ORGANIZATIONAL KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER:

A META-ANALYTIC REVIEW OF ITS ANTECEDENTS AND OUTCOMES

RAYMOND VAN WIJK

JUSTIN JANSEN
RSM Erasmus University
P.O. Box 1738
3000 DR Rotterdam, Netherlands

MARJORIE LYLES
Indiana University, Indianapolis

INTRODUCTION

Firms need to transfer and acquire new knowledge as they seek to develop competitive
advantage and survive selection pressures (Henderson & Cockburn, 1994; Kogut & Zander,
1992). Organizations that are able to assimilate and apply new external knowledge effectively
are more likely to survive than organizations less adept at inter-organizational knowledge
transfer (Argote, Beckman & Epple, 1990). Similarly, evidence is accumulating that the transfer
of knowledge across organizational units within a firm provides many competitive benefits (Tsai,
2001). Accordingly, the ability to acquire and transfer knowledge resources across and within
firm boundaries has emerged as an underlying theme in strategy and organization research.
Seeking to understand the ways in which firms organize and benefit from knowledge
transfer, research has increasingly focused on its antecedents and consequences. After two
decades of research, however, a systematic overview of underlying mechanisms and outcomes of
knowledge transfer is still lacking. The purpose of this study is to consolidate extant research on
organizational knowledge transfer and its antecedents and consequences by using meta-analytic
techniques. First, by estimating the mean values and range of effects for relationships, meta-
analysis provides empirical generalizations across multiple studies (Hunter & Schmidt, 2004).
Second, meta-analysis is particularly appropriate when empirical findings yield diverging results.
Prior studies on organizational knowledge transfer exhibit variation in magnitude, statistical
significance, and direction of relationships studied. Meta-analysis enables researchers to estimate
true relationships between study variables. Third, attempts to understand organizational
knowledge transfer have been largely based on subsets of antecedents and consequences. We
used meta-analytic evidence to generate a more comprehensive list of attributes and
consequences at the knowledge, organizational and network level. Fourth, meta-analysis can be
applied to detect moderating effects. This meta-analytic review explicitly distinguishes
knowledge transfer in different contexts and at different levels (cf. Ostroff & Harrison, 1999). In
this sense, we provide a more fine-grained analysis of how organizations may enhance
knowledge transfer and acquisition both across and within their boundaries (Henderson &
Cockburn, 1994).

THEORETICAL DEVELOPMENT

Previous research has examined a range of antecedents of organizational knowledge

transfer. Consistent with prior literatures, we classify these antecedents into three broad
categories: knowledge-level, organizational-level, and network-level attributes (cf. Adler &
Kwon, 2002; Lyles & Salk, 1996).

Knowledge-level attributes. A considerable amount of research is emerging that

considers attributes of the knowledge as an important antecedent to its transfer. Previous
empirical studies have indicated that knowledge ambiguity in particular is one of the most
important predictors of organizational knowledge transfer (Birkinshaw, Nobel & Ridderstrle,
2002; Simonin, 1999). Knowledge ambiguity refers to the inherent and irreducible uncertainty as
to precisely what the underlying knowledge sources are and how they interact. Knowledge
ambiguity has, therefore, been suggested to negatively affect organizational knowledge transfer.

