Experience and Performance in Interunit Knowledge Transfer

In the wake of the expansion of resource- and knowledge-based perspectives, knowledge has moved to the forefront as the strategically most important resource for organizations (Grant, 1996). From these perspectives, sustained competitive advantage is achieved by a superior organizational capability to coordinate heterogeneous knowledge resources in the firm (Grant, 1996; Kogut and Zander, 1992, 1996). This has directed a vast amount of research to deal with factors affecting the transfer of knowledge across subsidiaries, that is, how the gap between what is known and what is put to use in the organization is closed (Hansen and Levâs, 2004; McEvily et al. 2004; Pfeffer and Sutton, 2000).