Knowledge transfer is the transfer of facts or practical skills from one entity to another.Kjell Arne Røvik (2016). "Knowledge Transfer as Translation: Review and Elements of an Instrumental Theory." International Journal of Management Reviews, Vol. 18, 290–310 (2016) DOI: 10.1111/ijmr.12097 The specific profile of transfer processes that are activated for a given situation depends on the type of knowledge to be transferred, how it is represented (i.e., the source and recipient relationship with this knowledge), and the processing demands of the transfer task.Timothy J. Nokes (2009). "Mechanisms of knowledge transfer," Thinking & Reasoning, 15:1, 1–36, DOI: 10.1080/13546780802490186 From this perspective, knowledge transfer in humans encompasses expertise from different disciplines, including psychology, cognitive anthropology, anthropology of knowledge, communication studies, and media ecology.
Overview
Because of the rapid development of strategies for promoting wider information use during the "information age", a family of terms – knowledge transfer, learning, transfer of learning, and knowledge sharing – are often used interchangeably or as synonyms. While the concepts of knowledge transfer, learning, and transfer of learning are defined in closely related terms, they are different notions. According to conventional usage in psychology, Transfer of Learning occurs in people when they apply already learned information, strategies, and skills to a new situation or context. Another concept of learning is attributed to all animals and even certain plants.Karban, R. (2015). "Plant Learning and Memory." In: Plant Sensing and Communication. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, pp. 31–44, Archived 2022-12-31 at the Wayback Machine. Learning in humans starts before birth.OECD (2007). Understanding the Brain: The Birth of a Learning Science. OECD Publishing. p. 165. ISBN 978-92-64-02913-2.Chapter 2: The Montessori philosophy. From Lillard, P. P. Lillard (1972). Montessori: A Modern Approach. Schocken Books, New York.Castiello, U.; Becchio, C.; Zoia, S.; Nelini, C.; Sartori, L.; Blason, L.; D'Ottavio, G.; Bulgheroni, M.; Gallese, V. (2010). "Wired to be social: the ontogeny of human interaction." PloS one, 5(10), p.e13199.Kisilevsky, B.C. (2016). "Fetal Auditory Processing: Implications for Language Development? Fetal Development." Research on Brain and Behavior, Environmental In uences, and Emerging Technologies,: 133–152.Lee, G.Y.C.; Kisilevsky, B.S. (2014). "Fetuses respond to father's voice but prefer mother's voice after birth." Developmental Psychobiology, 56: 1–11.Hepper, P.G.; Scott, D.; Shahidullah, S. (1993). "Newborn and fetal response to maternal voice." Journal of Reproductive and Infant Psychology, 11: 147–153.Lecanuet, J.P.; Granier‐Deferre, C.; Jacquet, A.Y.; Capponi, I.; Ledru, L. (1993). "Prenatal discrimination of a male and a female voice uttering the same sentence." Early development and parenting, 2(4): 217–228.Hepper P. (2015). "Behavior during the prenatal period: Adaptive for development and survival." Child Development Perspectives, 9(1): 38–43. DOI: 10.1111/cdep.12104.Jardri, R.; Houfflin-Debarge, V.; Delion, P.; Pruvo, J-P.; Thomas, P.; Pins, D. (2012). "Assessing fetal response to maternal speech using a noninvasive functional brain imaging technique." International Journal of Developmental Neuroscience, 2012, 30: 159–161. doi:10.1016/j.ijdevneu.2011.11.002. According to cognitive psychology, learning begins from unawareTomasello, M. (2019). Becoming human: A theory of ontogeny. Cambridge, Massachusetts, US: Harvard University Press. and, even before birth during pregnancy,Val Danilov I (2024). "Child Cognitive Development with the Maternal Heartbeat: A Mother-Fetus Neurocognitive Model and Architecture for Bioengineering Systems". In: Ben Ahmed M, Boudhir AA, Abd Elhamid Attia HF, Eštoková A, Zelenáková M (eds) Information Systems and Technological Advances for Sustainable Development. DATA 2024. Lecture Notes in Information Systems and Organisation, vol 71. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-75329-9_24 from non-perceptual processes of distinguishing sensory stimuli.Val Danilov, I. (2024). "Shared Intentionality Before Birth: Emulating a Model of Mother-Fetus Communication for Developing Human-Machine Systems." In: Arai, K. (eds) Intelligent Systems and Applications. IntelliSys 2023. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, vol 824. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-47715-7_5Val Danilov I. (2023). "Low-Frequency Oscillations for Nonlocal Neuronal Coupling in Shared Intentionality Before and After Birth: Toward the Origin of Perception." OBM Neurobiology 2023; 7(4): 192; doi:10.21926/obm.neurobiol.2304192.https://www.lidsen.com/journals/neurobiology/neurobiology-07-04-192 In contrast to both above, knowledge transfer is a process in humans that requires intention from both sides: to share facts or skills from one side and acquire new knowledge from another (see the definition of knowledge transfer).