Organizational-level attributes. A second stream of research has focused on

organizational attributes as antecedents of organizational knowledge transfer. Although the list of
organizational attributes to be included in analyses is virtually endless, many studies have
assessed the roles of size, age, decentralization and absorptive capacity.
Most studies assessing the effect of size on knowledge transfer tend to find positive
effects, as larger firms and subsidiaries may possess more resources to devote to knowledge
creation which increases their ability to offer non-duplicative knowledge to others (Gupta &
Govindarajan, 2000). However, other studies have found negative or no effects of organizational
size on knowledge transfer (e.g. Lyles & Salk, 1996). Existing evidence of the overall effect of
size on organizational knowledge transfer appears to be mixed.
Previous research has also considered age of firms and units as an important determinant
of knowledge transfer. Aging organizations have been argued to become inert and possess a
limited ability to learn and adapt to changing circumstances. As they lack a broad installed base
of knowledge, younger firms are often dependent on complementary knowledge possessed by
other firms. Some empirical studies suggest, however, that age has no effect on the extent of
knowledge transfer (e.g. Powell, Koput & Smith-Doerr, 1996). In other words, prior research has
been inconclusive about the effect of age on organizational knowledge transfer.
To re-attain the advantages of small, young firms, many corporations disaggregate their
operations by decentralizing decision-making and increasing the autonomy of their units.
Decentralization involves moving down the hierarchy the locus of authority and decision-
making and broadens communication channels. Even though some studies have found no
influential role of decentralization in organizational knowledge transfer (e.g. Frost, Birkinshaw
& Ensign, 2002), prior research has mainly suggested a positive relationship between
decentralization and organizational knowledge transfer.
Absorptive capacity confers on firms the ability to recognize, assimilate and apply new
external knowledge (Cohen & Levinthal, 1990). The crucial role of absorptive capacity in inter-
organizational knowledge transfer has been documented extensively, and the evidence obtained
has generally been straightforward (Lane, Salk & Lyles, 2001; Lyles & Salk, 1996; Mowery,
Oxley & Silverman, 1996). In addition, various empirical studies have found that absorptive
capacity contributes to knowledge transfer across units within firms (Gupta & Govindarajan,
2000; Szulanski, 1996). Accordingly, prior research generally suggests that absorptive capacity
positively influences intra- and inter-organizational knowledge transfer.

Network-level attributes. A third category of antecedents addressed in prior research

involves attributes operating at the dyad or network level. These attributes are associated with
social resources embedded in relationships and encompass many facets of the social context
between partners. The social context can be evaluated along three main dimensions of social
capital: the structural, relational and cognitive dimension (Inkpen & Tsang, 2005; Nahapiet &
Ghoshal, 1998).
The structural dimension involves the pattern of relationships between network actors
and concerns the configuration of linkages among units or firms and the hierarchy or extent of
centrality in social networks. Various studies have shown that having a large number of relations
to other organizational units or firms enhances information processing capacity and increases the
flow of knowledge through these relationships (Hansen, 1999). Although the number of relations
increases access to external information and knowledge, social network literature suggests that a
centralized position within an overall pattern of relationships matters as well. An actor that
occupies a central position creates a brokerage position, enabling it to locate relevant information
or knowledge and exchange it within the social network (Tsai, 2001).
Scholars have also focused much attention on the relational dimension of social relations,
which refers to the nature of the relationships themselves and the assets that are rooted in them.
Tie strength reflects the closeness of a relationship between partners, and increases with
frequency of communication or interaction, and when the relationship is characterized by
friendship. Evidence suggests that strong ties lead to greater knowledge transfer (Hansen, 1999;
Levin & Cross, 2004). Prior studies have also argued that trust between partners determines
organizational knowledge transfer, as it increases the willingness of partners and results in
committed parent firms helping student firms to understand new external knowledge (Lane et al.,
2001). However, some studies indicate that a high level of trust may also inhibit transfer of new
external knowledge because of collective blindness (Nahapiet & Ghoshal, 1998). Hence,
although the tenet is that trust associates with increased organizational knowledge transfer,
counterevidence for such consistent effect is also surfacing.
The third dimension of social capital, the cognitive dimension, refers to the resources
within relationships that provide shared representations, interpretations, and systems of meaning.
Shared vision and systems promote mutual understanding and provide a crucial bonding
mechanism that helps different parts of the network integrate knowledge. Prior research has
argued that similarity in dominant logics, structures (Lane & Lubatkin, 1998) and businesses of
partners (Lane et al., 2001) contributes to organizational knowledge transfer. On the other hand,
cultural distance between foreign partners may lead to misunderstandings that can limit the
sharing of important organizational information or knowledge (Lyles & Salk, 1996). Even
though Jensen and Szulanski (2004) found a positive relationship between cultural distance and
organizational knowledge transfer, overall previous research has largely found a negative
relationship between cultural distance and organizational knowledge transfer.

Consequences of Organizational Knowledge Transfer

Our meta-analytic review organizes the consequences of organizational knowledge
transfer into two broad categories: financial and innovative performance.
Prior research supports a positive relationship between organizational knowledge transfer
and financial performance (Lyles & Salk, 1996). Knowledge exchange may increase
organizational capabilities through the transfer of best practices (Szulanski, 1996), and
subsequently, lead to enhanced performance. However, research on organizational knowledge
transfer has been dominated by studies that relate the extent of knowledge transfer to
innovativeness. Organizational knowledge transfer enables an organization to access external
information and knowledge and generate new ideas for new product development (Powell et al.,
1996; Tsai, 2001). Knowledge transfer stimulates the combination of sets of existing and newly
acquired knowledge and augments a units capacity for making novel linkages and associations
(Jansen, Van den Bosch & Volberda, 2005). Accordingly, prior research suggests that
organizational knowledge transfer increases innovativeness.

