Overcoming Stickiness: How the Timing of Knowledge Transfer Methods Affects Transfer Difficulty

Published Online:https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2016.1049

References

  • Alavi M, Leidner DE (2001) Review: Knowledge management and knowledge management systems: Conceptual foundations and research issues. MIS Quart. 25(1):107–136.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Almeida P, Kogut B (1999) Localization of knowledge and the mobility of engineers in regional networks. Management Sci. 45(7):905–917.LinkGoogle Scholar
  • Almeida P, Song J, Grant RM (2002) Are firms superior to alliances and markets? An empirical test of cross-border knowledge building. Organ. Sci. 13(2):147–161.LinkGoogle Scholar
  • Argote L (2012) Organizational Learning: Creating, Retaining and Transferring Knowledge (Springer Science and Business Media, New York).Google Scholar
  • Argote L, Miron-Spektor E (2011) Organizational learning: From experience to knowledge. Organ. Sci. 22(5):1123–1137.LinkGoogle Scholar
  • Argote L, McEvily B, Reagans R (2003) Managing knowledge in organizations: An integrative framework and review of emerging themes. Management Sci. 49(4):571–582.LinkGoogle Scholar
  • Arrow KJ (1974) The Limits of Organization (W. W. Norton, New York).Google Scholar
  • Asmussen CG, Foss NJ, Pedersen T (2013) Knowledge transfer and accommodation effects in multinational corporations evidence from European subsidiaries. J. Management 39(6):1397–1429.Google Scholar
  • Axelrod RM, Cohen MD (1999) Harnessing Complexity: Organizational Implications of a Scientific Frontier (Free Press, New York).Google Scholar
  • Bechky B (2003) Sharing meaning across occupational communities: The transformation of understanding on a production floor. Organ. Sci. 14(3):312–330.LinkGoogle Scholar
  • Bingham CB, Davis JP (2012) Learning sequences: Their existence, effect, and evolution. Acad. Management J. 55(3):611–641.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Blackler F (1995) Knowledge, knowledge work and organizations: An overview and interpretation. J. Management Stud. 30(6):863–884.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Boland RJ Jr, Tenkasi RV (1995) Perspective making and perspective taking in communities of knowing. Organ. Sci. 6(4):350–372.LinkGoogle Scholar
  • Brannen MY, Liker JK, Fruin WM (1999) Recontextualization and Factory-to-Factory Knowledge Transfer from Japan to the United States (Oxford University Press, New York).Google Scholar
  • Brown JS, Duguid P (1991) Organizational learning and communities-of-practice: Toward a unified view of working, learning, and innovation. Organ. Sci. 2(1):40–57.LinkGoogle Scholar
  • Carte T, Chidambaram L (2004) A capabilities-based theory of technology deployment in diverse teams: Leapfrogging the pitfalls of diversity and leveraging its potential with collaborative technology. J. Assoc. Inform. Systems 5(11–12):448–471.Google Scholar
  • Chew WB, Bresnahan TF, Clark KB (1990) Measurement, coordination, and learning in a multiplant network. Kaplan RS, ed. Measures for Manufacturing Excellence (Harvard Business School Press, Boston), 129–162.Google Scholar
  • Cohen MD, Bacdayan P (1994) Organizational routines are stored as procedural memory: Evidence from a laboratory study. Organ. Sci. 5(4):554–568.LinkGoogle Scholar
  • Conner KR, Prahalad CK (1996) A resource-based theory of the firm: Knowledge versus opportunism. Organ. Sci. 7(5):477–501.LinkGoogle Scholar
  • Daft RL, Lengel RH (1986) Organizational information requirements, media richness and structural design. Management Sci. 32(5):554–571.LinkGoogle Scholar
  • Darr ED, Argote L, Epple D (1995) The acquisition, transfer and depreciation of knowledge in service organizations: Productivity in franchises. Management Sci. 41(11):1750–1762.LinkGoogle Scholar
  • De Dreu CK, Van Vianen AE (2001) Managing relationship conflict and the effectiveness of organizational teams. J. Organ. Behav. 22(3):309–328.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Doz YL, Santos J, Williamson P (2001) From Global to Metanational: How Companies Win in the Knowledge Economy (Harvard Business School Press, Boston).CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Dyer JH, Nobeoka K (2000) Creating and managing a high-performance knowledge-sharing network: The Toyota case. Strategic Management J. 21(3):345–367.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Edmondson A (1999) Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Admin. Sci. Quart. 44(2):350–383.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Ellis KM, Reus TH, Lamont BT, Ranft AL (2011) Transfer effects in large acquisitions: How size-specific experience matters. Acad. Management J. 54(6):1261–1276.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Feldman MS, Pentland BT (2003) Reconceptualizing organizational routines as a source of flexibility and change. Admin. Sci. Quart. 48(1):94–118.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Fleiss JL (1971) Measuring nominal scale agreement among many raters. Psych. Bull. 76(5):378–382.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Gersick C (1988) Time and transition in work teams: Toward a new model of group development. Acad. Management J. 31(1):9–41.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Gersick CJ (1989) Marking time: Predictable transitions in task groups. Acad. Management J. 32(2):274–309.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Gibson JL (1977) A theory of affordances. Shaw R, Bransford J, eds. Perceiving, Acting and Knowing: Toward an Ecological Psychology (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Hillsdale, NJ), 67–82.Google Scholar
