IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/inm/ormnsc/v41y1995i11p1750-1762.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Acquisition, Transfer, and Depreciation of Knowledge in Service Organizations: Productivity in Franchises

Author

Listed:
  • Eric D. Darr

    (The Anderson Graduate School of Management, UCLA, 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, California 90024-1481)

  • Linda Argote
  • Dennis Epple

    (Graduate School of Industrial Administration, Carnegie Mellon University, Schenley Park, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213)

Abstract

The paper examines the acquisition, depreciation and transfer of knowledge acquired through learning by doing in service organizations. The analysis is based on weekly data collected over a one and a half year period from 36 pizza stores located in Southwestern Pennsylvania. The 36 stores, which are franchised from the same corporation, are owned by 10 different franchisees. We find evidence of learning in these service organizations: as the organizations gain experience in production, the unit cost of production declines significantly. Knowledge acquired through learning by doing is found to depreciate rapidly in these organizations. Knowledge acquired through learning by doing is found to depreciate rapidly in these organizations. Knowledge is found to transfer across stores owned by the same franchisee but not across stores owned by different franchisees. Theoretical and practical implications of the work are discussed.

Suggested Citation

  • Eric D. Darr & Linda Argote & Dennis Epple, 1995. "The Acquisition, Transfer, and Depreciation of Knowledge in Service Organizations: Productivity in Franchises," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 41(11), pages 1750-1762, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:41:y:1995:i:11:p:1750-1762
    DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.41.11.1750
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.41.11.1750
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1287/mnsc.41.11.1750?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    Keywords

    organizational learning; learning curves; productivity; knowledge transfer;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I20 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - General
    • D80 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - General
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:41:y:1995:i:11:p:1750-1762. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Asher (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/inforea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.