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ICC Advance Access originally published online on June 11, 2007
Industrial and Corporate Change 2007 16(3):371-394; doi:10.1093/icc/dtm014
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© The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Associazione ICC. All rights reserved.

Strategic management as distributed practical wisdom (phronesis)

Ikujiro Nonaka and Ryoko Toyama

Correspondence: Ikujiro Nonaka, Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo, Japan, Xerox Distinguished Faculty Fellow, IMIO, University of California, Berkeley, USA.

Correspondence: Ryoko Toyama, Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Graduate School of Knowledge Science, Nomi, Japan. e-mail: rtoyama{at}jaist.ac.jp

This article claims that effective strategic management requires distributed wisdom (which the philosopher Aristotle called "phronesis"). Strategy is created out of one's existential belief or commitment to a vision of the future, the ability to interpret one's environment and resources subjectively, and the interaction between subjectivity and objectivity. These abilities need to be distributed among organizational members. Strategy as distributed phronesis thus emerges from practice to pursue "common goodness" in each particular situation since a firm is an entity that pursues a universal ideal and a particular reality at the same time. Such idealistic pragmatism means that in a specific and dynamic context knowledge can be created and refined to become wisdom.


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