  • Gilovich T (1991) How We Know What Isn’t So: The Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life (Free Press, New York).Google Scholar
  • Grant RM (1996) Toward a knowledge-based theory of the firm. Strategic Management J. 17(S2):109–122.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Gupta AK, Govindarajan V (2000) Knowledge flows within multinational corporations. Strategic Management J. 21(4):473–496.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Haas MR, Hansen MT (2005) When using knowledge can hurt performance: The value of organizational capabilities in a management consulting company. Strategic Management J. 26(1):1–24.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Haas MR, Hansen MT (2007) Different knowledge, different benefits: Toward a productivity perspective on knowledge sharing in organizations. Strategic Management J. 28(11):1133–1153.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Hansen M (1999) The search-transfer problem: The role of weak ties in sharing knowledge across organization subunits. Admin. Sci. Quart. 44(1):82–111.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Hansen MT, Lovas B (2004) How do multinational companies leverage technological competencies? Moving from single to interdependent explanations. Strategic Management J. 25(8–9):801–822.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Hansen MT, Nohria N, Tierney T (1999) What’s your strategy for managing knowledge? Harvard Bus. Rev. 77(2):106–116.Google Scholar
  • Harinck F, De Dreu CK, Van Vianen AE (2000) The impact of conflict issues on fixed-pie perceptions, problem solving, and integrative outcomes in negotiation. Organ. Behav. Human Decision Processes 81(2):329–358.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Harvey S (2014) Creative synthesis: Exploring the process of extraordinary group creativity. Acad. Management Rev. 39(3):324–343.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Hollingshead AB (1998) Communication, learning, and retrieval in transactive memory systems. J. Experiment. Soc. Psych. 34(5):423–442.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Hoopes DG, Postrel S (1999) Shared knowledge, “glitches,” and product development performance. Strategic Management J. 20(9):837–865.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Howell RD (1987) Covariance structure modeling and measurement issues: A note on “interrelations among a channel entity’s power sources”. J. Marketing Res. 24(1):119–126.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Hutchby I (2001) Technologies, texts and affordances. Sociology 35(2):441–456.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Inkpen AC, Dinur A (1998) Knowledge management processes and international joint ventures. Organ. Sci. 9(4):454–468.LinkGoogle Scholar
  • Jarzabkowski P, Kaplan S (2015) Strategy tools-in-use: A framework for understanding “technologies of rationality” in practice. Strategic Management J. 36(4):537–558.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Jehn KA (1997) A qualitative analysis of conflict types and dimensions in organizational groups. Admin. Sci. Quart. 42(3):530–557.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Jehn KA, Northcraft GB, Neale MA (1999) Why differences make a difference: A field study of diversity, conflict and performance in workgroups. Admin. Sci. Quart. 44(4):741–763.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • King AW (2007) Disentangling interfirm and intrafirm causal ambiguity: A conceptual model of causal ambiguity and sustainable competitive advantage. Acad. Management Rev. 32(1):156–178.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • King AW, Zeithaml CP (2001) Competencies and firm performance: Examining the causal ambiguity paradox. Strategic Management J. 22(1):75–99.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Ko DG, Kirsch LJ, King WR (2005) Antecedents of knowledge transfer from consultants to clients in enterprise system implementations. MIS Quart. 29(1):59–85.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Kogut B, Zander U (1992) Knowledge of the firm, combinative capabilities, and the replication of technology. Organ. Sci. 3(3):383–397.LinkGoogle Scholar
