Modeling the Transfer of Knowledge Between Organisations: A Critical Review of the Current Literature

It is commonly acknowledged that Knowledge Management involves several processes whose main goal is to make the knowledge available where it can be usefully applied. Even though all the KM processes give their specific contribution to the value generation, the literature has always devoted special attention to knowledge transfer since the greatest challenge organisations have to deal with is locating and capturing the needed piece of knowledge, wherever it is, and transferring it where it is of use. Knowledge transfer is important also because it allows avoiding reinventing an already successfully applied solution. Unfortunately, knowledge transfer is a complex phenomenon and therefore its success is often not easy to achieve. This is particularly true in the case of inter-organisational knowledge transfer, since the actors involved belong to distinct organisations that may be far from one another not only in spatial but especially in cultural and cognitive terms. This is the reason why such issue deserves further attention, from both the empirical and the conceptual side. In light of this, the paper aims to discuss and compare some models of knowledge transfer available in the literature. As a matter of fact, a small number of scholars have dealt with this question; furthermore they have done it from different and often complementary, points of view (e.g. economic, cognitive, social, cultural, and so on) and with different purposes. In particular, the paper has a twofold goal. The first is to critically evaluate the applicability (i.e. basic assumptions, limits, etc.) and workability (i.e. the capability of being put into effective operation) of the examined models. The second is to discuss the possibility of integrating the various models in a single framework that can be a useful working tool both for scholars and practitioners.