Knowledge Transfer Difficulty in Inter-Organizational Networks: An Empirical Study of Absorptive Capacity and Causal Ambiguity

While most research dealing with the issue of inter-organizational knowledge transfer takes the position that some type of network alliance is superior to a non-networked group of entities for the purposes of knowledge transfer, limited theory, or empirical research, addresses how different network types experience knowledge transfer and its associated factors differently. This issue is addressed within the current study. Specifically, this study develops and empirically tests two distinct parts of a research model. The first part of the model examines two factors of knowledge transfer – absorptive capacity and causal ambiguity – and puts forth hypotheses regarding how these factors affect inter-organizational knowledge transfer difficulty. The second part of the model hypothesizes how these factors are expected to vary within two different network types. A total of eight hypotheses are developed and tested empirically using a combination of PLS and ANOVA based upon survey data, taken from 102 financial organizations. Our findings indicated that absorptive capacity was a significant factor of interorganizational knowledge transfer. However, although causal ambiguity has been shown in previous research to be a significant factor of intra-organizational knowledge transfer, it was not found to be a significant factor of knowledge transfer in an inter-organizational context. In addition, we found differences to exist between two network types for both absorptive capacity and causal ambiguity, providing some initial insight into how different network types experience knowledge transfer differently.