Exploring the Impact of Global Structure on Organizational Knowledge Transfer: A Contingency Analysis

In the global economy, organizational knowledge has emerged as a major contributor to achieving sustainable competitive advantage. In this paper, the authors present an outline for the exploration of the impact of the global structure of an organization on intra-firm knowledge transfer. The authors discuss four global structures: global, international, multinational, and transnational, and present the Global Knowledge Transfer framework. This framework suggests that the global structure of an organization has an impact on its knowledge flow. The framework also suggests that this relationship is moderated by the IT-based communication and social networks that are inherent within the organization. The authors suggest that this relationship can be examined through organizational and information systems theories including contingency theory, social network theory, and the theory of communicative action. The contribution of this proposed study is to provide a foundation to determine the optimal knowledge flow configuration for each global structure.