Impact of Different Individual Behavior on Knowledge Transfer Processes within the Organization

Abstract

The study addresses three behavioral or psychological factors (i.e. individual’s learning attitude, self-learning ability and the mutual trust) that relate to the knowledge transfer between actors, and examines their effects on the knowledge transfer speed and further the knowledge stock within the organization. A cellular automata based model is proposed to simulate the actors’ behavior by using the knowledge exchange rules, of which more attention has been paid to the effect of the knowledge recipients’ knowledge absorption capacity on the performance of knowledge transfer in terms of their learning attitudes, self-learning abilities and the degree of mutual trust. The simulation results show that the greater proportion of initial active recipients, the more active ones over time which implies a self-organization mechanism involved in knowledge transfer, Meanwhile, the knowledge stock of the organization is considerably related to the recipients’ learning initiatives, abilities and the actors’ mutual trust.