Complementarity between a firm's management practices means that: O A firms should always be looking to adopt best practices from competitors and firms in other industries A firm needs to distinguish between those practices that are generic and those that are contextual-i.e. their performance depends upon the firm's other practices Generic practices relate to basic functions; contextual practices tend to be more idiosyncratic O A generic practices offers incremental performance improvement; a contextual practices leads to a new fitness peak