Identifying Determinants of Knowledge Transfer in Collaborative Process: A Multi Case Study Approach

Collaborative processes involve two or more independent organizations engaged in interaction with each other, working towards common goals and share risks, benefits and their resources. Knowledge transfer is an important part of this kind of processes, so it is important to answer the question that what are the factors that affect knowledge transfer in collaborative processes? There are limited researches on this issue, so it is our main contribution to study determinants of inter-organizational information and knowledge transfer in collaborative processes. A questionnaire-based survey was conducted in two collaborative processes selected from public and private sector. Collected data were analysed using structured equation modelling. According to our finding, knowledge nature, technical tools and similarity are important determinants of knowledge transfer. Also organizational leadership have positive effect on it only in private sector. In addition to this, we concluded that a good operational protocol can improve knowledge transfer by removing risk from inter organizational relationship and giving a positive role to senior manager of organizations.