  • Kogut B, Zander U (1993) Knowledge of the firm and the evolutionary theory of the multinational corporation. J. Internat. Bus. Stud. 24(4):625–645.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Lawless MW (1987) Institutionalization of a management science innovation in police departments. Management Sci. 33(2):244–252.LinkGoogle Scholar
  • Leonard-Barton D, Sinha DK (1993) Developer-user interaction and user satisfaction in internal technology transfer. Acad. Management J. 36(5):1125–1139.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Leonardi PM (2011) When flexible routines meet flexible technologies: Affordance, constraint, and the imbrication of human and material agencies. MIS Quart. 35(1):147–167.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Lewis K (2004) Knowledge and performance in knowledge-worker teams: A longitudinal study of transactive memory systems. Management Sci. 50(11):1519–1533.LinkGoogle Scholar
  • Lippman SA, Rumelt RP (1982) Uncertain imitability: An analysis of interfirm differences in efficiency under competition. Bell J. Econom. 13(2):418–438.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Majchrzak A, Markus ML (2013) Technology affordances and constraints theory (of MIS). Kessler E, ed. Encyclopedia of Management Theory (SAGE Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA), 832–836.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Majchrzak A, Cooper LP, Neece OE (2004) Knowledge reuse for innovation. Management Sci. 50(2):174–188.LinkGoogle Scholar
  • Majchrzak A, Malhotra A, Mertens A (2015) Greater innovation by the crowd in crowdsourcing: The sequencing of knowledge types that balance divergence and convergence. Working paper, University of Southern California, Los Angeles.Google Scholar
  • Majchrzak A, More PH, Faraj S (2012) Transcending knowledge differences in cross-functional teams. Organ. Sci. 23(4):951–970.LinkGoogle Scholar
  • Malhotra A, Majchrzak A (2012) How virtual teams use their virtual workspace to coordinate knowledge. ACM Trans. Management Inform. Systems 3(1):1–14.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Mansfield E, Romeo A, Schwartz M, Teece D, Wagner S, Brach P (1983) New findings in technology transfer, productivity and development. Res. Management 26(March–April):11–20.Google Scholar
  • March JG, Simon HA (1958) Organizations (Wiley, New York).Google Scholar
  • Markus ML (1994) Electronic mail as the medium of managerial choice. Organ. Sci. 5(4):502–527.LinkGoogle Scholar
  • Marsden PV (1990) Network data and measurement. Ann. Rev. Sociology 16(1990):435–463.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Martin X, Salomon R (2003) Knowledge transfer capacity and its implications for the theory of the multinational corporation. J. Internat. Bus. Stud. 34(4):356–373.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Miller KD, Zhao M, Calantone RJ (2006) Adding interpersonal learning and tacit knowledge to March’s exploration-exploitation model. Acad. Management J. 49(4):709–722.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Moorman C, Miner AS (1998) Organizational improvisation and organizational memory. Acad. Management Rev. 23(4):698–723.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Moreland RL (1999) Learning who knows what in work groups and organizations. Thompson LL, Levine JM, Messick DM, eds. Shared Cognition in Organizations: The Management of Knowledge (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, NJ), 3–32.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Murnighan JK, Conlon DE (1991) The dynamics of intense work groups: A study of British string quartets. Admin. Sci. Quart. 36(2):165–186.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Nelson RR, Winter SG (1982) An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change (Belknap, Cambridge, MA).Google Scholar
  • Nonaka I (1994) A dynamic theory of organizational knowledge creation. Organ. Sci. 5(1):14–37.LinkGoogle Scholar
  • Orlikowski WJ (2002) Knowing in practice: Enacting a collective capability in distributed organizing. Organ. Sci. 13(3):249–273.LinkGoogle Scholar
  • Pelled LH (1996) Demographic diversity, conflict, and work group outcomes: An intervening process theory. Organ. Sci. 7(6):615–631.LinkGoogle Scholar
  • Pisano GP (1996) Learning-before-doing in the development of new process technology. Res. Policy 25(7):1097–1119.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Polanyi M (1966) Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy (Chicago University Press, Chicago).Google Scholar
  • Powell TC, Lovallo D, Caringal C (2006) Causal ambiguity, management perception, and firm performance. Acad. Management Rev. 31(1):175–196.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Ranft AL, Lord MD (2002) Acquiring new technologies and capabilities: A grounded model of acquisition implementation. Organ. Sci. 13(4):420–443.LinkGoogle Scholar
