Overcoming stickiness: An empirical investigation of the role of the template in the replication of organizational routines

Knowledge assets are fundamental sources of competitive advantage. Accordingly, the prosperity of firms is increasingly predicated on their ability to mobilize those assets so that they can be properly exploited. Yet, valuable knowledge assets are often complex, intangible, and tacit organizational attributes embedded in organizational routines and are hard to mobilize. Thus, the reality of knowledge transfer rarely lives up to expectations. A central tenet in viewing transfers of knowledge as the replication of organizational routines is the importance of the template. We hypothesize that a template, i.e. a working example, is essential in replicating knowledge assets effectively. In this paper, we explore this hypothesis with a case study that takes the form of a naturally occurring, repeated‐treatment quasi‐experiment. The ‘treatment,’ in this case, is determined by the use of a template that serves to guide the replication. The extent of stickiness in the transfer of marketing practices is then observed. The setting is Rank Xerox, the European subsidiary of Xerox. The unfolding of this experiment was closely monitored over an eight‐year period. The findings support the hypothesized impact of the template on stickiness. The findings suggest also that the template serves also a persuasive role that is not articulated in the original theoretical portrayal of replication. Moreover the results suggest an actionable lever to overcome difficulty, i.e. an actionable lever to enhance the utilization of scarce, hard to transfer knowledge assets.