Best practices and their dissemination in the organization: An assessment of organizational practices transfer and integration

Knowledge transfer has attracted significant attention from researchers in general and is a major area of investigation by management researchers. This interest in knowledge transfer is closely linked to changes in the economy and to managerial efforts to find resources that can help organizations attain and sustain a competitive advantage.; This study examines the transfer of organizational practices between business units in a Fortune 500 corporation with operations in the regulated and deregulated industries. I propose that understanding both process and content is essential to the study of knowledge transfer. Process and content translate into issues surrounding how that transfer will occur and what is being transferred. Process is important because it directly relates to the fact that organizations are essentially social communities and, as a consequence, knowledge transfer is a social and political process. Content is important because knowledge transfer has implications for existing resource endowments.; Here, I test hypotheses regarding the importance of both process and content to understanding knowledge transfer. The findings indicate that knowledge transfer is an issue of both process and content. More precisely, knowledge transfer is a highly social process and relies on the management of relationships and resources. Knowledge transfer can neither be mandated nor incentivized.; “In today's highly competitive, technologically driven environment, the scarce resource that constrains the growth and strategic success of companies is not so much capital, as it is specialized knowledge and expertise, and the organizational capability that embeds it within the company” (Bartlett & Ghoshal, 1993).