Linda Argote was named the 2012 Distinguished Scholar by the Organization and Management Theory Division of the Academy of Management. She gave this presentation on the occasion of her award, August 6, 2012, in Boston, Mass.

1. Learning about
Organizational Learning
Linda Argote
Tepper School of Business
Carnegie Mellon University
OMT Distinguished Scholar Presentation
Academy of Management
August 2012

2. The Relationship Between Assembly
Hours Per Aircraft & Cumulative Output
Assembly Hours Per Aircraft
Cumulative Output
Reprinted from L. Argote and D. Epple, Learning curves in manufacturing, Science, Volume 247, Number
4945, (February, 1990). Copyright 1990, American Association for the Advancement of Science. Units omitted
to protect confidentiality of data.

3. Relationship Between Direct Labor Hours Per Truck
and Cumulative Output for Three Truck Plants
From Argote, L., & Epple, D. (1990). Learning curves in manufacturing. Science, 247, 920-924.

4. Research Questions
• Why are some organizations better at
learning from experience than others?
• Does organizational knowledge persist
through time or does it depreciate?
• Can organizational knowledge be transferred
from one establishment to another?

5. Factors Managers Identify as
Explaining the Learning Curve
• Increased proficiency of individuals
• Improved coordination and structures
• Improved tools and layout
• Better knowledge of who is good at what
– Transactive memory system

6. Early Streams of Research
on Organizational Learning
• Argyris & Schon, 1978
– Defensive routines prevent learning
• Cyert & March, 1963
– Experience coded into routines which affect
future behavior
• Dutton & Thomas, 1984
– Learning Curves – improvements in
performance associated with experience

7. Dramatic Increase in Organizational
Learning Research over Last 25 Years
• Research developments
– Levitt & March (1988) Annual Review of Sociology theory paper
– Developments in statistics and methods that enabled drawing
inferences from longitudinal field data (Miner & Mezias, 1996)
• Practical developments
– Many organizations, especially in U.S., experienced productivity
problems (Krugman, 1991)
– Concerns about knowledge retention as the baby boom starts
to retire
– Increasing globalization and distribution of work around the
globe
– Increasing use of multi-unit organizational form (Baum & Greve,
2001).

8. Increasing Interest in
Organizational Learning
• Special Issues
– Journal of Management Studies
• Easterby-Smith, Crossan & Nicollini, 2000
– Management Science
• Argote, McEvily & Reagans, 2003
– Organization Science
• Cohen & Sproull, 1991
• Grandori & Kogut, 2002
• Lampel, Shamsie & Shapira, 2009
– Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes
• Argote, Ingram, Levine & Moreland, 2000
– Strategic Management Journal
• Spender & Grant, 1996
• Helfat, 2000

9. Increasing Interest in
Organizational Learning
• Handbooks
– Handbook of Organizational Learning and Knowledge
• Dierkes, Antal, Child & Nonaka, 2001
– Blackwell Handbook of Organizational Learning and
Knowledge Management
• Easterby-Smith & Lyles, 2003
– Many books and articles

10. Organizational Learning
• Change in the group or organization associated with
experience
• Change in the group’s or organization's knowledge
associated with experience (Fiol & Lyles, 1985)
• Indicators of change in knowledge
– Change in cognitions (Huff & Jenkins, 2001)
– Change in routines (Cyert & March, 1963; Levitt &
March, 1988)
– Change in range of potential behavior (Huber, 1991)
– Change in characteristics of performance such as
speed, costs and quality (Argote & Epple, 1990;
Dutton & Thomas, 1984)

11. Levels of Analysis
• Learning occurs at different levels of analysis
– Reagans, Argote & Brooks, 2005
– Individual
– Group
– Organizational
• In order for learning to be organizational knowledge
has to be embedded in a supra-individual repository
– A practice or a routine
– A data base
– A transactive memory system

12. Current and Emerging
Research Themes
1. Characterizing experience
2. Importance of context
3. Organizational memory
4. Knowledge transfer
5. Implications for entrepreneurship and
strategic management

13. Theme 1: Characterizing Experience at a
Fine-Grained Level
• Reviews in Baum’s The Blackwell
Companion to Organizations
– Argote & Ophir, 2002
– Schulz, 2002
– Ingram, 2002

