IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/esi/evopap/2005-15.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Replicating Organizational Knowledge: Principles or Templates?

Author

Listed:
  • C. Baden-Fuller
  • S.G. Winter

Abstract

We discuss how firms can replicate practices and knowledge embedded in practices by following principles, with no direct reference to an extant working example (template). Definitions are provided for the key concepts of templates, principles, and background knowledge. We address the challenges of providing operational measures for successful replication, and for comparing the efficacy of principles and templates. By using two longitudinal case studies of replication across the units of two multi-unit organizations, we support the central claim that in certain circumstances replication by principles can be as speedy and cost effective as replication with templates, and deliver results of comparable quality. The principle contingencies affecting the relative performance of the two methods are identified. We also point out that replication efforts can be a source or incubator, as well as an application area, for dynamic capabilities in an organization. We briefly suggest what the results may mean for theories of knowledge-based competition.

Suggested Citation

  • C. Baden-Fuller & S.G. Winter, 2005. "Replicating Organizational Knowledge: Principles or Templates?," Papers on Economics and Evolution 2005-15, Philipps University Marburg, Department of Geography.
    • Handle: RePEc:esi:evopap:2005-15
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: ftp://137.248.191.199/RePEc/esi/discussionpapers/2005-15.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bruce Kogut & Udo Zander, 1992. "Knowledge of the Firm, Combinative Capabilities, and the Replication of Technology," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 3(3), pages 383-397, August.
    2. Paul S. Adler & Barbara Goldoftas & David I. Levine, 1999. "Flexibility Versus Efficiency? A Case Study of Model Changeovers in the Toyota Production System," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 10(1), pages 43-68, February.
    3. Michael A. Lapré & Luk N. Van Wassenhove, 2001. "Creating and Transferring Knowledge for Productivity Improvement in Factories," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 47(10), pages 1311-1325, October.
    4. Pablo Martin de Holan & Nelson Phillips, 2004. "Remembrance of Things Past? The Dynamics of Organizational Forgetting," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 50(11), pages 1603-1613, November.
    5. Lazaric, Nathalie & Mangolte, Pierre-Andre & Massue, Marie-Laure, 2003. "Articulation and codification of collective know-how in the steel industry: evidence from blast furnace control in France," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 32(10), pages 1829-1847, December.
    6. von Hippel, Eric & Tyre, Marcie J., 1995. "How learning by doing is done: problem identification in novel process equipment," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 24(1), pages 1-12, January.
    7. D. Charles Galunic & Kathleen M. Eisenhardt, 1996. "The Evolution of Intracorporate Domains: Divisional Charter Losses in High-Technology, Multidivisional Corporations," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 7(3), pages 255-282, June.
    8. Hyde, Charles K., 1984. "United States and Canada - From the American System to Mass Production, 1800–1932: The Development of Manufacturing Technology in the United States. By David A. Hounshell. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 44(4), pages 1114-1116, December.
    9. Kathleen M. Eisenhardt & Jeffrey A. Martin, 2000. "Dynamic capabilities: what are they?," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 21(10‐11), pages 1105-1121, October.
    10. Sidney G. Winter & Gabriel Szulanski, 2001. "Replication as Strategy," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 12(6), pages 730-743, December.
    11. Udo Zander & Bruce Kogut, 1995. "Knowledge and the Speed of the Transfer and Imitation of Organizational Capabilities: An Empirical Test," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 6(1), pages 76-92, February.
    12. Cowan, Robin & David, Paul A & Foray, Dominique, 2000. "The Explicit Economics of Knowledge Codification and Tacitness," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 9(2), pages 211-253, June.
    13. Gary Hamel, 1991. "Competition for competence and interpartner learning within international strategic alliances," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 12(S1), pages 83-103, June.
    14. de Holan Pablo Martin & Nelson Phillips, 2004. "Remembrance of things past? : The Dynamics of Organizational Forgetting," Post-Print hal-02312935, HAL.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Martin J. Eppler & Friederike Hoffmann & Sabrina Bresciani, 2011. "New Business Models Through Collaborative Idea Generation," International Journal of Innovation Management (ijim), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 15(06), pages 1323-1341.
    2. Roger D. Congleton, 2010. "On the Evolution of Organizational Government," Papers on Economics and Evolution 2010-09, Philipps University Marburg, Department of Geography.
    3. Anja Danner-Schröder & Daniel Geiger, 2016. "Unravelling the Motor of Patterning Work: Toward an Understanding of the Microlevel Dynamics of Standardization and Flexibility," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 27(3), pages 633-658, June.
    4. Łukasik Paweł, 2019. "Creative Industries and Knowledge Replication," Management Sciences. Nauki o Zarządzaniu, Sciendo, vol. 24(3), pages 10-15, September.
    5. Roger D. Congleton, 2015. "On the Evolution of Organizational Governance: Divided Governance and Survival in the Long Run," Working Papers 15-25, Department of Economics, West Virginia University.
