Social Identity and Knowledge Transfer

Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh PA

Investigators

Abstract

Knowledge transfer in organizations has become increasingly important because firms are more often organized in a distributed fashion to take advantage of differences in expertise, labor costs, and access to markets that exist around the world. The increased use of joint ventures and strategic alliances, the increased frequency of mergers and acquisitions, and the greater prevalence of the multiunit organizational form also point to the importance of knowledge transfer. Evidence indicates that organizations that are adept at transferring knowledge across their units are more productive and more likely to survive than their counterparts that are less effective at knowledge transfer. The research examines a critical predictor of knowledge transfer across groups: whether the groups share a social identity. We hypothesize that sharing a social identity affects the likelihood of knowledge transfer across groups and their subsequent performance. Group members who share a social identity generally view their own group, its members, its products, and its processes more positively than those of other groups. In a laboratory study, we found that groups that shared a superordinate social identity with a new member who rotated in from another group were very likely to adopt innovations proposed by the rotating member when the innovations improved their performance and to reject innovations when they did not improve performance. By contrast, groups that did not share a superordinate social identity with a rotating member were likely to reject the new member's innovations, even when they would have improved group performance. The current research replicates and builds on our initial results to gain a greater understanding of the processes through which and the conditions under which social identity affects knowledge transfer and performance. The first study aims to determine the minimal conditions necessary to create the perception of a shared superordinate social identity among interacting group members and to affect knowledge transfer. The second and third studies aim to assess how characteristics of groups and characteristics of the knowledge being transferred interact with social identity to affect knowledge transfer. This research has implications for theories of knowledge transfer as well as theories about shared social identity. Because knowledge transfer can have a significant impact on group and organizational performance, the research has practical implications for improving organizational and work group effectiveness.