A Formal Approach to Analysing Knowledge Transfer Processes in Developing Countries

An organisation's competitive advantage depends on its ability to transfer knowledge effectively. Research suggests that knowledge transfer (KT) remains a problem for many organisations, particularly those in developing countries with emerging knowledge economies. Analysis of organisational KT problems in this context could be helpful in diagnosing particular challenges for sustainable development. In this paper, we apply a formal modelling approach to represent the KT processes within organisations. Communicating Sequential Processes (CSP) are used to model human interactions during the transfer and model-checking techniques are used to analyse obstacles to effective KT. The application of CSP in analysing KT models in such a way is a novel idea. To demonstrate our approach we present a case study of a Chinese company and show how cultural attitudes in organisations, widely prevalent in some developing countries, could lead to problems in effective KT.