Usage of the concept of organizational capability in the Japanese quality management context

This paper elucidates how the concept of “organizational capability”—which tends to fall into a tautology and for which it is difficult to establish a unified scale in academic empirical research—is used in the Japanese practical context. Therefore, we clarified the “meaning attributed to the concept of organizational capability” within Japanese Total Quality Management (TQM), which actively employed the term “organizational capability” to contribute to enhancing the international competitiveness of Japanese companies. As a result, it became evident that Japanese-style TQM standardized the “procedures” through which each company defines, implements, and evaluates organizational capability in accordance with its own context and not the “contents” of organizational capability itself. It also became clear that the organizational capability realized differs across companies. This can be viewed as a practical response by Japanese-style TQM to the research problem that assessing organizational capability retroactively based on outcomes tends to fall into a tautology. Therefore, in organizational capability research, rather than applying a uniform measure, it is necessary to carefully ascertain the organizational capability of each company through dialogue with practitioners while referencing standardized procedures.