2015 Fiscal Year Research-status Report
Knowledge Management for Foreign Direct Investments: Comparative Analysis of Japanese and Foreign Inbound and Outbound Investments
| Project/Area Number |
26380497
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| Research Institution | University of Tsukuba |
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Principal Investigator |
マニエー渡邊 レミー 筑波大学, ビジネスサイエンス(系), 准教授 (00527848)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2014-04-01 – 2017-03-31
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| Keywords | Knowledge Management / Foreign Investment / Cross-country comparison |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
Concerning research question #1, the focus of this research was temporarily changed to the needs for engineering knowledge and information (see current status for specific reasons).
The first paper (Secundo, Magnier-Watanabe, Heisig, 2015) identifies and compares the knowledge and information retrieval needs from past projects and for future work among Italian and Japanese engineers. Statistical analyses including factor analysis reveal that (a) for knowledge to be retrieved from past work, both Italian and Japanese engineers identified mainly experiential and systemic knowledge assets; (b) for knowledge to be captured for future work, both groups picked experiential as well as conceptual knowledge related to the competitive environment of the firm absent from knowledge needs from past work. The study identified information and knowledge needs which could help inform the design of procedures to capture and document engineering work and the development of supporting information systems.
A book chapter recently published and based on related works (Magnier-Watanabe, Benton, Senoo, 2015) highlighted several important knowledge management enablers across countries.
Concerning research question #2, further interviews were conducted with companies and governmental and non-governmental dealing with foreign direct investments in Japan and in the US. I am working in collaboration with a professor based in the US. Data collection is still on-going.
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| Current Status of Research Progress |
Current Status of Research Progress
3: Progress in research has been slightly delayed.
Reason
This research project heavily relies on cooperation and collaboration with foreign researchers based abroad. while communication is smooth and goals are fully shared, data collection has been taking longer than expected. The questionnaire instrument has been developed and the questionnaire sent to potential respondents, but only few responses have been collected so far.
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| Strategy for Future Research Activity |
To address the collection issues stated previously for data on companies' foreign direct investments, several interviews are being planned in order to provide a complementary case-study approach. At the same time, ongoing work with foreign partners should increase the response rate by reaching out to more respondents among the target companies.
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| Causes of Carryover |
When planning my research trips, I miscalculated some planned cost which led to 5,915 yen going unused.
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| Expenditure Plan for Carryover Budget |
The remaining 5,915 yen will be used towards presenting research at an academic conference this fiscal year.
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