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Addressing calls to integrate insights from institutional theory and the resource-based view, we bring together dual theoretical explanations from institutional theory and the resource-based view to examine the effectiveness of transfer of practice and human capital development as two routes to subsidiary performance. Our study of Hong Kong firms with subsidiaries in Mainland China shows that both routes positively affect subsidiary performance. However, our data show that our sampled firms struggled to successfully transfer practices from their parents. We attribute an explanation for this to the characteristics of practices as organizational capabilities in which transfer is made harder by the difficulty in replicating such capabilities. Consequently, developing subsidiary human capital is an important ally to practice transfer as a means to achieve superior subsidiary performance. Our results raise interesting questions about practice transfer and the resource-based view relevant to future scholarly research.

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Pareto analysis is based on the observation that operational results and economic wealth are not distributed evenly and that some inputs contribute more than others. It is referred to as the “80/20 rule,” a nomenclature which has popularized a complex economic concept introduced by Vilfredo Pareto, a nineteenth‐century Italian economist. The underlying concept is that the majority of problems (roughly 80%) are often caused by a small number of the sources (roughly 20%). The implication of the 80/20 rule is that most efforts are not efficient and should be reduced. The strategic objective would be to leverage and maximize the efforts that produce most of the results. In strategic management, Pareto analysis is linked to the analysis of an organization's internal environment. It is particularly useful to identify internal strengths and weaknesses through the evaluation of an organization's internal resources and capabilities, which are the source of its core competencies and which in turn, create competitive advantage.

Espoused versus realized knowledge management tool usage in knowledge intensive organizations Many knowledge intensive organizations (KIOs) have invested in tools and policies to enhance knowledge-sharing and application as this is crucial for their growth. The implementation of these tools results in multiple approaches for knowledge-sharing being available. This article reports on an empirical study of five global management consultancies investigating how consultants choose between these knowledge-sharing alternatives and the factors driving this choice. Our findings indicate that consultants base their decisions on both judging the anticipated benefits of the knowledge content and the associated process costs. Importantly, the criteria employed to assess these knowledgesharing alternatives was different to that of the leadership. The use of different criteria resulted in the leadership championing tools and policies that the consultants did not perceive as valuable. The study contributes to the human resource management and knowledge management literature, not only by surfacing criteria, yet to be discussed in the literature, used by the leadership and consultants of KIOs in determining which knowledge-sharing approach to use, but also by highlighting that when considering KM tools it was critical to take a multi-level approach as there may be some differences in rationales as to why some systems are used or not.