Based on knowledge theory, enterprises are professional social groups that effectively create and transfer knowledge. Compared with other institutional arrangements such as the market, the competitive advantage of an enterprise lies in its unique knowledge transfer ability. The transfer of knowledge within an organization does not happen overnight. Gabriel Szulanski studied the transfer of best practices within enterprises and believed that knowledge transfer is divided into four stages: awareness, transaction, adaptation and institutionalization, and analyzed the influencing factors of best practice transfer from four perspectives: from knowledge From the perspective of the grantor, it includes motivation and perceived reliability; from the nature of knowledge, it includes tacitness, complexity, robustness and integrity; from the nature of knowledge From the perspective of the transferee, these include motivation, absorptive capability and retentivecapacity (motivation, obsorptive capability and retentivecapacity); from the transfer scenario, transfer opportunities can also cause transfer difficulties.
In 1996, Gabriel Szulanski studied the same problem again and proposed and tested a best practice transfer model based on the internal stickiness of knowledge transfer. Based on the perspective of the knowledge transfer/organization process, scholars have also emphasized the positive correlation between internal knowledge transfer within the enterprise and organizational performance and knowledge management effectiveness. Badaracco and Joseph L. Jr believe that alliance management is a process of learning, creating, sharing and controlling knowledge, and an enterprise is a collection of embedded knowedge and migratory knowledge. To understand how to manage alliances, it is important to understand the factors that encourage and discourage the acquisition, transfer, and creation of embedded knowledge. According to case studies on multiple alliances such as GE and IBM, nine aspects including trust, openness, and leadership are conducive to promoting knowledge transactions within alliances. Bernard L.Simonin empirically tested the impact of knowledge causal ambiguity on knowledge transfer within strategic alliances. The research results show that knowledge tacitness, complexity, prior experience, cultural differences and organizational differences significantly contribute to causal ambiguity, while causal ambiguity is negatively related to the level of technical knowledge transfer.
Chinese scholars have also conducted preliminary explorations into knowledge transfer in alliances. Lin Li studied the problem of knowledge transfer in knowledge alliances and pointed out that the attributes of knowledge, the motivation level and absorptive capacity of the knowledge recipient, the intention and transfer ability of knowledge sources, and the cultural differences among alliance partners may all be factors that affect the progress between partner enterprises in knowledge alliances. Barriers to knowledge transfer. Wang Lisheng also analyzed the obstacles to corporate knowledge acquisition and transfer from the perspective of alliances, pointing out that although corporate organizational learning and innovation through strategic alliances has become one of the important goals of strategic alliances, the process is not smooth and there are three problems between the alliance companies. Obstructive factors that affect knowledge acquisition and transfer: different social cultures of the alliance parties and the resulting different ways of judgment; huge differences in strategic goals and capability levels between alliance enterprises, and the lack of appropriate channels for knowledge transfer; alliances other factors within the organization, etc. Chang Li studied the influencing factors of knowledge transfer and diffusion among different market entities from the perspective of knowledge chain, and proposed that factors affecting the speed of knowledge diffusion include the nature and content of knowledge, the ability of knowledge supply entities to transfer knowledge, the learning ability of knowledge demand entities and Digestion and absorption capacity, complementarity of knowledge, expectations of costs and benefits of knowledge diffusion, and social environmental factors of knowledge transfer, etc. Based on empirical research on the U.S. manufacturing and service industries, S. Tamer C. et al. pointed out that the stronger the relationship between enterprises, the higher the level of tacit knowledge transfer between enterprises, and this relationship is positively regulated by enterprise cooperation experience; further , the higher the level of tacit knowledge transfer, the stronger the enterprise's innovation ability, and thus the better its innovation performance.
The article measures the level of tacit knowledge transfer from complexity, codification and observability of information transfer.
Masaaki K. et al. studied the sources of operating performance improvement in supply partnerships. Research shows that when suppliers and buyers develop time-bound assets and use the communication efficiencies brought by these assets to transfer productive knowledge, supplier performance benefits greatly. A comparison of samples based on the United States and Japan shows that the impact of ordinary technology transactions on supplier performance improvement does not change as the relationship continues to change. The positive effect of high-end technology transfer on supplier performance improvement increases as the relationship continues to increase. Jan T.K. and Pet.rex G. studied the impact of information technology, mechanisms and procedures, culture and other factors on knowledge transfer in IT projects. The results of the empirical analysis show that there is no significant relationship between information technology and effective knowledge transfer. The overall performance of the project is related to the culture that promotes effective knowledge transfer. Organizational culture may be the most important factor affecting knowledge management. Knowledge transfer also exists in international mergers and acquisitions and informal networks, and scholars have also conducted specialized research on this. Henrik B. studied knowledge transfer in international mergers and acquisitions. Empirical results show that: communication, visits and meetings, and the passage of time contribute to the transfer of technical know-how, while the articulability of the knowledge, the size of the acquired organization, and the novelty of the acquisition method (recency of the acquisition) Relevant to the transfer of patents. The case study also found that in international mergers and acquisitions, knowledge transfer is initially one-way, from the transferor to the transferee, and gradually turns to a two-way reciprocal process over time.
Informal networks between people play a key role in the knowledge transfer process. The ability to effectively transfer knowledge between individuals plays an important role in a company's output, including the speed of learning, new product development, and organizational survival. To this end, Ray Reagans and Bill McEvily directly studied the direct impact of informal networks on knowledge transfer. The authors studied social cohesion, network range, tie strength and absorptive capacity (expressed in common knowledge). ) four dimensions measure informal networks. Social linkage refers to the degree to which a relationship is surrounded by third-party relationships; network scope refers to the extent to which network relationships cross institutional, organizational and social boundaries; relationship strength refers to the intensity of emotional intimacy and frequency of communication described by interviewees; fairness* **Knowledge includes social similarity, expertise overlap, functional expertise and structural equivalence. Empirical results show that social cohesion, network scope, relationship strength and absorptive capacity all have a direct and significant impact on the difficulty of knowledge transfer.