Inter-organizational knowledge transfer difficulty: The influence of organizational network type, absorptive capacity, causal ambiguity and outcome ambiguity.

摘要

While most articles dealing with the issue of inter-organizational knowledge transfer take the position that some type of network alliance is superior to independent entities for the purposes of knowledge transfer, limited theory, or empirical research, addresses how different network types experience the factors of knowledge transfer differently. This dissertation addresses this issue. Specifically, this study develops two distinct parts of a specified model. The first part of the model identifies the factors expected to affect knowledge transfer difficulty, including the introduction of a new factor---outcome ambiguity---and puts forth hypotheses regarding their respective relationships. The second part of the model hypothesizes how each of these factors is expected to vary with four different network types. A total of nineteen hypotheses are developed, and eleven are tested empirically using primary data.