Sustaining Firm Performance through Cross-Border Knowledge Transfer: The Foskor-Coromandel Case Study

Knowledge (both internal and external) has been identified as a critical resource to give firms competitive advantage in the ruthless global markets that they operate. A very adept vehicle to achieve this is strategic alliances. Extensive conceptual work has been done on cross-border knowledge transfer, but insufficient empirical work. This research study sets out to use an empirical case study of the Foskor-Coromandel cross-border collaboration to investigate the knowledge transfer. The strategic alliance is a buyer-supplier type of inter-firm alliance. The study uses a conceptual model derived from literature to discuss the influence of factors (knowledge characteristics, knowledge recipient characteristics, knowledge supplier characteristics and relationship characteristics) on the effectiveness of the knowledge transfer. The study also examines the impact of effective knowledge transfer on firm performance. The study findings indicated that of the factors considered knowledge complexity, absorptive capacity, recipient collaborativeness, transfer capacity and organisational distance had the most significant impact on the knowledge transfer and its effectiveness. Firm performance is positively impacted by effective knowledge transfer, leading to the conclusion that inter-firm strategic alliances as a vehicle to transfer knowledge can be an effective source of competitive advantage.