Eight basic practices have been found to be characteristics of successfully managed companies.One of these is management's "bias toward action";
this was manifest in a willingness to experiment and take risks. In such a company all new ideas get tested and then get stored rather than discarded if they don't work right away. Long, detailed strategies are not the rule, and ideas are solicited from everyone, not just from corporate planners.
Many of these ideas are considered part of the management's conventional wisdom in highly profitable Japanese corporations but few of them are common practice in the majority of American business, many of which do not realized the New Law of Business Life: that strong cultures make for highly successful companies
What does the word "this" in line 3 refer to