Creating, retaining, and transferring knowledge

[didit]

Introduction to the special issue on managing knowledge in organizations: Creating, retaining, and transferring knowledge
Linda Argote, Bill McEvily, Ray Reagans. Management Science. Linthicum: Apr 2003. Vol. 49, Iss. 4; pg. V


Copyright Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences Apr 2003


Interest in the issues of organizational learning and knowledge management on the part of academics and practitioners increased dramatically in recent years. On the practical side, changes in technology and modes of organizing work, globalization, and increased competition brought the issues of organizational learning and knowledge management to center stage for organizations. New developments in computing and information technology enabled the retention and transfer of information in organizations on a larger scale than was once possible. Shifts to more distributed modes of organizing work made knowledge transfer a priority for firms. The greater prevalence of the multiunit organizational form, such as a franchise or chain (Baum and Greve 2001), and the greater frequency of interorganizational relationships (Powell et al. 1996) also increased the importance of knowledge transfer for firms.

Parallel to the surge in interest among practitioners, academic interest in organizational learning and knowledge management also grew considerably, as evidenced by the proliferation of books and articles recently published on the subject.1 In addition, a number of special issues on knowledge management appeared in leading academic journals.2

Several developments or shifts in the academic literature contributed to the dramatic increase in research on organizational learning and knowledge management. Research in the learning-curve tradition documented persistent differences across firms or units of firms in their performance (e.g., Dutton and Thomas 1984, Argote and Epple 1990, Pisano et al. 2001). These studies provided evidence that important performance variation occurred at the level of the organization or organizational subunit. Consistent with this evidence, resource-based and evolutionary views of the firm became influential in the fields of strategy and organizational theory (Barney 1991, Montgomery 1995, Nelson 1991, Peteraf 1993, Teece 1998, Winter 1995). These theoretical perspectives emphasize differences across firms and aim to understand factors contributing to those differences (Rumelt 1991).

The concept of "capabilities" was introduced to explain these persistent performance differences (Dosi et al. 2000, Eisenhardt and Martin 2000, Helfat and Raubitschek 2000, Henderson and Cockburn 1994, Iansiti and Clark 1994, Klepper and Simons 2000). The concept of capabilities is so attractive because it puts content back into theories of organizations. While other theories emphasize the structure and process of organizational activities, knowledge-based theories emphasize the content of those activities (or what the organization comes to know) as an important explanatory variable of performance. Further, knowledge-based theories are inherently dynamic. The theories aim to capture and explain changes in the content and distribution of knowledge over time and the effect of those changes on organizational performance. Thus, knowledge-based approaches complement organizational theories that emphasize structure and process. Together, the different frameworks provide a more complete picture of organizational performance than each could accomplish alone.
Research on organizational learning and knowledge management focuses on a fundamental set of questions. How do organizations create knowledge and what factors influence that process? How do organizations retain the knowledge they create? Where is knowledge embedded in organizations and how do those repositories affect its retention and subsequent use? How is knowledge transferred within organizations and what factors facilitate (or inhibit) its transfer? Do the factors that facilitate transfer inside the organization promote transfer across organizational boundaries? Although early work in this tradition focused more on the processes of learning and knowledge transfer and their effects on organizational outcomes, more recent work added the element of managing a firm's stock of knowledge for competitive advantage (Argote and Ingram 2000, Helfat 2000, Kogut and Zander 1996).
The papers appearing in this Management Science special issue address various aspects of the fundamental questions about how organizations create, retain, and transfer knowledge. On the question of knowledge creation, papers in this special issue deal with knowledge creation issues include the following: Creative problem solving in technical support (Das); recombining old knowledge to produce new knowledge (Gittleman and Kogut); patenting, stemming from the mobility of human capital (Song, Almeida, and Wu); the generation of innovative financial instruments in interorganizational relations (Uzzi and Lancaster); the emergence of idiosyncratic knowledge in organizations (Weber and Camerer). Papers appearing in the special issue also address the question of knowledge retention in terms of relational characteristics that affect knowing "who knows what" (Borgatti and Cross) and problem-solving moves that invoke the retrieval of solutions (Das).

Relative to knowledge creation and retention questions, however, a large number of papers in the special issue devote attention to knowledge transfer. One set of papers focuses on knowledge transfer between organizations, via interfirm networks (Uzzi and Lancaster) and personnel mobility (Song, Almeida, and Wu), and between communities of practice via boundary spanners (Gittleman and Kogut). Another group of papers examines how knowledge transfer is affected by the internalization of activities, whether by merger (Menon and Pfeffer, and Weber and Camerer) or vertical integration (Sorenson). Other papers investigate the effects of informal social structure and stratification, such as status (Thomas-Hunt, Ogden, and Neale) and prestige (Sine, Shane, and DiGregorio), on knowledge transfer. A fourth set of papers emphasizes various aspects of the process through which knowledge is transferred, including search and information seeking (Borgatti and Cross), training (Nadler, Thompson, and van Boven), the "organizing moves" used to solve problems (Das), and interruptions to team activities (Zellmer-Bruhn). A final set of papers explores how knowledge creation and transfer is affected by features of the external environment, including the intensity of competition (Chang and Harrington), the composition of customer market segments (Lee, Lee, and Lee), and the turbulence of the environment (Sorenson).

