Toward Middle-Up-Down Management: Accelerating Information Creation
The author is one of a group of Japanese management scholars developing a frame of reference strikingly different from that of American scholars writing about business administration. Here Professor Nonaka introduces the concept of compressive management, which recognizes a key role for middle managers in information development. "The essential logic of compressive management is that top management creates a vision or dream, and middle management creates and implements concrete concepts to solve and transcend the contradictions arising from gaps between what exists at the moment and what management hopes to create." The development of the Honda "City" is used to illustrate "middle-up-down" management. In their wish to develop an entirely new car, Honda's top managers gave a group of young designers that task -- with virtually no direction. The designers first attempted to modify an existing model but were eventually forced into questioning and transcending universal assumptions about automobile design.