An Opportunity for Mutual Learning between Organizational Learning and Global Strategy Researchers: Transactive Memory Systems

• Author: Linda Argote
• Date: 01 May 2015
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/gsj.1096
• Published date: 01 May 2015

AN OPPORTUNITY FOR MUTUAL LEARNING

BETWEEN ORGANIZATIONAL LEARNING AND

GLOBAL STRATEGY RESEARCHERS:

TRANSACTIVE MEMORY SYSTEMS

LINDA ARGOTE*

Tepper School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh,

Pennsylvania, U.S.A.

The concept of transactive memory systems affords an opportunity for organizational learning

and global strategy researchers to learn from each other to their mutual benefit.A transactive

memory system is a collective system for encoding, storing, and retrieving information. Teams

with well-developed transactive memory systems have been found to perform better on a

variety of tasks than teams lacking such memory systems. The preponderance of research on

transactive memory systems has been at the team level of analysis. I argue that extending the

concept of transactive memory to the organizational level and studying the concept in global

firms would advance knowledge about transactive memory systems as well as increase our

understanding of global strategy. Copyright © 2015 Strategic Management Society.

INTRODUCTION

Global strategy research aims to explain persistent

performance differences in global firms. Why do

some firms perform better than others? Organiza-

tional learning is one factor that explains these per-

formance differences. Firms that are able to learn

from experience and effectively manage the knowl-

edge they acquire are more successful than their

counterparts that are less adept at organizational

learning and knowledge management (Grant, 1996;

Zander and Kogut, 1995). Organizations vary sig-

nificantly, however, in the rate at which they learn,

with some organizations showing dramatic improve-

ment and others showing little or no improvement

with experience (Argote, 2013).

One of the key factors contributing to differences

in organizational learning is organizational memory.

Organizational memory is a mechanism through

which lessons of the past are stored in the organiza-

tion to affect performance in the future. Several con-

ceptualizations of organizational memory have been

developed (Argote and Ingram, 2000; Walsh and

Ungson, 1991). Transactive memory is a particular

form of collective memory. Transactive memory is

knowledge of who knows what and who is best at

doing what. This knowledge has been found to

improve team performance on a variety of tasks (Ren

and Argote, 2011).

Extending the concept of transactive memory to

the organizational level and analyzing it in global

firms would advance understanding of transactive

memory systems (TMS). Further, because transactive

memory systems can be a source of competitive

advantage in firms (Argote and Ren, 2012), studying

transactive memory systems in global firms would

advance understanding of global strategy.

These ideas are developed in the sections that

follow. I begin with an overview of organizational

Keywords: organizational learning; organizational knowledge;

global strategy; transactive memory systems; expertise; com-

petitive advantage

*Correspondence to: Linda Argote, Tepper School of Business,

Carnegie Mellon University, 5000 ForbesAve., Pittsburgh, PA

15213, U.S.A. E-mail: argote@cmu.edu

Global Strategy Journal

Global Strat. J., 5: 198–203 (2015)

Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI: 10.1002/gsj.1096

Copyright © 2015 Strategic Management Society