Contribution
Description: The current global race for higher levels of innovation entails an increased complexity of knowledge transfer (KT) within strategic alliances resulting in various sources of misunderstanding and failures. This paper examines the barriers faced in this context and provides solutions to overcome them. Moreover, the paper reasons the appropriatness of ethnographic research to elicit meaningfulo research results.The linear KT from the West to the East is regaded to be currently ineffcient as techniques are not rooted in the socio-cultural environment of the reciepients. Pointing to a polycentrism gap Western managers often show a lack of cultural sensitivity applying ethnocentric "one way -processes" underestimating the understanding of the structural influences of cultural variants.Based on a wide ranging literature review crucial gaps have been identified originating an ambience of resistance, friction and misunderstanding. Those are relating to a lack of ignorance, absorptive capacity, pre-existing relationships, motivation, lack of trust, cultural distance, a lack of time and meeting places, status and rewards going to owners, the belief that knowledge is prerogative of a particular group, intolerance for mistakes or the need for help, different cultures and ethical backgrounds, lack of conceptual equivalence, the relationship between the course of knowledge and the recipients and last but not least, inappropiate research methodologies.Many writers confirm that academia, so far, could not provide satisfactory solutions for inaccurate and inefficient transferability of KT even stressing that conceptual and empirical work is in an embryonic stage.It has been identified that an emphasis on single cultures and comparative research does no longer suffice and point to urgent need to carry out an analysis of cross-cultural interactions of trans-national companies from KM perspective. Serious shortcomming in social scientific research inon KMT refer in particular to CEE countires.If it is agreed upon that transferring physical technologies or explicit knowledge (i.e. models and concepts) across borders already provides a major challenges how much more problematic has the transferof social technologies to be considered as it is strongly interwoven with the social context. Hence, the transfer of tacit knowledge being rooted in action and social context should become the centre of academic interest. To get access to and ue this valuable deposit a shared cognitive or mental space, a shared system of meaning, common experience and a socialisation process have to be provided for.
Methodology: The paper suggests the recommended methodology for this study to be an ethnographic approach as opposed to structuralist frameworks. Ethnographic research is regarded appropiate to analyse social or human processes as compared to deductive methodologies. Ethnographic research allows to observe, describe and analyse of how people interact and collaborate and to identify beliefs and lifestyles of the respective research population in their natural settings. Latter is regarded to be crucial for the understanding of tacit knowledge. Consequently, it is hypothesized that efficient KT implies an understanding between the source of knowledge and the recipient rather than a linear information flow. This is suggested by reciprocal learning asa basis for creating a common mental space being the procondition for transferring cognitive models.
Conclusions: Barriers for efficient cross-cutlural KT have been identified and solutions of how to overcome them have been provided. This expected outcome will be presented as an initial conceptualisation to be tested by empirical work on the second stage of the PhD.
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