Gabriel Szulanski

When and How Trustworthiness Matters: Knowledge Transfer and the Moderating Effect of Causal Ambiguity

The recognition that better use of existing internal knowledge could enhance survival chances of organizations has spawned substantial interest in the transferability of routinized, experiential learning to additional settings within the organization. Previous research has established that trustworthiness of the source enhances such knowledge transfer. More recent work, however, suggests that this may not always be the case. Yet, little systematic attention has been paid to moderating conditions. The major purpose of this paper is to identify a moderator, causal ambiguity, which delineates the conditions as to when and how a recipients perception of the trustworthiness of a source affects the effectiveness of the transfer of organizational practices.

Reproducing Knowledge: Inaccurate Replication and Failure in Franchise Organizations

The recognition that better use of existing knowledge can enhance performance has spawned substantial interest in the replication of productive knowledge within organizations. An enduring belief is that when expanding by replication, organizations can and should strive to adapt to fit the salient characteristics of new environments. Yet some have argued that the exploitation of an established template for doing business by replication can be more successful when the template is copied precisely. Using unique longitudinal data, we report a large-sample empirical investigation of the survival consequences of accurate replication versus local adaptation by examining the effect that deviation from the template has on the survival chances of franchise units within a large franchise organization.

Overcoming Stickiness: How the Timing of Knowledge Transfer Methods Affects Transfer Difficulty

Knowledge transfer can be facilitated through the judicious timing of transfer methods. Yet, extant research has neglected the impact of the timing of transfer methods. Departing from this observation, we theorize the existence of two knowledge transfer modes—“front-loading” and “back-loading”—based on whether the affordance for tacit knowledge exchange provided by the transfer methods used is higher during the initiation or during the implementation phase of a transfer. We suggest that the impact of front-loading and back-loading on transfer difficulty is contingent on the causal ambiguity of the knowledge being transferred and on the arduousness of the relationship between the source and the recipient of knowledge. We operationalize front-loading and back-loading and test our propositions using primary data on 2,711 instances of method use in 116 transfers of 37 organizational practices in 8 companies. We hypothesize and find empirical support for the claim that front-loading affordance for tacit knowledge exchange reduces transfer difficulty when the causal ambiguity of the knowledge to be transferred is high, whereas it increases difficulty when the relationship between the source and recipient of knowledge is arduous.

Adaptation of Know-how for Cross-border Transfer

A central tenet in various streams of literature is the need to attend to key factors in the environment when adapting organizational practices transferred across borders. More recently scholars have examined the need to focus on key factors of the practice itself. We explore the intersection of these two factors with an in-depth, five-year longitudinal study of the transfer of franchising know-how from the US to Israel.

The Past, Present, and Future of Organizational Learning Research A Conversation With Professor Linda Argote

We share an interview on the past, present, and future of organizational learning research from the perspective of one of the field’s foundational contributors—Professor Linda Argote (Tepper School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University). This interview was held at the 2013 Strategic Management Society (SMS) annual conference in Atlanta, continuing the emerging tradition of bringing the SMS Knowledge and Innovation Group closer to the people who wrote important, foundational papers at the intersection of strategy, knowledge, and innovation.

Leadership, Innovation, and Strategic Change A Conversation With Michael Tushman

Continuing the emerging tradition of the Knowledge and Innovation (K&I) Interest Group at the Strategic Management Society (SMS) Conference to interview foundational scholars in strategic management, we invited Professor Michael Tushman from Harvard Business School (HBS) as our guest of honor this year. The interview provided a rare opportunity to get behind the scenes of the author’s much celebrated scholarly contribution to the field as well as his responses to some of the new findings within and across his work over time.

Heuristics to Navigate Uncertainties: Interview With Professor Kathleen M. Eisenhardt

Kathleen Eisenhardt made numerous theoretical and methodological contributions to the fields of entrepreneurship, organization theory, and strategy. This interview focuses on her perspectives on how organizations in high-velocity environments can navigate technological uncertainties in fast-paced markets. In addition to clarifying her research contributions, she provides rare insight into her own academic development, her belief in teaching and mentoring, and her stance on intriguing issues future research should address.

On the Foundations of Organizational Knowledge Interview With Professor Sidney G. Winter

This interview is focused on the core ideas of Sidney Winter’s work, with special emphasis on his contributions to the understanding of organizational knowledge and on synthesizing and situating those ideas in the broader context of management theory. We conducted the interview on November 6, 2011, during the Knowledge and Innovation Interest Group’s pre-conference program of the Strategic Management Society (SMS) annual conference in Miami.