Transferring organizational capabilities across transient organizations: Evidence fron the Hollywood filmmaking

Using the Hollywood Motion Picture Industry as empirical grounding for our reasoning, in this paper we show that in a project-based environment firm disbanding does not necessarily imply the termination of the collaborative interactions established during the project. We test our theoretical arguments with blockmodels and other network analysis techniques on collaborations that took place in 783 movies distributed in the USA between 1995 and 1999. Results demonstrate that project participants with complementary tasks tend to consolidate their collaboration over time, establishing teams that survive the disruptive pressures of the industry. While supporting the consistency of a knowledge-oriented focus in project environments, our findings highlight the role of teams as carriers of capabilities and ultimate repositories of the industry organizational memory.