Learning Across Product, Workgroup, and Geographic Boundaries

Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh PA

Investigators

Abstract

Learning Across Product, Workgroup, and Geographic Boundaries Organizational learning is critical to the performance and long-run success of firms and nations. Organi-zations that are able to learn from their experience and transfer the knowledge they acquire throughout their establishments are more successful than their counterparts that are less adept at organizational learning. Yet organizations vary significantly in their ability to learn with some organizations demonstrat-ing dramatic improvements and other organizations evidencing little or no learning. Leveraging extensive data collected over several years from a high technology, offshore product development and manufacturing facility of a U.S. firm, this project conducts three studies to shed light into learning across 1) product, 2) workgroup, and 3) geographic boundaries within the firm. Intellectual Merit: The first study focuses on organizational learning in a multi-product production envi-ronment with high turnover. Ninety percent of U.S. output comes from multi-product facilities. Yet past studies of organizational learning have focused primarily on production sites with a single product or a product with minor variations. This first study investigates how product mix and employee turnover affect performance, whether turnover is more harmful for certain products and processes than others, and whether turnover of individuals with certain skills and experiences is more harmful than turnover of other individuals. The second study examines knowledge transfer across workgroups. The third study sheds insights into whether moving product development closer to manufacturing helps performance, which product development activities may be important to co-locate, and the impact on performance of moving more product development activities offshore. As more manufacturing has moved overseas, there have been concerns that knowledge work, such as R&D, will follow. Broader Impact: These three studies provide empirical evidence about knowledge accumulation and transfer in an offshore environment, and thereby inform corporate decisions about offshoring as well as U.S. industrial and manufacturing policy.