What determines whether or not multinational firms transplant the mode of organisation to other countries? We embed the theory of knowledge hierarchies in an industry equilibrium model of monopolistic competition to examine how the economic environment may affect the decision of multinational firms about transplanting the mode of organisation to other countries. We test the theory with original and matched parent and affiliate data on the level of decentralisation of 660 Austrian and German multinational firms and 2,200 of their affiliate firms in Eastern Europe. We find that market competition in both home and host markets is an important driver of organisational transfer to host countries: an increase in competition in the home (host) market by ten percentage points lowers (increases) the probability of transplanting by nine (seven) percentage points.