Explicit and Tacit Practice Transfer Methods: Evidence from Two Field Experiments

Abstract

Despite the recent advances in communication technologies and the extant literature on intra-organization knowledge transfer, organizations still invest in unsuccessful initiatives to disseminate practices. This suggests that the mechanisms leading to a successful transfer remain elusive. A key obstacle to understand the determinants of successful practice transfer initiative is that these are often endogenous processes. In this paper, I address some of these theoretical and empirical challenges by conducting two field experiments where 804 managers from a national branch of a large multinational firm were exogenously assigned to distinct practice-transfer method pairs. More specifically, I analyze practice transfer implications of employing explicit (non-personalized and non-interactive) transfer methods with heterogeneous credibility (Experiment 1) and further compare explicit to tacit (personalized and interactive) transfer processes (Experiment 2). The main results of the experiments are: 1) credibility is a double-edged sword which facilitates knowledge transfer for practices associated with such credibility while hindering the transfer of other practices; and 2) tacit methods allow for the transfer of knowledge content outside an initially codified scope. These findings complement the knowledge transfer literature by showing that outcomes from a practice transfer initiative depend on the fit between the characteristics of a transfer method and of the practices being transferred.