This chapter reveals the overview of knowledge transfer; knowledge transfer, labor mobility, and labor diversity; knowledge transfer and subsidiary perspectives; barriers to knowledge transfer; knowledge transfer and absorptive capacity; knowledge transfer and knowledge acquisition; knowledge transfer and virtual teams; and the advanced issues of knowledge transfer in modern organizations. The process of transferring knowledge is an ongoing progression of learning, adjusting, and improving. At the organizational level, knowledge transfer manifests itself through changes in the knowledge of a unit. Most successful knowledge transfer efforts actively involve both the source of the knowledge and its receiver. Establishing performance expectations for those who will use the knowledge further quantifies the value of the transfer. Companies considering or using knowledge transfer processes, should continuously evaluate their social media readiness. The benefits of knowledge transfer for workplaces include the increases in productivity, speed, agility, profits, and growth.
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The rapid proliferation of the Internet and information technology (IT) has dramatically increased the speed of knowledge creation, and information distribution (Hsu, 2009). In the digital economy, the need for managing data, information, and knowledge is ever-increasing (Acar, et al., 2014). During the last decade, improvements in information and communication technology (ICT) have made possible the transformation of knowledge transfer processes from the purely informal communication mechanisms to the formal communication mechanisms that enhance the intra-organizational communication channels (Zapata-Cantú, et al., 2016).
With the complexity of organizations, it is important that organizations must understand how knowledge is created and shared around their core business processes (McLaughlin, 2013). Knowledge can be either tangible or intangible and knowledge transfer is a process responsible for gathering, analyzing, storing, and sharing this knowledge within an organization (Harorimana, 2012). Knowledge sharing is a mechanism to capture, disseminate, transfer, and apply the useful knowledge (Nemati-Anaraki & Heidari, 2016). Knowledge transfer in an organization is the process through which one unit (e.g., group, department, and division) is affected by the experience of another (Kwan & Cheung, 2006). Transferring knowledge leads to the synergistic cost advantages, better implementation of organizational strategies, and competitive advantage (Clinton, et al., 2011).