Culture and Knowledge Transfer: Theoretical Considerations

摘要

Knowledge and culture are indissolubly linked together in organizations. Considerable evidence supports the importance of culture in the success or failure of knowledge management. Then, the effectiveness of knowledge transfer needs both cultural understanding and new considerations in the knowledge transfer of intercultural organizations. This paper identifies the influence of different dimensions of culture on knowledge transfer in different types of knowledge. Based on a topology that classified national culture into four dimensions provided by [12 and 13], power distance and individualism/collectivism are chosen as the representatives of national culture in this work and discuss the effect of national culture on knowledge transfer. The aim of this paper is to propose a theoretical framework for knowledge transfer processes based on differences in national culture for future research.