A Sender-Receiver Framework for Knowledge Transfer

28 29 The shift to more distributed forms of organizations 30 and the prevalence of interorganizational relation31 ships have led to an increase in the transfer of 32 V. Sambamurthy and Mani Subramani were the 33 accepting senior editors for this paper. 34 asymmetric and incomplete knowledge information between entities. Because of this asymmetry and incompleteness, parties seeking knowledge may not be able to identify qualified knowledge providers, and the appropriate experts may fail to be motivated to engage in knowledge transfer. We propose a sender-receiver framework for studying knowledge transfer under asymmetric and/or incomplete information. We outline four types of information structures for knowledge transfer, and focus on the sender-advantage asymmetric information structure and the symmetric incomplete information structure. We develop formal game-theoretical models, show how information incompleteness and asymmetry may negatively influence knowledge transfer, and propose solutions to alleviate these negative impacts. Implications for knowledge transfer research and practice are also discussed.