in cognitive theories that may help us to improve our knowledge management, focusing on researchers close to me.
Janis (1982) found that a small group of confident elites tend to choose a risky and brave alternative when they have to make big decision urgently. This phenomenon is called group think. It was observed in some Japanese companies, too, in 1980's, when they consider the acquisition of large American companies, and as a matter of course most of the brave decisions eventually failed.
We are human, not computers, and have emotion. Emotion sometimes drives us to choose a wrong alternative. Emotion sometimes plays positive roles, as well. Odaka found that a multinational corporation has two groups with their own subcultures; One group, which consists of senior executives, has a culture that favor intuitive decisions and brave actions. The other group is composed of lower level managers and has culture valuing scientific, cautious analyses before decisions. She also hypothesizes that the dialectical interactions between the two cultural groups help the corporation to make creative but

Some people are in positions, where they have to account their own decisions to outsiders.
Kida (2000) analyzed the letters of CEO's at the annual reports and found that their explanations tend to be self-serving. They explain poor performance referring to the external environment, while they explain good performance by referring to their own strategy and efforts. is a field that applies the theories of basic disciplines. Human and organizational cognition have been studied in various basic disciplines. and discarding.
Khurana (2002) found that board of directors tend to use objective matching method in identifying candidates for a CEO position in order to show the legitimacy of their decisions. The matching process reduce the number of candidates and, thus, lead to increase the risk of wrong decisions.
Decisions are biased not only by organizational cultures and social positions but also by the wider social cultures. Nisbett (2003) found that the Orientals look at the woods (or context), whereas the Westerners look at the trees (objects) . He suggests that there are differences in perception and decisions between Orientals and Westerners.
The culture of an organization is a set of values, beliefs, and norms shared by the member of the organization. A culture is a sort of a shared knowledge. Deguchi found that culture is shared not by directly sharing knowledge, but by indirectly sharing the observable styles, through intensive observations on merged banks.
Tochio (2003) studied the training processes of craftsmen in die-making firms. It is generally believed that training is got started with the simplest task and gradually proceeded to the more difficult tasks. Tochio studied the process training the die-making craftsmen, and found that they were assigned most complicated task as the starting task. Tochio gave the rationale of counter-intuitive finding as follows : Candidates are tested by the complicated task whether they have the potential to be the die-making craftsmen.
Yoshimura (2003) studied two old companies in the Japanese construction industry. The elder company has the history of more than 1400 years, perhaps the oldest company in the

world, although the company is too old to have the hard evidence of the founding year. Another company is younger than the first, yet has a history of more than 500 years. Both have a similar organizational arrangement. The elder company has a set of subgroups called kumi inside the whole organization. Kumis are independent communities, recruiting and developing carpenters by themselves. Skilled carpenters are honored to become a chief of kumis. The chief of kumi can put his name to the kumi. The parent chooses the suitable kumis for each construction project.
There is competition among kumis. Through the competition within the organization, each kumi seek to improve and transmits the skills of carpenters from generation to generation and enhance their technological strength. The same approach is being taken by the second firm.
Various studies based on cognitive theories have been done. The studies reviewed were a biased sample of vast pool of studies, which will give useful insights to knowledge management.
Business practitioners can get something from cognitive theories.
Reference
Berger, P. L., and Lacknan. Social construction of reality, San Francisco: Chandler, 1967
Deguchi, Managing the organizational culture: Sharing of styles (Japanese),
Tokyo : Hakuto-Shobo, 2004.
Gardner, H., The mind’s new science, New York : Basic Books, 1985
Janis, I. L., Groupthink (second edition), Dallas : Houghton Miffin, 1982.
Kagono,T.. Organizational epistemology (Japanese). Tokyo: Chikura-shobo, 1988.
Matsumoto,Y., Organization and skills (Japanese). Tokyo: Hakuto-shobo, 2002.
Odaka.K. Two cultures of decision making in an organization, Ph. D. Thesis. Kobe University, 2002.
Tochio, Y. Skill Development in small firms in die-making industry.
Ph. D. Thesis, Kobe University, 2003.
Yoshimura. Y., Skill transmission in old organizations, working paper. Wakayama university, 2000.