Originally found at Business Insider Japan, by Akie Iriyama. Excerpt below translated with Google Translate.

I am currently at Waseda University Business School, a graduate school for working adults, and I read seminars with seminar students, many of whom are employees of major and medium-sized companies, and cutting-edge business administration treatises published in top overseas academic journals. I am trying to match this with the current state of work of the students. It is truly an "ultimate round trip of knowledge between abstract and reality."

By matching cutting-edge academic knowledge with the voices of young working people who are currently at the forefront of business, we can gain new insights and insights.

Consider a paper entitled "A (Blurry) Vision of the Future: How Leader Rhetoric about Ultimate Goals Influences Performance," published in the top academic journal of business administration, Academy of Management Journal, in 2014. It was written by young researchers including Andrew Carton of the University of Pennsylvania.

In a nutshell, this treatise is a study of "how leaders should talk to their subordinates about their vision."

As I have emphasized many times, vision is very important to the company. It is most important for leaders and managers to set a long-term vision such as "what is our company for" and "what kind of future we will create and contribute to the world" and convey it to employees. It 's one of the important jobs.

Employees can do their best because they sympathize with and agree with that vision. We are "hungry" for the future of the company, so even if there are some difficulties, we can move forward together toward our vision.

However, it is also true that many Japanese companies have a weak management vision in the first place. However, in an era of rapid change where innovation is required for every company, companies that cannot convince their employees to adopt a big vision will be eliminated.

In fact, perhaps because of that background, I think that the number of top Japanese companies who talk about their vision has increased. In the venture industry, it's already natural for top management to talk about their vision.

Conversely, it is natural for managers to talk about their vision overseas, such as in Europe and the United States. That is why some treatises study "how leaders talk about their vision."

Continue reading the original article (in Japanese) at Business Insider Japan.

Read the original research in Academy of Management Journal.

Learn more about the AOM Scholars and explore their work:

• Andrew M. Carton, University of Pennsylvania
• Chad Murphy, Oregon State University
• Jonathan R. Clark, Pennsylvania State University