Study on inter-organizational knowledge transfer based on incomplete information

Many papers have been published recently in the fields of strategy and international business research incorporating the role of organizational knowledge as a basis of firm competitive advantage. Knowledge transfer, defined here as an event through which one organization learns from the experience of another, has thus become an important research area within the broader domain of organizational learning and knowledge management. However, there exists incomplete information about each other in the transfer of knowledge between parties. Because of this incompleteness, parties seeking knowledge may not be able to identify qualified knowledge providers, and the appropriate experts may fail to be motivated to engage in knowledge transfer. This article analyses the types of information structures for knowledge transfer, and focuses on the provider-advantage asymmetric information structure. Finally, this paper presents a theoretical framework of knowledge transfer under incomplete information structure, show how information incompleteness may negatively influence knowledge transfer, and propose solutions to alleviate these negative impacts.