Assignment 2 (Management Quantitative Methods) Essay

Assignment 2 (Management Quantitative Methods) - Essay Example The research paper focuses on how individual motivation, connectedness and inter/intra-unit ties is important in knowledge transfer between individuals in organisations. Knowledge transfer and has recently been gaining a lot of importance since firms are finding themselves in increasingly competitive markets and are realizing their need to be more creative and innovative. Its importance has grown in recent decades for three related reasons. First, knowledge appears to be an increasing proportion of many organizations total assets2. Second, organizations have moved away from hierarchical methods of control toward more decentralized organizational structures and increased employee involvement. This has resulted in more knowledge transfer as employees are more involved in the decision making of the companies and has reduced organizational paths through which information travels. Finally, advances in information technology have created new means of knowledge transfer. The paper discusses how knowledge transfer is important for promoting innovation and creativity in organisations. Employees can be influenced by actions taken by the organisations to transfer knowledge so as to reach favourable outcomes. This can be done by an understanding of both what motivates the individual to transfer knowledge, as well as, structurally, with whom individuals exchange knowledge; the former is relevant to development of proper HRM policy to stimulate knowledge while the latter is indicated by an individual’s position in the knowledge transfer network of an organization. The paper also discusses how individual motivation may explain an individual’s position in the structure of the network in which innovative knowledge is transferred. Individuals that are more connected within the full knowledge transfer network of an organisation contribute significantly and lead to more innovative outcomes for the organisation. The concept of closeness centrality is used to indicate the individual’s position in the full knowledge transfer network, rather than merely observing their immediate connections. The connections an individual has may be within the own unit, while also knowledge transferred from other units, crossing unit boundaries, is believed to contribute to innovation in an important way. Transfer of knowledge in a multi-unit organisation may be difficult than transfer of knowledge in a unit that specializes in one knowledge field. This is because in a multi-unit organisation, the employees have limited information as to what activities and knowledge other employees have or are engaged in. Within a unit that specializes in one knowledge field, knowledge may also be of the tacit3 kind. Thus an individual’s capacity to contribute to the innovation processes in a firm then depends not just on his own (absorptive) capacity originating from earlier experiences, but also depends on the social, professional and hierarchical relations within t he organization. If one is not well-connected one’s contribution to knowledge transfer and thus the innovation process can be limited. Well-connected individuals can gain information of higher accuracy, van gain diverse knowledge and can collect and spread existing information more rapidly, but can also recombine existing ideas and knowledge in a novel way thus being more creative. Individual motivation is important factor for knowledge transfe