  • Reed R, DeFillippi RJ (1990) Causal ambiguity, barriers to imitation, and sustainable competitive advantage. Acad. Management Rev. 15(1):88–102.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Reus TH, Lamont BT, Ellis KM (2015) A darker side of knowledge transfer following international acquisitions. Strategic Management J., ePub ahead of print April 23, http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/smj.2373.Google Scholar
  • Reus TH, Ranft AL, Lamont BT, Adams GL (2009) An interpretive systems view of knowledge investments. Acad. Management Rev. 34(3):382–400.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Rivkin JW (2001) Reproducing knowledge: Replication without imitation at moderate complexity. Organ. Sci. 12(3):274–293.LinkGoogle Scholar
  • Rogers E (1983) The Diffusion of Innovations (Free Press, New York).Google Scholar
  • Ryall MD (2009) Causal ambiguity, complexity, and capability-based advantage. Management Sci. 55(3):389–403.LinkGoogle Scholar
  • Ryle G (1949) The Concept of Mind (Hutchinson, London).Google Scholar
  • Shannon CE, Weaver W (1949) The Mathematical Theory of Communication (University of Illinois Press, Chicago).Google Scholar
  • Simonin BL (1999) Ambiguity and the process of knowledge transfer in strategic alliances. Strategic Management J. 20(7):595–623.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Stasser G, Stewart DD, Wittenbaum GM (1995) Expert roles and information exchange during discussion: The importance of knowing who knows what. J. Experiment. Soc. Psych. 31(3):244–265.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Subramaniam M, Venkatraman N (2001) Determinants of transnational new product development capability: Testing the influence of transferring and deploying tacit overseas knowledge. Strategic Management J. 22(4):359–382.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Szulanski G (1996) Exploring internal stickiness: Impediments to the transfer of best practice within the firm. Strategic Management J. 17(S2):27–43.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Szulanski G (2000) The process of knowledge transfer: A diachronic analysis of stickiness. Organ. Behav. Human Decision Processes 82(1):9–27.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Szulanski G (2003) Sticky Knowledge: Barriers to Knowing in the Firm (Sage, London).Google Scholar
  • Szulanski G, Casaburi MV (2004a) Rank Xerox (B): Is “telemarketing” the answer? (INSEAD, Fontainebleau, France).Google Scholar
  • Szulanski G, Casaburi MV (2004b) Rank Xerox (C): The success of telesales. (INSEAD, Fontainebleau, France).Google Scholar
  • Teece DJ (1976) The Multinational Corporation and the Resource Cost of International Technology Transfer, 1st ed. (Ballinger Publishing Company, Cambridge, MA).Google Scholar
  • Teece D (1977) Technology transfer by multinational firms: The resource cost of international technology transfer. Econom. J. 87(346):242–261.Google Scholar
  • Torgerson WS (1952) Multidimensional scaling: I. Theory and method. Psychometrika 17(4):401–419.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Tsoukas H (2009) A dialogical approach to the creation of new knowledge in organizations. Organ. Sci. 20(6):941–957.LinkGoogle Scholar
  • Tulving E (1985) How many memory systems are there? Amer. Psychologist 40(4):385–398.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Van de Ven AH (1992) Suggestions for studying strategy process: A research note. Strategic Management J. 13(S1):169–188.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Van Wijk R, Jansen JJP, Lyles MA (2008) Inter- and intra-organizational knowledge transfer: A meta-analytic review and assessment of its antecedents and consequences. J. Management Stud. 45(4):830–853.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Von Hippel E, Tyre MJ (1995) How learning by doing is done: Problem identification in novel process equipment. Res. Policy 24(1):1–12.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Wegner DM (1995) A computer network model of human transactive memory. Soc. Cognition 13(3):319–339.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • White H (1980) A heteroskedasticity-consistent covariance matrix estimator and a direct test for heteroscedasticity. Econometrica 48(4):817–838.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Winter SG (1987) Knowledge and competence as strategic assets. Teece DJ, ed. The Competitive Challenge: Strategies for Industrial Innovation and Renewal (Ballinger, Cambridge, MA), 159–184.Google Scholar
  • Zander U, Kogut B (1995) Knowledge of the firm and the speed of the transfer and imitation of organizational capabilities: An empirical test. Organ. Sci. 6(1):76–92.LinkGoogle Scholar
  • Zhao ZJ, Anand J (2013) Beyond boundary spanners: The “collective bridge” as an efficient interunit structure for transferring collective knowledge. Strategic Management J. 34(13):1513–1530.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
INFORMS site uses cookies to store information on your computer. Some are essential to make our site work; Others help us improve the user experience. By using this site, you consent to the placement of these cookies. Please read our Privacy Statement to learn more.