14. Dimension of Experience
(Argote & Todorova, 2007)
• Direct/Indirect (Darr, Argote & Epple, 1995)
• Tasks or relationships (Kim, 1997; Taylor & Greve, 2006)
• Spatial (Cramton, 2001; Cummings, 2004; Gibson &
Gibbs, 2006)
• Novelty (Katila & Ahuja, 2002)
• Heterogeneity (Haunschild & Sullivan, 2002)
• Ambiguity (Repenning & Sterman, 2002)
• Success/Failure (Sitkin, 1992; Denrell & March, 2001; Kim,
Kim & Miner, 2009)
• Temporal (frequency, recency, pace, timing) (Argote,
Beckman & Epple, 1990; Lampel, Shamsie & Shapira,
2009; Pisano, 1994; Ellis & Davedi, 2005; Starbuck, 2009)

15. Theme 1: Characterizing Experience
at a Fine-Grained Level
Argote & Miron-Spektor, 2011
– Provides a more unified treatment of experience to
identify conditions under which it improves, harms or
has no effect on learning processes and outcomes
– Enables understanding of relationships between
different types of experience: substitutes or
complements
• e.g., Wong, 2004; Haas & Hansen, 2004; Bresman, 2010
– Facilitates designing experience to promote
organizational learning

16. Theme 2: Importance of the Context
Context
• Includes the organization
– Culture − Goals
– Technology − Incentives
– Structure − Strategy
– Social networks
– Shared identities
• Includes the environment
– Relationships with other organizations
– Competitors − Institutions
– Clients − Regulators

17. Theme 2: Importance of the Context
• Context as contingency
Context
Experience Knowledge

18. Theme 2: Importance of the Context:
Structural Factors
• Semi-isolated subgroups with moderate cross-group
linkages promote organizational learning (Fang, Lee &
Schilling, 2010)
• Decentralization increases explorative learning (Jansen,
Van Den Bosch & Volberda, 2006), especially in uncertain
environments (Ethiraj & Levinthal, 2004; Siggelkow &
Levinthal, 2003; Siggelkow & Rivkin, 2005)
• Specialization and formalization increase learning at the
team level because they increase information sharing and
reduce conflict (Bunderson & Boumgarden, 2010).
• Specialist organizations benefit more from experience
than generalist organizations (Barnett, Greve & Park,
1994; Ingram & Baum, 1997; Haunschild & Sullivan, 2002)

19. Theme 2: Importance of the Context
• A culture of psychological safety facilitates
organizational learning (Edmondson, 1999)
• A “learning” (as opposed to a “performing”)
orientation facilitates organizational learning
up to a point (Bunderson & Sutcliffe, 2003)
• A superordinate identity facilitates learning
from the experience of others (Kane, Argote
& Levine, 2005)

20. A Theoretical Framework for Analyzing
Organizational Learning
Task
Experience
Argote & Miron-Spektor, 2011

21. Theme 3: Memory
• Does organizational knowledge decay or
depreciate?
• Argote, Beckman & Epple, 1990
• Darr, Argote & Epple, 1995
• Baum & Ingram, 1998
• Benkard, 2000
• Thompson, 2007

22. Theme 3: Memory
• Where and how is knowledge embedded in organizations?
– Walsh & Ungson, 1991; Argote & Ingram, 2000
• Very active research on two knowledge repositories
– Routines
• Winter, 1987
• Cohen & Bacdayan, 1994
• Feldman & Pentland, 2003
• Becker, 2004, 2008
– Transactive memory systems
• Wegner, 1986
• Liang, Moreland & Argote, 1995
• Hollingshead, 1998, 2001
• Faraj & Sproull, 2000
• Lewis, 2003, 2004
• Austin, 2003
• Lewis, Lange, & Gilles, 2005
• Majchrzak, Javernpaa & Hollinghsead, 2007
• Yuan, Fulk, Monge & Contractor, 2010
• Ren & Argote, 2011

23. Theme 3: Memory
Future Directions
• What explains variation in knowledge
depreciation?
• Does knowledge in different repositories decay at
different rates?
• Does knowledge acquired from different kinds of
experience decay at different rates?
– Madsen & Desai, 2010

