Linking Practice
with Research
Giving Back Widely
to Society

The role that management studies should fulfill is becoming increasingly significant amidst intensified competition as a result of the acceleration and globalization of technological innovation, due to advancements in technology.
However, even within the topic of “management,” a large gap exists between “the practice of strategy” and “strategic management as a field of research.”
Associate Professor Masahiro Kotosaka is putting his best efforts into bridging this gap between “practice” and “research” by harnessing his experience as an entrepreneur, management consultant, and researcher.

 Linking Practice with Research Pursuing Universal Values

After completing my course of “training” as a practitioner lasting about 8 years, I began walking down the path of a researcher.

In my first 4 years as a practitioner, I managed 3 small companies alongside with pursuing my studies at university. After that, I joined McKinsey & Company as a consultant, where I provided support for resolving various management issues in more than 10 countries while based in Japan and Germany.

As a consultant, in my discussions with corporations and governments around the world, or with the managers of multinational corporations that have their beginnings in Europe or Southeast Asia, I was confronted by the question “Is there a universal and optimal solution to managing operations in diverse countries and/or regions?”

Should I continue working as a consultant while struggling with this question? Or should I face up to this unresolved question that emerged in the course of my work as a consultant? After much agonizing, I resigned from McKinsey & Company, and set my heart on becoming a researcher as I moved to Saïd Business School, University of Oxford. Since then, I have held the conviction that contributing to “management as practice” and contributing to “management studies as a field of research” are different things even while they are closely related to each other.

Today, I provide “valuable knowledge” to those who are working on the frontlines of practice. At the same time, I am tackling the difficult challenge of “pursuing universal values” in order to bring about the evolution of management as a science.

 What I Am Currently Working on—
3 Themes

 Technological Advancements Bring about Changes in Management

Recently, I began to conduct research on the impact that artificial intelligence (AI) has on management organizations.

The concept of management was born to study the administration of “organizations” that were created to improve production efficiency, during an era when much of the manual labor processes previously required became mechanized through the industrial revolution. Since then, technological advancements have constantly brought about changes to the management.

Thereafter, innovation in the transportation of things and information arose thanks to the emergence of railways and telegraphic communications. This enabled corporations to conduct multiple businesses in places that are geographically apart, and gave birth to large corporations that became known as “national companies.” The emergence of satellite communications and high-speed mass transportation by jets and container ships further gave rise to the successive establishment of global companies.

Till now, the process had involved the growth in size of organizations. On the contrary, technologies such as AI, IoT, and FinTech made it possible to “reduce the size” of organizations. Most white-collared employees became redundant, and organizations that previously required 2,000 employees can now operate with just 100 people. In the future, key management objectives will focus on how small an organization can become, and how large a value-chain it can build with that organizational scale. What are the types of management organizations and management strategies that this era calls for? This research has been selected as a research theme under the “Human-Information Technology Ecosystem (HITE)” research area, which is a “Call for proposal” R&D focus area delivered by the Research Institute of Science and Technology for Society (RISTEX), Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST). Together with researchers in the respective fields at the Shonan Fujisawa Campus (SFC), I am conducting research on this project based on the theme of “Trans-disciplinary Research Project on Co-designing Social Systems (Law, Economics and Management) and AI/Robot Technologies.”

The global value chain is an important key phrase for next-generation international business strategy. Today, where it has become common for many companies from various countries to work together to produce and supply a single product, corporations that are highly influential in the value chain are able to generate high levels of profits.

 From “a Place to Transmitting Knowledge” To “a Place for Generating Knowledge”

I would like to take a renewed look at the “approach to research” in the field of management studies. Education as a “place for transmitting knowledge,” such as in traditional arts faculties, is now an outdated and obsolete concept. The same applies to management studies. If the aim is merely to acquire systematized knowledge, it would be more beneficial for students to listen to lectures conducted at Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or the University of Oxford through the Internet, instead of listening to my lectures in the classroom. What we truly need is to generate “interaction” and “creation” between the students and myself through the intense discussion. In short, it is important for the classroom to serve the function of “a place for generating knowledge,” rather than “a place for transmitting knowledge.”

My research laboratory is currently engaged in research work commissioned by corporations, and students are also involved in the research on their own initiative. Through such research work, students gain the valuable experience of delivering presentations to executive officers of leading Japanese corporations, and at the same time, experience success in providing value to society. For myself, I am able to harness the knowledge and information that I gain through the students’ research to conduct research at an even higher level of precision. This research style is sometimes seen in research laboratories in the field of natural science, but I hope to also establish such “organizational research styles” in the field of management studies.