Transferring Collective Knowledge: Teaching and Learning in the Chinese Auto Industry

This paper is a theory-guided exploratory study of teaching and learning strategies that firms use to transfer of collective knowledge between organizations. Collective knowledge is knowledge that is both tacit and embedded in intra-firm group activities. We first discuss the benefits of group teaching and group learning in transferring collective knowledge from a source community to a recipient community. Group teaching involves joint teaching effort by multiple members of the source community. Group learning occurs when members of the recipient community gain collective exposure to same problems and solutions. We then explore and expand the initial discussion by examining international R&D capability transfer in the Chinese auto industry, based on interviews at multiple ventures in China and the U.S. Several results emerge from the study. Group teaching is more effective than individual teaching in helping recipients understand multiple dimensions of a source’s collective knowledge and creating bridge networks, while group learning is more effective than individual learning for helping trainees integrate and synthesize their learning and re-embed it with their local context. Among four teaching-learning configurations, group teaching-group learning is the most effective transfer strategy for transferring collective knowledge. Individual teaching-individual learning transfers collective knowledge poorly, but can lay a foundation for more complex teaching-learning combinations by transferring individual and codified knowledge. Compared to group teaching-group learning, the sequence of group teaching-individual learning followed by individual teaching-group learning is a less costly but lengthier and less effective process of transferring collective knowledge.