Requirements for knowledge transfer in hospitals

Abstract

Much literature exists about knowledge transfer in general, but very little deals with the link between the micro-perspective of learning in organizations and structural, cultural, and cognitive constraints caused by the organization - particularly with regard to prerequisites of knowledge-transfer within groups in knowledge-based working processes. The main question of this article is: How can knowledge transfer be supported? We exemplify this theoretical question with the help of an investigation we accomplished in German hospitals. The aim of our article is to fill two detected gaps in the existing literature: First we analyze knowledge transfer as a double-sided process of providing and obtaining knowledge. Second we link structural, cultural, and cognitive perspectives together and give a theoretical underpinning of knowledge transfer. We will give empirical evidence from our survey which supports five of our six hypotheses: Possibilities of interaction, organizational culture, and intrinsic motivation are relevant requirements for knowledge transfer. Only team size is not a significant factor for transferring knowledge in hospitals. In detail we show in this article that different factors support providing or obtaining knowledge.