    6. Davies, Andrew & Frederiksen, Lars & Cacciatori, Eugenia & Hartmann, Andreas, 2018. "The long and winding road: Routine creation and replication in multi-site organizations," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 47(8), pages 1403-1417.
    7. Shad Morris & James Oldroyd & Ryan T. Allen & Daniel Han Ming Chng & Jian Han, 2023. "From local modification to global innovation: How research units in emerging economies innovate for the world," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 54(3), pages 418-440, April.
    8. Agnieszka Dziubinska, 2017. "The institutional innovation in terms of transition of the environment (Innowacja instytucjonalna w warunkach transformacji otoczenia)," Research Reports, University of Warsaw, Faculty of Management, vol. 2(24), pages 48-59.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Linda Argote & Sunkee Lee & Jisoo Park, 2021. "Organizational Learning Processes and Outcomes: Major Findings and Future Research Directions," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(9), pages 5399-5429, September.
    2. Wolfgang H. Güttel & Stefan Konlechner & Barbara Müller, 2012. "Entscheidungsmuster und Veränderungsarchitekturen in Wandelprozessen: Eine Dynamic Capabilities-Perspektive," Schmalenbach Journal of Business Research, Springer, vol. 64(6), pages 630-654, September.
    3. Lee, Po-Yen & Lin, Hui-Tzu & Chen, Hung-Hsin & Shyr, Yi-Hwan, 2011. "Dynamic capabilities exploitation of market and hierarchy governance structures: An empirical comparison of Taiwan and South Korea," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 46(3), pages 359-370, July.
    4. Gianni Lorenzoni, 2010. "Genesis of a research field: district, network, strategic network," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 14(3), pages 221-239, August.
    5. Ghauri, Pervez & Wang, Fatima & Elg, Ulf & Rosendo-Ríos, Veronica, 2016. "Market driving strategies: Beyond localization," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 69(12), pages 5682-5693.
    6. Cynthia A. Lengnick-Hall & Robert J. Griffith, 2007. "Knowledge Resources, Exploration, and Exploitation: A New Perspective on the Interplay Between Innovation and Application," Working Papers 0027, College of Business, University of Texas at San Antonio.
    7. Koen H. Heimeriks & Geert Duysters, 2007. "Alliance Capability as a Mediator Between Experience and Alliance Performance: An Empirical Investigation into the Alliance Capability Development Process," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44(1), pages 25-49, January.
    8. Szulanski, Gabriel, 2000. "The Process of Knowledge Transfer: A Diachronic Analysis of Stickiness," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 82(1), pages 9-27, May.
    9. Guo, Jingjing & Guo, Bin & Zhou, Jianghua & Wu, Xiaobo, 2020. "How does the ambidexterity of technological learning routine affect firm innovation performance within industrial clusters? The moderating effects of knowledge attributes," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 155(C).
    10. Maurizio Zollo & Sidney G. Winter, 2002. "Deliberate Learning and the Evolution of Dynamic Capabilities," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 13(3), pages 339-351, June.
    11. Heimeriks, K. & Duysters, G.M., 2004. "A study into the alliance capability development process," Working Papers 04.21, Eindhoven Center for Innovation Studies.
    12. Chen, Hung-hsin & Lee, Po-yen & Lay, Tzyy-jane, 2009. "Drivers of dynamic learning and dynamic competitive capabilities in international strategic alliances," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 62(12), pages 1289-1295, December.
    13. Jaideep Anand & Raffaele Oriani & Roberto S. Vassolo, 2010. "Alliance Activity as a Dynamic Capability in the Face of a Discontinuous Technological Change," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 21(6), pages 1213-1232, December.
    14. Vikas A. Aggarwal, 2020. "Resource congestion in alliance networks: How a firm's partners’ partners influence the benefits of collaboration," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 41(4), pages 627-655, April.
    15. Henri A. Schildt & Markku V.J. Maula & Thomas Keil, 2005. "Explorative and Exploitative Learning from External Corporate Ventures," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 29(4), pages 493-515, July.
    16. Pettus, Michael L. & Kor, Yasemin Y. & Mahoney, Joseph T., 2007. "A Theory of Change in Turbulent Environments: The Sequencing of Dynamic Capabilities Following Industry Deregulation," Working Papers 07-0100, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, College of Business.
    17. Zhang-Zhang, YingYing & Rohlfer, Sylvia & Varma, Arup, 2022. "Strategic people management in contemporary highly dynamic VUCA contexts: A knowledge worker perspective," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 144(C), pages 587-598.
    18. Gopesh Anand & John Gray & Enno Siemsen, 2012. "Decay, Shock, and Renewal: Operational Routines and Process Entropy in the Pharmaceutical Industry," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 23(6), pages 1700-1716, December.
    19. H. Martinez & A. Jaime & J. Camacho, 2012. "Relative absorptive capacity: a research profiling," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 92(3), pages 657-674, September.
    20. Frank T. Rothaermel & Maria Tereza Alexandre, 2009. "Ambidexterity in Technology Sourcing: The Moderating Role of Absorptive Capacity," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 20(4), pages 759-780, August.

    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:esi:evopap:2005-15. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Christoph Mengs (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vamarde.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.