METHOD

We acquired published empirical studies of organizational knowledge transfer through a

variety of sources. First, we searched the ABI/INFORM, EBSCO, JSTOR, Science Direct and
Swetsnet databases for studies on knowledge published between 1991 and 2005, using multiple
keywords to identify relevant articles. Second, we searched the Social Sciences Citation Index
for studies that refer to the three most highly cited articles in the organizational knowledge
transfer literature (i.e., Darr, Argote & Epple, 1995; Mowery et al., 1996; Szulanski, 1996).
Third, we examined the references from the organizational knowledge transfer articles identified
in these two steps for additional studies. Finally, we manually searched abstracts from journals
that publish applicable papers and reviewed the reference lists of identified articles to locate
papers that earlier searches were unable to capture.
Inclusion of studies into the meta-analysis was based on three criteria. First, we included
into the meta-analysis only studies that reported the r-family of effects (i.e., correlation
coefficients or its variants; Rosenthal, 1991). Second, we included only the articles that measured
organizational knowledge transfer at the team, (business) unit, organizational, or network level
of analysis so that results from research that have vastly divergent goals were not aggregated
(Hunter & Schmidt, 2004). Third, to address the problem of conceptual replication, we
ascertained that studies are independent and have no overlapping samples. On completion of the
search process, we had obtained a total of 251 effects from 83 independent samples reported in
75 studies. Total cumulative sample size across all studies included amounted to 26,636.
We used the psychometric meta-analysis method to estimate the relationships because of
its advantage in adjusting observed effect sizes for measurement and statistical artifacts such as
unreliability (Hunter & Schmidt, 2004). As an estimator of the population effect sizes, we
calculated sample-weighted mean correlations corrected for unreliability (rc). Following previous
meta-analyses, we provide meta-analytic estimates when at least three independent effect sizes
are available. The mean k was 19 samples for all relationships considered in our analysis and the
mean sample size of the included studies was 321.

RESULTS

In total, we obtained 208 effect sizes for the antecedents of organizational knowledge
transfer, which included 15 effects involving knowledge attributes, 108 effects covering
firm/BU-level antecedents, and 85 effects encompassing antecedents at the network level. In
addition, we obtained a total of 43 effect sizes for the consequences of organizational knowledge
transfer. Support for hypotheses for all of the examined relationships was established when the
95 percent confidence intervals around the sample-weighted mean r did not contain zero.
Regarding the effect of knowledge ambiguity, the results indicate that the more tacit,
specific, and complex the knowledge, the less easily it can be transferred. Regarding the
firm/BU-level attributes, the evidence reveals that size and absorptive capacity positively impact
organizational knowledge transfer. Our study showed that a strongly significant but mildly
positive relationship (rc = 0.11; p < 0.001) exists between organization size and knowledge
transfer, and a positive association between absorptive capacity and knowledge transfer (rc =
0.19; p < 0.001). The current meta-analytic findings showed, however, no evidence for
hypotheses that age and decentralization influence organizational knowledge transfer.
The results include significant mean correlations for most of the network-level
antecedents. The results concerning the structural elements provide more mixed results. While
we found a significant positive mean correlation for centralized network position, we found no
significant effect for the number of relations of firms and units. Largely in keeping with
traditional hypotheses, we found strongly significant medium to large effect sizes for tie strength
(rc = 0.29; p < 0.001) and trust (rc = 0.41; p < 0.001). Both findings suggest that relational
aspects of relationships play a crucial role in organizational knowledge transfer. Although less
significant, we found similar support for the role of cognitive elements in organizational
knowledge transfer. Consistent with prior research, the results show that as firms and units share
similar visions and systems (rc = 0.21; p < 0.01) organizational knowledge transfer increases. On
the contrary, as firms and units are more culturally distant from each other, their knowledge
transfer decreases (rc = -0.11; p < 0.05).
In addition to the antecedents, the meta-analytic results corroborate traditional hypotheses
concerning outcomes of organizational knowledge transfer. We obtained strongly significant
positive mean correlations for performance (rc = 0.22; p < 0.001) and innovativeness (rc = 0.15;
p < 0.001). Hence, our meta-analytic findings confirm previous assumptions of the importance of
organizational knowledge transfer for obtaining above-normal results.

