Unravelling the Replication Dilemma

Leveraging a firm’s knowledge assets through the replication of its productive routines is a major driver of firm growth and profitability. Yet, replicating organizational routines is far from trivial. A fundamental tension, a "replication dilemma" (Winter and Szulanski 2001), often exists between the benefits of replicating a successful system of organizational routines (a template) precisely and the benefits of adapting it to fit the salient characteristics of new environments and incorporate new learning. While extant research suggests that firms often seek to attend to both competing goals, theoretical guidance on what factors determine the performance consequences of accurate replication versus local adaptation when reproducing an established template remains scarce. In this paper we aim to reconcile the differences between the adaptation and replication perspectives by proposing that unravelling the replication dilemma may involve examining how the type, timing, and local context of replication dete...