24. Theme 4: Knowledge Transfer
• Does knowledge transfer within and between organizations?
– Epple, Argote & Devadas, 1991
– Darr, Argote & Epple, 1995
– Zander & Kogut, 1995
– Powell, Koput & Smith-Doerr, 1996
– Szulanski, 1996
– Baum & Ingram, 1998
– Almeida & Kogut, 1999
– Hansen, 1999
– Argote & Ingram, 2001
– Knott, 2001
– Reagans & McEvily, 2003
– Song, Almeida & Wu, 2003
– Zellmer-Bruhn, 2003
– Owen-Smith & Powell, 2004
– Wong, 2004
– Szulanski, Cappetta & Jensen, 2004
– Kane, Argote & Levine, 2005
– Bresman, 2010

25. Darr, Argote & Epple, 1995

26. Theme 4: Knowledge Transfer
• Current Themes
– What are effective mechanisms of knowledge transfer?
• Personnel movement (Almedia & Kogut,1999)
• Social networks (Reagans & McEvily, 2003)
• Alliances (Gulati, 1999; Rosenkopf & Almeida, 2003)
• Templates (Winter, Szulanski, Ringov & Jensen, 2012)
– What are conditions that facilitate or impede knowledge transfer?
• Characteristics of units
– Power and status (Contu & Wilmott, 2003; Sine, Shane & Di Gregorio,
2003)
• Characteristics of knowledge
– Tacitness (Hansen 1999)
• Characteristics of relationship between source and recipient
– Superordinate identity (Kane, Argote & Levine, 2005)
– Similarity (Darr & Kurtzberg, 2000)
– Quality of relationships (Szulanski, 1996)

27. Theme 4: Knowledge Transfer
and New Directions
• How do new tools, such as those enabled by Web 2.0
technologies, affect knowledge transfer?
• How is the process of learning from indirect
experience, knowledge transfer, similar to or different
from the process of learning from direct experience?
• What is the best learned through direct experience and
what is the best learned through indirect experience?
• What is the relationship between organizational
memory and knowledge transfer?
– Levine and Prietula (in press) showed that greater access to
organizational memory weakened the benefits of knowledge
transfer

28. Theme 5: Strategic Implications
• Previous experience is valuable for new
entrepreneurial ventures
– Philips, 2002
– Klepper & Sleeper, 2005
– Beckman & Burton, 2008
• What transfers from parent firms to new
ventures?

29. Theme 5: Strategic Implications
• A Transaction Memory System (TMS)
includes a collective awareness of “who
knows and does what” and a set of
frameworks and a shared language that
allows team members to coordinate their
joint activities (Wegner, 1987)
• Teams that develop a TMS outperform teams
that are unable to develop a TMS

30. Theme 5: Strategic Implications
Indirect Evidence Transactive Memory
Systems Transfer
• De novo firm with preproduction experience
performed better initially than de novo firms
without preproduction experience or de alio
firms. No evidence that technology explained
performance advantages (Carroll, Bigelow,
Seidel & Tsai, 1995)
• Failure rate of firm decreased as the
proportion of founding team members from a
parent firm increased and the number of
parent firms decreased (Philips, 2002)

31. Theme 5: Strategic Implications:
Indirect Evidence Transactive
Memory Systems Transfer
• Interfirm mobility has the greatest effect when
collectives rather than individuals move (Wezel,
Cattani & Pennings, 2006)
• Analysts who move with their teams perform better
than analysts who move solo (Groysberg & Lee,
2009)
• Surgeons who perform the same operation in
different hospitals differ dramatically in their
outcomes (Huckman & Pisano, 2006)
• Individuals moving with their team would have the
benefit of a transactive memory system while those
moving by themselves would not

32. Theme 5: Strategic Implications
• Transactive memory systems are a source of
competitive advantage (Argote & Ren, in press)
• Develop based on experience working together
(Liang, Moreland & Argote, 1995)
• Idiosyncratic to a particular organization: context
dependent
• Have many components which fit each other
• Can be adapted to new tasks (Lewis, Lange & Gillis,
2005) and facilitate innovation (Gino, Argote, Miron-
Spektor & Todorova, 2010)
• Hard for competitors to imitate

33. Thank you!