Evaluating the Relationship between Knowledge Characteristics and Knowledge Transfer: An Empirical Study within Egyptian Textile Industry

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Evaluating the Relationship between Knowledge
Characteristics and Knowledge Transfer An
Empirical Study within Egyptian Textile Industry
Associate Professor, Business Administration
Department,Faculty of Commerce, Ain Shams
University,Cairo, Egypt.
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Abstract

• The purpose of this paper is to examine the
  relationship between knowledge characteristics
  and knowledge transfer from external sources such
  as suppliers, buyers, universities, and
  competitors.

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Design/methodology/approach

• Research involved the collection of both
  quantitative and qualitative data. The
  qualitative data was based on questionnaire
  survey of Egyptian Textile Industry Sector (three
  companies) to investigate the range of attitude
  and their ability to transfer both organisational
  and technological knowledge. The quantitative
  data to assess the knowledge transfer process
  included the export rate through the last three
  years. The questionnaire was carried out by
  postal, online, and some interviews questionnaire
  

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Findings

• The empirical evidence collected from the survey
  confirms that the urgent need to continuous
  knowledge transfer process in order to achieve a
  competitive advantage and sustainability. In
  addition, results suggest a strong positive
  relationship between knowledge characteristics
  and knowledge transfer.

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Research/ limitations/implications

• There are two limitations affecting the scope of
  these findings. The first limitation is that the
  survey respondents were representative only from
  the private sector (vertical comparison), but I
  needed to compare between public sector and
  private ones to complete the judgment process
  transfer particularly the effectiveness measures
  (horizontal comparison). The second limitation
  was the limited number of factors related to
  knowledge transfer which I have examined. Future
  research would benefit from public sector as well
  as private sector and examine more factors of
  knowledge transfer.
  

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• The paper offers several recommendations related
  to knowledge transfer process to be more
  effective.

This paper has two aspects of originality
firstly, both the theoretical frame work and
empirical study involved the study of the
knowledge and classifying it into organisational
and technological knowledge. This was due to the
user diversity. Secondly, I adopted two
methodologies in our empirical study.
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• Tacit knowledge, knowledge characteristics,
  organizational knowledge, technological
  knowledge, knowledge transfer, Textile Industry,
  Egypt.

Research paper.
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The Objectives

• Despite, tacit knowledge transfer takes a central
  role in the study. I need to measure the degree
  of an attitude the research units toward factors
  to knowledge transfer among firms. Hence, the
  objectives of the empirical analysis were (1) to
  describe characteristics of knowledge, (2) to
  measure the attitude towards the factors to
  knowledge transfer, (3) to test the proposed
  hypothesis and thus the relationship between
  characteristics of knowledge and factors to
  knowledge transfer. Descriptive statistics are
  used to meet the first and the second objectives,
  and Step-wise regression model is performed to
  meet the third objective
  

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• For practical reasons, including the ease of
  measurement, I put factors to knowledge transfer
  on 8 statements.

The independent variable of the present study are
predominantly based on pre-existing constructs, I
form characteristics of knowledge in 9 statements.
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Hypothesis of the Study

• From the previous dependent and independent
  variables and the proposed relationship is
  captured in the final set of hypothesis as
  follows

There is no relationship between knowledge
characteristics and factors to knowledge transfer.
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Some findings

• The aim of this study was to examine
  quantitatively and qualitatively the relationship
  between knowledge characteristics and factors to
  knowledge transfer. I found that the Centre of
  Modernization Egyptian Industry has an effective
  role in the field of knowledge transfer from many
  sources suppliers, buyers, universities, and
  competitors.
• Relevant to the level of adoption initiative and
  the level of implementation, obviously, were at
  each site in all companies. These companies get
  (transfer) their knowledge from many sources.
  This depends on the classification which I have
  covered about types of knowledge from a
  functional perspective

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• Organizational knowledge transfer to these
  companies from Universities (staves in all
  industrial and managerial areas) where work with
  Private Expert Houses that are funded by
  (EIU-CMEI) and European Union.
• Technological knowledge transfer to these
  companies is from two sources, on the one hand,
  from equipment suppliers (UK, Germany, France,
  and Italy) and expertise (employees) for long
  time from European Union. On the other hand the
  tacit knowledge comes from expertise and
  technical professional from competitive companies
  but by informal way.

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Future Directions

• It has recently been suggested that it is
  preferred to study the factors of knowledge
  transfer in detail where one can include the main
  three elements to transfer process the source
  the recipient and the organization (Schwartz,
  2007) and go deepen toward tacit knowledge only.
• Therefore I propose three titles of studies that
  would be useful in this field the first is
  Evaluating the Relationship between Tacit
  Knowledge Characteristics and The Source of
  Knowledge the second is Evaluating the
  Relationship between Tacit Knowledge
  Characteristics and The Recipient of Knowledge
  and the third is Evaluating the Relationship
  between Tacit Knowledge Characteristics and The
  Organizational Factors. Each of the studies will
  be expected to follow a similar methodology as
  outlined in our approach in this paper.

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Thank You !