Autor:innen:
Anne Burmeister, Leuphana Universität Lüneburg
Jürgen Deller, Leuphana Universität Lüneburg
Joyce Osland, San Jose State University
Betina Szkudlarek, The University of Sydney Business School
Gary Oddou, San Marcos University
Roger Blakeney, University of Houston
Research question: This paper aimed to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the role of trust as it affects repatriate knowledge transfer and asked how trust between actors influences knowledge transfer outcomes.
Research design: Data were obtained from 29 semi-structured interviews with German and U.S. repatriates using the critical incident technique. Interview transcripts were content-analyzed, and inter-coder reliabilities for the derived category system were calculated and satisfactory.
Results: First, repatriates perceived an asymmetry between themselves and knowledge recipients regarding the different importance attached to the underlying dimensions of trustworthiness. Second, the type of knowledge influenced the mode of interaction and the trust development process between repatriates and knowledge recipients. Third, three trusting relationships between repatriates, recipients, and supervisors were detected as relevant for RKT.
Limitations: First, only German and U.S. American repatriates were interviewed. Second, the insights are based on repatriates’ experiences and do not include the perspectives of recipients and supervisors.
Theoretical/practical implications: The proposed asymmetry in importance attached to the cognitive and affective dimensions of trustworthiness by knowledge senders and recipients can only be tested with more advanced measuring instruments. In addition, the results support the conceptualization of trustworthiness and trust as two sequential constructs. From a practitioner standpoint, our findings can be used to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of existing organizational processes that are aimed at harvesting repatriate knowledge and enlarging the organizational knowledge base.
Relevance/contribution: This study overcomes the simplistic treatment of the trust construct in previous studies on knowledge transfer. In addition, it clarifies the impact of different knowledge types and third actors, namely supervisors on the knowledge transfer process.