Those Who Know, Do. Those Who Understand, Teach. Disseminative Capability and Knowledge Transfer in the Automotive Industry

• Published in: The Journal of product innovation management Vol. 31; no. 1; pp. 79 - 97
• Main Authors: Schulze, Anja, Brojerdi, Gundula, von Krogh, Georg
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Hoboken Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.01.2014; Blackwell Publishing
• Subjects: Absorptive capacity; Absorptivity; Alliances; Automobile industry; Automobiles; Automotive components; Automotive engineering; Automotive industry; Deutschland; Innovations; Innovationsmanagement; Kfz-Industrie; Knowledge; Knowledge management; Product innovation; R&D; Research & development; Schweiz; Strategische Allianz; Studies; Wissenstransfer; Österreich
• ISSN: 0737-6782; 1540-5885
• DOI: 10.1111/jpim.12081

Innovations in the automotive industry are increasingly building on contributions from different technological fields. Correspondingly, firms in this industry more than ever tend to form research and development (R&D) alliances that aim at innovating new products through integrating separate fields and transferring knowledge. While, in symmetrical R&D alliances, each partner intends to ultimately maintain their distinctive and specialized knowledge base, overlapping knowledge facilitates cooperation and ultimately alliance success. Thus, the capability for knowledge transfer between partners is crucial in such R&D alliances. The literature provides ample evidence that such knowledge transfer is more likely to succeed if the recipient firm has absorptive capability. However, whereas the characteristics of the knowledge transfer process and the recipient firm are well understood, limited attention has so far been given to the issue of the knowledge source firm's ability to transfer knowledge to R&D alliance partners. This study focuses on the impact of source firm capability on successful knowledge transfer in R&D alliances. The study develops a theoretical framework of disseminative capability consisting of five dimensions and tests it on a sample of 59 projects in R&D alliances in the automotive industry. To ensure content validity and avoid common source bias, data were collected from both alliance partners. To test the hypotheses, multiple regression analyses were performed. The results reveal that the source firm's disseminative capability including the attainment of expert knowledge, assessing the recipient firm's knowledge base, and encoding knowledge are positively related to knowledge transfer success, while, surprisingly, detaching knowledge and support of knowledge application in the recipient firm are negatively related. Intentionally or unintentionally, disseminating knowledge across firm boundaries is widely perceived as detrimental to a firm's competitive advantage. Accordingly, the literature tends to downplay disseminative capability as an important means of exploiting external knowledge in collaborative settings. By demonstrating potential benefits for the source firm to transfer knowledge to the allying R&D partner firm, this paper reinvigorates the collaborative dimension in knowledge transfer. Further, the paper is the first of this kind to theoretically explain and empirically show that dimensions of disseminative capability of collaborators in R&D alliances are important for knowledge transfer, whereas disseminative capability is the complementary inverse of an organization's absorptive capacity.