Research Scholarly Productivity of Universities: From the Perspective of Knowledge Transfer

Knowledge transfer acts as essential mediator to build research scholarly productivity of university faculty. However, the effects that knowledge transfer takes on research scholarly productivity of universities are still quite ambiguous, which results in ignorance of procedural concern about how knowledge transfer promotes research scholarly productivity through interaction and synergy between university faculty and specific knowledge users (receivers). Therefore, we proposed a conceptual model and 13 hypotheses, which illustrate the elements influencing knowledge transfer while university faculty engage in research work and make contribution to research scholarly productivity. Later, correlation and regression analysis were done to verify the model and hypotheses, and the statistical results indicate: the processes of "conduct research work" (knowledge transmit) and "absorb research outcome" (knowledge accept) pose the first and second greatest total effects on research scholarly productivity, which implies university faculty should pay high attention to the procedural management while making research; "communication environment" takes the third place to influence research scholarly productivity, which suggests building proper communication environment for knowledge transmission by university faculty and absorption by specific knowledge receivers is indirectly important to the level of research scholarly productivity; the last but not the least, an unexpected finding that "knowledge characteristics" (complexity) does exert direct effect on research scholarly productivity, which probably reveals university faculty is eager to grasp open opportunities and difficult challenges-the more complex the knowledge, the stronger willing to undertake research and transfer knowledge.