A Network Perspective on Inter-Organizational Transfer of Knowledge: A Study of Automobile R&D in Chinese Joint Ventures*

The purpose of this study is to introduce the network perspective to the transfer of knowledge between organizations embedded in different organizational contexts. This paper extends the previous studies in inter-organizational knowledge transfer by (1) explicitly considering the notion that organizational capabilities are largely collective knowledge, (2) identifying different networks involved in the capability transfer process from the perspectives of source organization, recipient organization and the interface between them, and (3) analyzing the impact of different attributes of these networks on the effectiveness of capability transfer. The empirical setting of this paper is multinational enterprises’ transfer of R&D capabilities to their international joint ventures in the Chinese auto sector. The setting involves organizations embedded in networks that have largely been isolated so far, and with significant capability mismatches between them, and thus provides a great natural setting for this study. The findings from the field study confirm the impact of the following network related factors on R&D capability transfer suggested in the propositions: (1) experience stock of the business network of the source organization and (2) experience stock of the recipient organization’s business network, (3) the initial endowment of the routines at the recipient organization from its business network, (4) the intensity of the network connection the source and recipient organizations (referred to as the bridge network), or the number of joint R&D tasks performed (5) the scope of the bridge network, or the implementation of group teaching and group learning.