Learning Across Product, Workgroup, and Geographic Boundaries

跨产品、工作组和地理界限的学习

• 批准号: 0965442
• 负责人: Erica Fuchs
• 金额: $ 70.78万
• 依托单位: Carnegie-Mellon University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2010
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2010-06-01 至 2014-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0965442&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Learning; Across; Product; Workgroup; Geographic

Learning Across Product, Workgroup, and Geographic BoundariesOrganizational 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.

跨产品、工作组和地理边界的学习组织学习对公司和国家的绩效和长期成功至关重要。能够从他们的经验中学习并将他们获得的知识转移到整个机构中的组织比那些不太擅长组织学习的同行更成功。然而，组织在学习能力方面存在很大差异，一些组织表现出巨大的进步，而另一些组织则表现出很少或根本没有学习。利用从一家美国公司的高科技、离岸产品开发和制造设施收集的多年来的大量数据，该项目进行了三项研究，以揭示公司内部跨1）产品、2）业务和3）地理边界的学习。智力价值：第一个研究集中在高流动率的多产品生产环境中的组织学习。美国90%的产量来自多产品设施。然而，过去的研究组织学习主要集中在生产现场与单一产品或产品与微小的变化。第一项研究调查了产品组合和员工流动率如何影响绩效，某些产品和流程的流动率是否比其他产品和流程更有害，以及具有某些技能和经验的个人的流动率是否比其他个人的流动率更有害。第二项研究审查了跨工作组的知识转移。第三项研究揭示了将产品开发移近制造是否有助于业绩，哪些产品开发活动可能对共同定位很重要，以及将更多产品开发活动移到海外对业绩的影响。随着越来越多的制造业转移到海外，人们担心研发等知识工作也会随之而来。更广泛的影响：这三项研究提供了关于离岸环境中知识积累和转移的经验证据，从而为公司关于离岸外包以及美国工业和制造业政策的决策提供了信息。