This special issue of Management Science builds on and complements previous research on knowledge management. Consistent with the mission of Management Science, the special issue provides an interdisciplinary treatment of knowledge management. Because the topic of knowledge management spans disciplines, we believe that an interdisciplinary approach is particularly fruitful for moving the field forward. The papers appearing in this special issue represent different disciplines, including organizational behavior and theory, information systems, psychology, sociology, economics, and strategy. The papers describe work at different levels of analysis ranging from the small group to the organizational to the interorganizational levels.
In addition to being grounded in multiple disciplines, the special issue of Management Science is rooted in empirical work. Because we felt that conceptual papers had outpaced empirical evidence in the area of knowledge management, we were particularly interested in empirical papers that provided new evidence about the phenomenon. We are delighted with the quality of empirical papers and the diversity of methods and empirical contexts that are represented in the special issue. The papers are based on archival, survey, laboratory, qualitative, and simulation methods. Moreover, the field studies focus on firms in different industries, such as pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, computers, and financial services.
The special issue was coordinated with a conference at Carnegie Mellon University in September 2001. The conference and special issue were supported by the Carnegie Bosch Institute (CBI) for International Management at Carnegie Mellon University and by the National Science Foundation (NSF), Grant SES-0004283, 2001-2002. We wish to thank the Carnegie Bosch Institute and the National Science Foundation for their generous support. Special thanks are due to Michael Trick, Director of the CBI, and Hau Lee, the former editor-in-chief at Management Science, for their support and encouragement of the special issue.

The papers appearing in this special issue are representative of a large and impressive body of research on knowledge management currently underway. The vitality of this field of research is evidenced by the response to our Call for Papers for the special issue, which was extraordinary: We received over 100 submissions. Although we were able to accept only a small number of them, the quantity and quality of submissions are indicators of the significant interest in the topic of managing knowledge in organizations. We wish to thank all of the authors who allowed us to consider their research for the special issue.

Submissions were reviewed by the editorial board of the Department of Organizational Performance, Strategy and Design at Management Science, augmented by other individuals with special expertise in the area. We wish to thank the following special issue associate editors for their expert judgment and thoughtful advice:
Paul Almeida, Georgetown University
Philip Bromiley, University of Minnesota
Richard M. Burton, Duke University
John S. Carroll, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cheryl Gaimon, Georgia Institute of Technology
Pamela Haunschild, University of Texas at Austin
Andrea B. Hollingshead, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Paul Ingram, Columbia University
Adam B. Jaffe, Brandeis University
John Kagel, Ohio State University
Bruce Kogut, INSEAD
David Krackhardt, Carnegie Mellon University
Kyle Lewis, University of Texas at Austin
Susan McEvily, University of Pittsburgh,
Steve Mezias, New York University
Anne Miner, University of Wisconsin
Richard Moreland, University of Pittsburgh
Katherine W. Phillips, Northwestern University
Peter Roberts, Columbia University
Sandra Slaughter, Carnegie Mellon University
Gabriel Szulanski, INSEAD
Pamela Tolbert, Cornell University
Robert Zmud, The University of Oklahoma
We also wish to thank the reviewers for their important contributions to the special issue. Jennifer Kukawa, our administrative assistant deserves special thanks for the outstanding job that she did coordinating the special issue and conference. Finally, we wish to thank the authors of the papers in the special issue for the exceptional quality of their research and their responsiveness to reviewers' feedback.
At the outset of this project we had several goals in mind. One was to disseminate important new research findings about knowledge management. A second goal was to identify current themes in research on organizational learning and knowledge management. Third, we wanted to identify gaps in our understanding of knowledge management and to suggest directions for future research that are likely to be fruitful. A fourth goal was to stimulate future research about knowledge creation, retention, and transfer in organizations. Ultimately, the test of whether we have fulfilled these objectives is if the special issue stimulates future research on the important topic of managing knowledge in organizations. We hope that the special issue will be a valuable resource to individuals interested in knowledge management for many years to come.

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Vol. 49, No. 4, April 2003, pp. v-viii

[Footnote]

1 Examples of books and articles on organizational learning and knowledge management include: Argote (1999), Argyris (1992), Brown and Duguid (1991), Davenport and Prusak (1998), Kogut and Zander (1992), Leonard-Barton (1995), Levitt and March (1988), Levinthal and March (1993), March (1991), Miner and Mezias (1996), Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995), Winter and Szulanski (2000).

2 Special issues of academic journals on organizational learning and knowledge management were published by: Argote et al. (2000), Cohen and Sproull (1991), Grandori and Kogut (2002), Helfat (2001), Spender and Grant (1996).

[Reference]

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[Author Affiliation]

Linda Argote [bullet] Bill McEvily [bullet] Ray Reagans

Graduate School of Industrial Administration, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213

Graduate School of Industrial Administration, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213

Columbia Business School, Columbia University, New York, New York 10027

argote@andrew.cmu.edu [bullet] bmcevily@andrew.cmu.edu [bullet] rr2018@columbia.edu