Udo Zander and Bruce Kogut. Knowledge and the Speed of the Transfer and Imitation of Organizational Capabilities: An Empirical Test. Organization Science, February 1995. doi:10.1287/orsc.6.1.76.
@article{zander_knowledge_1995,
abstract = {The capabilities of a firm, or any organization, lie primarily in the organizing principles by which individual and functional expertise is structured, coordinated, and communicated. Firms are social communities which use their relational structure and shared coding schemes to enhance the transfer and communication of new skills and capabilities. To replicate new knowledge in the absence of a social community is difficult. A classic demonstration is the well-studied problem of the transfer across country borders of manufacturing capabilities that support production of new product innovations. We show in this article that the degree of codification and how easily capabilities are taught has a significant influence on the speed of transfer. What makes the question of knowledge codification particularly interesting is that firms compete not only through the creation, replication, and transfer of their own knowledge, but also through their ability to imitate the product innovations of competitors. The capacit...},
author = {Zander, Udo and Kogut, Bruce},
doi = {10.1287/orsc.6.1.76},
journal = {Organization Science},
language = {en},
month = {February},
shorttitle = {Knowledge and the {{Speed}} of the {{Transfer}} and {{Imitation}} of {{Organizational Capabilities}}},
title = {Knowledge and the {{Speed}} of the {{Transfer}} and {{Imitation}} of {{Organizational Capabilities}}: {{An Empirical Test}}},
year = {1995}
}