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Concept
Knowledge transfer
Summary
Knowledge transfer is the sharing or disseminating of knowledge and the providing of inputs to problem solving. In organizational theory, knowledge transfer is the practical problem of transferring knowledge from one part of the organization to another. Like knowledge management, knowledge transfer seeks to organize, create, capture or distribute knowledge and ensure its availability for future users. It is considered to be more than just a communication problem. If it were merely that, then a memorandum, an e-mail or a meeting would accomplish the knowledge transfer. Knowledge transfer is more complex because:
knowledge resides in organizational members, tools, tasks, and their subnetworks and
much knowledge in organizations is tacit or hard to articulate.
The subject has been taken up under the title of knowledge management since the 1990s. The term has also been applied to the transfer of knowledge at the international level.
In business, knowledge transfer now has become a common topic in mergers and acquisitions. It focuses on transferring technological platform, market experience, managerial expertise, corporate culture, and other intellectual capital that can improve the companies' competence. Since technical skills and knowledge are very important assets for firms' competence in the global competition, unsuccessful knowledge transfer can have a negative impact on corporations and lead to the expensive and time-consuming M&A not creating values to the firms.
Knowledge transfer between humans is a practice that likely dates back to the "Great Leap Forward" in behavioral modernity about 80,000 years ago, with the origin of speech initiating as far back as 100,000 BCE. Many scholars agree that modern human behavior can be characterized by abstract thinking, planning depth, symbolic behavior (e.g., art, ornamentation), music and dance, exploitation of large game, and blade technology, among others - "a set of traits that have come to be accepted as indicators of behavioral modernity"
The evolution of knowledge transfer from this prehistoric period can arguably be broken up into two key developments: speech and symbols.
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