Linda Argote

Linda Argote is the Thomas Lord University Professor of Organizational Behavior and Theory at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business and directs its Center for Organizational Learning, Innovation and Knowledge. Her work examines how experience becomes knowledge within groups and organizations.

Argote coauthored a 1995 study with Eric D. Darr and Dennis Epple using data from 36 pizza stores. The researchers found falling unit production costs with experience, rapid depreciation of acquired knowledge, and evidence of transfer among stores under the same franchisee rather than across different owners. In separate work with Ella Miron-Spektor, Argote proposed a framework in which organizational experience interacts with its context to create knowledge. Together, these contributions inform a conditional account of capability compounding: practice can generate useful knowledge, but retention and transfer cannot be assumed.