Abstract:

Knowledge transfer is a very generic term; however, many studies describe it´s nature as an important factor in knowledge based firms (von Hippel, 1994). The more tacit knowledge and complexity, the harder transfer process is (McEvily & Chakravarthy, 2002). The more knowledge is included in the causes and consequences of ambiguity, the harder transfer is (Szulanski, 2000). According to Szulanski (2000) there are ambiguities associated with the tacit knowledge transfer process because it involves exchanges between individuals and the mutual communication. Ambiguity also increases both the sender (Foss & Pedersen, 2002) and the recipient's (Gupta & Govindarajan, 2000; Tsai, 2001) cognitive skills. The most difficult part of the knowledge transfer area is associated with interactivity between people, tasks and tools. Therefore, knowledge is both a challenge and an opportunity (Argote & Ingram, 2000). Knowledge transfer has been defined in several ways and is often used as a general term of an organizational knowledge interaction. Knowledge transfer can be seen as the communication of technology and knowledge from one agent to another, to locations where knowledge is needed and can be used (Ceptureanu SI et al, 2016). Usually knowledge transfer is for many synonyms with internal knowledge transfer. According to Argote & Ingram (2000) knowledge transfer is a process related to experience from one business unit to other business unit in the same organization. For Alavi & Leidner (2001) internal knowledge transfer is possible at several levels: between individuals, from individuals to explicit sources, between and across groups and from group to the organization and movement of knowledge across the boundaries created by specialized knowledge domains (Carlile & Rebentisch, 2003). 
Although there are many paper analysing knowledge transfer, few researchers describe and deal the concept as such, usually descriptive and less analytic (Murray & Peyrefitte, 2007). According to Szulanski (2000) key factors influencing knowledge transfer are knowledge characteristics, disseminative capacity, absorptive capacity and relationship characteristic between senders and recipients, while Minbaeva (2007) argue that, although these factors are important, features of senders and recipients are more important.