The most significant difficulties exist with separating the terms knowledge transfer and knowledge sharing. According to Paulin and Suneson (2012), their distinction is based on different representations of the relationship between knowledge and its context by different authors.Paulin, D., & Suneson, K. (2012). "Knowledge transfer, knowledge sharing and knowledge barriers–three blurry terms in KM." Electronic Journal of Knowledge Management, 10(1), pp82-92. Available online. Scientists who use the term knowledge transfer intend knowledge as an object without regard to the context; they amplify the enablers, suppress disabling conditions, and overcome obstacles, including the barriers, if they want to create good conditions for knowledge flow. Scholars who believe that knowledge is something that is constructed in a social context and which cannot be separated from the context (or the individual) use knowledge sharing and focus more on the development of "space" or "environment" to better fit individuals who need to develop personal knowledge with the help of those who have already developed it. Another approach suggests that knowledge sharing is a subset of knowledge transfer. Knowledge sharing refers to a linear (unidirectional) process using a personalization strategy. Knowledge transfer is a non-linear (bidirectional) process that may also proceed unidirectionally (as those linear in Knowledge sharing). According to Tangaraja and colleagues (2016), the essential peculiarity of knowledge transfer is that it is distinguished by the strategy used. Indeed, the meaning of the word transfer implies the aim since the dictionary defines it as the process "to move someone or something from one place, vehicle, person, or group to another".Cambridge dictionary. "Knowledge transfer". Retrieved 2 February 2024. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/knowledge-transfer In contrast, sharing refers to "having or using something simultaneously as someone else" without targeting.Cambridge dictionary. "Sharing". Retrieved 2 February 2024. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/share?q=sharing
The brief overview of related fields of knowledge introduces the main concepts that scholars consider when studying the current topic.
In cognitive anthropology, scholars tend to study patterns of shared knowledge. Cognitive anthropology is concerned with what people from different groups know and how that implicit knowledge changes how people perceive and relate to the world around them.D'Andrade, Roy (1995). The Development of Cognitive Anthropology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. This discipline attempts to understand the impact of culture on developing the cognitive schema – a culturally specific mental structure responsible for an active organization of past experiences, implying activation of the whole.Schacter, D. L., & Kihlstrom, J. F. (1989). "Functional amnesia." Handbook of neuropsychology, 3, 209–231.Kamppinen, M. (1993). "Cognitive schemata." In Consciousness, Cognitive Schemata, and Relativism: Multidisciplinary Explorations in Cognitive Science (pp. 133–168). Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands. Cognitive anthropologists strive to identify and systematize certain essential aspects of culture to understand how these peculiarities affect knowledge transfer.Tyler, Stephen A. (1969). Cognitive anthropology : readings. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. ISBN 0-03-073255-7. OCLC 22714. Because the cognitive schemas on the same issue may differ in different cultures, the particularities of knowledge transfer in different environments are essential.
In psychology, knowledge transfer is also based on the notion of cognitive schema and involves essential processes of Assimilation and Accommodation.Piaget, Jean. 1963. The Origins of Intelligence in Children. Translated by M. Cook. New York: Norton. Assimilation refers to an interpretation of new information within the framework of existing cognitive schema. It is the reuse of existing schemata to fit the new information. Accommodation refers to making minor changes to acquired knowledge to create a new schema for that knowledge to cope with things that do not fit existing schemas. In terms of psychology, knowledge transfer relates to the transformability of the transferred knowledge for assimilating by existing cognitive schemas and the translatability of the source practice for creating the new cognitive schema in the accommodation.
In communication studies, basic concepts like "sender", "receiver", "message", "channel", "signal", "encoding", "decoding", "noise", "feedback", and "context", appear in different models, which are classified in many ways. Models of communication adhere to the main properties of any model: Mapping (emulating something existing in objective reality); Reduction (including only attributes that appear relevant to the model's creator or user); Pragmatism (not relating unambiguously to its original).Herbert Stachowiak (1973). Allgemeine Modelltheorie, S. 131–133. The Internet Archive, retrieved 30 January 2024. Communication studies recognize two main categories of models for describing knowledge transfer.Narula, Uma (2006). Handbook of Communication Models, Perspectives, Strategies. Atlantic Publishers & Dist. ISBN 9788126905133. The linear direction category presents a unidirectional process in which messages flow from the communicator to the audience. Conversely, the non-linear category is multi-directional: messages are sent back and forth between participants.
In organizational theory, knowledge transfer is the practical problem of transferring knowledge from one part of the organization to another. Like knowledge management, knowledge transfer seeks to organize, create, capture or distribute knowledge and ensure its availability for future users. It is considered to be more than just a communication problem. If it were merely that, then a memorandum, an e-mail or a meeting would accomplish the knowledge transfer. Knowledge transfer is more complex because:
knowledge resides in organizational members, tools, tasks, and their subnetworks and much knowledge in organizations is tacit or hard to articulate.
The subject has been taken up under the title of knowledge management since the 1990s. The term has also been applied to the transfer of knowledge at the international level.