Dual Demands, Attention, and Organizational Learning: Spatial and Temporal Replication of Routines in Scaling Organizations

Abstract

The replication of routines is fundamental to knowledge transfer and retention in organizations. Because research on routine replication has historically been divided, proceeding within knowledge transfer (spatial replication) or knowledge retention (temporal replication), respectively, our understanding of how replicating routines in new organizational units (knowledge transfer) affects an organization’s capacity to maintain adherence to those routines over time at existing units (knowledge retention) remains limited. Drawing on the organizational learning and related evolutionary economics literature on routines as well as the multiple goals literature and using data on a Fortune 100 franchise chain being scaled in the United States with thousands of outlets opened over a period of 10 years, we examine whether and how knowledge transfer affects knowledge retention. Our primary thesis is that knowledge transfer and knowledge retention create competing demands for limited attention and therefore the need to allocate attention between them. We posit that this gives rise to a negative relationship between the spatial (knowledge transfer) and temporal (knowledge retention) replication of routines, although the effect can be mitigated by organizational learning from experience. We find robust empirical support for our propositions, pointing to important attention and learning mechanisms that shape the organizational capacity to simultaneously navigate knowledge transfer and retention demands, that is, replicate routines across both space and time.