New BetaCodex Network paper by Niels Pflaeging: "Deming in Japan, 1950-1965"

Deming with a group of businessmen, their wives and geishas, partially left black-and-white. Photo courtesy of the Deming Institute, www.deming.org

The network's 23rd research paper sheds a new (and colored) light on the work of W. Edwards Deming in the post-war years in Japan.

Deming's work in the war-torn country did not just reshape Japan's industry: it also changed the history of management. With its 23rd research paper, the BetaCodex Network returns to the topic of management history – after a 4-paper stint into patterns emerging in organizational transformation.

“This is our first research paper that’s pretty much built around photos," says BetaCodex Network founder Niels Pflaeging. "It’s a rather unusual approach to management research, granted. But I hope this paper will change readers’ minds about that particular period of history, about the work of W. Edwards Deming, and about how the alternative to command-and-control management gained its first world-famous case, which is Toyota."

In the previous four installments, Niels Pflaeging and his writing partner Silke Hermann wrote about patterns they observed in their consulting work with companies, applying the OpenSpace Beta, Cell Structure Design and Relative Targets approaches, combined. “We needed to share the patterns we had discovered, or learned more about since 2019,” Niels explains. “So we put out four papers, all in all, to cover our most important findings. After the fourth paper of the series, I felt it was time to return to how contemporary thinking on organizations has emerged, and how it found its first practical applications in practice.”

A period of time, a country, a man

Niels Pflaeging explains why he chose this particular topic for his research paper: “The 15 years from 1950 to 1965 mark a crucial period, both in W. Edwards Deming’s life, and also in the history of management: During this period, Deming managed to leave a mark on Japanese managers and industry, to move beyond the technical and into management learning – with the wide-ranging implications for Japan’s economy and the world economy we have heard to much about. It was in Japan in 1950 that Deming first managed to reach a crucial audience: industrialists and executives. It was in 1950 that Deming started to hone his message for executives, and to turn the search for quality into an economic quest, a political one even. The implications of that shift in perception were dramatic.

The results started emerging in 1951, during Deming’s next visit to Japan, and they had more fully manifested by 1960. Five more years on, in the 15th year of the Deming Prize, Toyota is awarded the Deming Prize, during a ceremony in Tokyo, at which Dr. Deming also speaks. At this point , one might say that Deming’s key work in Japan had been accomplished. It had reached tens of thousands in Japan and attracted public interest. It was bearing fruit more widely, throughout the Japanese economy.” The repercussions on management technique of Deming’s work during this time were equally wide-ranging: “Much of what we know today as Quality Management, as Lean Management or Agile has its roots in this period of time, and in Toyota’s practice that emerged during that era.”

Making management history present in our times

There is another, rather practical reason why Niels Pflaeging decided to highlight Dr. Deming and Japan, combined with this period of history, in the network’s 23rd research paper: “It has to do with the photos themselves. When I sifted through available photos of Deming, I found that the photos from Japan depicted him in particularly interesting situations and greatly varying contexts: Visiting factories, lecturing, in work meetings, in social situations or just traveling. Those photos from Japan give a vivid picture of an era that is now perceived as ‘ancient history‘ by most of us. Also, very importantly: The photos from the 1950s and 1960s were all black-and-white, seeming rather antiquated. With recent coloring software, it is possible to make those 70-year-old photos look vivid, fresh and less distant.” There was a problem, though: “The photos did not make much sense to me at first. I did not understand clearly what Deming had done in Japan, and when, and how the events that were depicted in the photos were tied together. So I had to do a bit of research to figure out the big picture, and tie all the knots together.”

Niels adds: “The first photo I tried the coloring with was a professional photography from 1951 in Tokyo, with Deming sitting amidst a group businessmen, their wives and some geishas. After coloring, the liveliness of the setting, the colorful robes and the beauty of the whole picture just blew me away!”