Moderating effects
Our results also indicate that contextual characteristics moderate the relationships
covered in our study. Consistent with prior research, we examined whether the effects of
antecedents and consequences of organizational knowledge transfer are contingent on the
specific context at inter- and intra-organizational levels of analysis. Indeed, we found that the r
associated with the antecedents and consequences covered in this study differed for knowledge
transfer between different firms (k = 47) and between different units within firms (k = 36). The
effect size of number of relations was large and significant at the interorganizational level, but
insignificant at the intraorganizational level. Similarly, the effect size for centralized network
position is significantly higher at the interorganizational than at the intraorganizational level. The
relationship between knowledge transfer and performance proved to be significantly larger at the
intra-organizational level.
The relationships of the antecedents and consequences of knowledge transfer differed for
firms and units exchanging knowledge in a two-way transfer process (k = 52) compared to firms
or units acquiring knowledge in a one-way process (k = 31). The mean correlations we obtained
for the relation between age and knowledge transfer was only significant for acquisition.
Ambiguity had a more negative relationship for acquisition than for exchange. During
knowledge exchange parties are likely to cooperate together more closely through rich media
that enable them to better understand and interpret knowledge (Daft & Lengel, 1984). Finally,
we found that the number of relations of firms and units with others differed for knowledge
exchange and acquisition processes and was only significant in cases of knowledge acquisition.
In contrast to our previous findings, remarkably, the effect was negative from which may be
inferred that firms and units having a larger number of knowledge sources may experience
problems managing them and the large amount of knowledge available to them.
Measurement characteristics also appeared to moderate the effects. We differentiated
studies relying on secondary data retrieved through patents, databases, and archival records from
studies relying on primary data retrieved through surveys. Notably, the correlations of tie
strength and innovativeness became stronger when patent studies were included. This indicates
that operationalization of, for example, tie strength may have reduced the correlations. The
increased effect size for innovativeness may be due to the common problem in patent studies that
knowledge transfer and innovation are hard to discriminate.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

We contributed to the burgeoning literature on organizational knowledge transfer a

review and consolidation of existing research using meta-analytic techniques. Specifically, our
findings provide more fine-grained insights into the importance of knowledge, organizational,
and network antecedents of knowledge transfer, and provides important guidance for future
research.
The majority of the studies included in the meta-analytic review used survey research
methods to collect their empirical data. Not only alternative methodological approaches are
needed when studying organizational knowledge transfer, but also a parallel need exists for
greater sophistication in the assessment of construct reliability and validity. Most prior studies on
organizational knowledge transfer have investigated the phenomenon as a uni-dimensional
construct. Future research may investigate multiple dimensions of knowledge transfer beyond
extent, such as speed and quality, to obtain a more comprehensive understanding of antecedents
and consequences of knowledge transfer.
Our meta-analytic review reveals that some antecedents of organizational knowledge
transfer have not been studied extensively. For some of the relationships covered in this meta-
analytic study we had only a small number of samples. Our findings indicate a need for more
broad-based empirical studies that include multiple antecedents from different categories so that
their impacts on organizational knowledge transfer can be juxtaposed and the importance of
certain variables relative to others can be assessed.
Future studies should also continue to explore the role of additional moderating variables
for the relationships found, beyond the moderators included here. For example, absorptive
capacity and knowledge ambiguity, for instance, may moderate the relationships between
organizational-level and network-level attributes and organizational knowledge transfer.
This study represents a first step toward summarizing the empirical literature related to
organizational knowledge transfer. Interestingly, the number of studies investigating
organizational knowledge transfer studies has increased over time, as is evidenced by the fact
that 43 percent of the studies included in our meta-analytic review have been published in the
last two years (2004 and 2005). Our results demonstrate that the construct of organizational
knowledge transfer is alive and wellboth in terms of the amount of research attention it garners
as well as the fact it does influence important organizational outcomes. Nevertheless, there is
clearly a need for additional theoretical development and methodological development of the
organizational knowledge transfer construct.

REFERENCES AVAILABLE FROM AUTHORS

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