The Acquisition, Transfer, and Depreciation of Knowledge in Service Organizations: Productivity in Franchises

Eric D. Darr, Linda Argote and Dennis Epple
Additional contact information
Eric D. Darr: The Anderson Graduate School of Management, UCLA, 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, California 90024-1481

Management Science, 1995, vol. 41, issue 11, 1750-1762

Abstract: The paper examines the acquisition, depreciation and transfer of knowledge acquired through learning by doing in service organizations. The analysis is based on weekly data collected over a one and a half year period from 36 pizza stores located in Southwestern Pennsylvania. The 36 stores, which are franchised from the same corporation, are owned by 10 different franchisees. We find evidence of learning in these service organizations: as the organizations gain experience in production, the unit cost of production declines significantly. Knowledge acquired through learning by doing is found to depreciate rapidly in these organizations. Knowledge acquired through learning by doing is found to depreciate rapidly in these organizations. Knowledge is found to transfer across stores owned by the same franchisee but not across stores owned by different franchisees. Theoretical and practical implications of the work are discussed.

Keywords: organizational learning; learning curves; productivity; knowledge transfer (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1995
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (288)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.41.11.1750 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The Acquisition, Transfer and Depreciation of Knowledge in Service Organisations: Productivity in Franchises (1995)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:41:y:1995:i:11:p:1750-1762

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Management Science from INFORMS Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Asher ().