Understanding the Management Practices of the Pacific Rim Timothy D. Hill, Ph.D Copyright © 1988 - All parts in all forms, Dr. Timothy D. Hill Contents Well, I said I would make some of the content of the book available here, and that's what I've done! I've kept this as largely text-based to accommodate browsers with lower bandwidth internationally. I have make this work freely available on the Web because the book continues to generate operations and production questions from all over the world. Now, years since I started this line of research and sharing, I still get 2-3 questions a week! I was the first person to introduce the term "Paradigm" when discussing organizations. Kuhn ("The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" used to the term paradigm to suggest the cognitive "set" or "style" of people within a field of endeavour. In the mid-80's, I was looking for a term similar to Kuhn's, but without any psycho-babble connotations. (It would also save the embarassment of calling "old" paradigm people cognitively rigid! In the end, I decided to use Kuhn's term, and to refer to old paradigm organizations as those who were stuck in old or counter-productive work styles. Conversely, the new paradigm organizations were the ones who had championed newer work styles. It also cut short any diatribe about "us" versus "them" or North America versus Japan -- arguments that were heard at that time.