Knowledge Transfer

There are several ways that knowledge can be transferred. Nancy Dixon theorizes the 5 types of knowledge transfer.

1. Serial Transfer
2. Near Transfer
3. Far Transfer
4. Strategic Transfer
5. Expert Transfer

My comrade Ope Ogunlaja on his blog, defines concisely about each transfer type.

Below is the table of the types of Knowledge transfer and their descriptions. The table is generated from Madam Azmawati Mohd Lazim's lecture.

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Week 6: Presentation of Strategic Transfer

 

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Disclaimer: this powerpoint slides presentation is yet to be finalized and citations are needed. Downloading and usage of the material is permissable but the authors do not bear any responsibility of any misconception, error or misleading information of users.

 

Strategic transfer involves a non-routine job scope and also infrequent. The task impacts more than one person or group and may extend to the whole organization. Meaning to say, the source and the receiver of the knowledge cannot be of the same person or group. The nature of the task is also different and unique. This type of knowledge transfer implies both tacit and explicit knowledge.

 

Example

Bank A wants to make a debut in having credit cards as the latest convenience and service for their customers. So the top management of Bank A calls for the experts from the Marketing Department, R&D, Finance, Customer's Service, etc. to discuss about launching the credit card service.

As you can see, this task is non-routine for any of them, because it is out of their daily job description and also infrequent because most likely they don't have to repeat it again in the future. 

The collective knowledge of the experts are the tacit knowledge and when they have made any documentations out of their ideas, they are creating explicit knowledge.

When they have finally generate ideas and draw the outlines, they will present it to the top level management of the bank. So the knowledge do not only circulate amongst the experts, but involves the top management, who did not take part in the discussion. 

Then finally the top management will make the final decision, based on the ideas and suggestions of the experts league. 

Here we understand that the source and receiver of the knowledge are of different groups.

That is what we call Strategic Transfer!

 

To learn more about the other types of knowledge transfer, I will soon update this blog and include links to my peers' blogs about each of the transfer type.

 

Please care to give a pinch of your thoughts by leaving comments. Thank you~