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Mamdouh Abdel Aziz Refaiy Dr.

Associate Professor, Business Administration Department,

Faculty of Commerce, Ain Shams University,Cairo, Egypt.

Evaluating the Relationship between Knowledge Characteristics and

Knowledge Transfer: An Empirical Study within Egyptian Textile

Industry

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1 Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between knowledge characteristics and knowledge transfer from external sources such as suppliers, buyers, universities, and

competitors.

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Purpose

Design/methodology/approach

Research involved the collection of both quantitative and qualitative data. The qualitative data was based on questionnaire survey of Egyptian Textile Industry Sector (three companies) to investigate the range of attitude and their ability to transfer both organisational and technological knowledge. The quantitative data to assess the knowledge transfer process included the export rate through the last three years. The questionnaire was carried out by postal, online, and some interviews

questionnaire

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Findings The empirical evidence collected from the survey confirms that the urgent need to continuous knowledge transfer process

in order to achieve a competitive advantage and sustainability. In addition, results suggest a strong positive relationship between knowledge characteristics and knowledge transfer.

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Research/ limitations/implications

There are two limitations affecting the scope of these findings. The first limitation is that the survey respondents were representative only from the private sector (vertical comparison), but I needed to compare between public sector and private ones to complete the judgment process transfer particularly the effectiveness measures (horizontal comparison). The second limitation was the limited number of factors related to knowledge transfer which I have examined. Future research would benefit from public sector as well as private sector and examine more factors of knowledge

transfer .

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Practical implications

The paper offers several recommendations related to knowledge transfer process to be more effective.

Originality/value

This paper has two aspects of originality; firstly, both the theoretical frame work and empirical study involved the study of the knowledge and classifying it into organisational and technological knowledge. This was due to the user diversity. Secondly, I adopted two

methodologies in our empirical study .

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Key words

Tacit knowledge, knowledge characteristics, organizational knowledge, technological knowledge, knowledge transfer, Textile Industry, Egypt.

Paper type

Research paper.

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The Objectives

Despite, tacit knowledge transfer takes a central role in the study. I need to measure the degree of an attitude the research units toward factors to knowledge transfer among firms. Hence, the objectives of the empirical analysis were (1) to describe characteristics of knowledge, (2) to measure the attitude towards the factors to knowledge transfer, (3) to test the proposed hypothesis and thus the relationship between characteristics of knowledge and factors to knowledge transfer. Descriptive statistics are used to meet the first and the second objectives, and Step-wise regression model is performed to meet

the third objective

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Dependent Variable

For practical reasons, including the ease of measurement, I put factors to knowledge transfer on 8 statements.

Independent Variables

The independent variable of the present study are predominantly based on pre-existing constructs, I form characteristics of knowledge in 9 statements.

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1 Hypothesis of the Study

From the previous dependent and independent variables and the proposed relationship is captured in the final set of hypothesis as follows :

There is no relationship between knowledge characteristics and factors to knowledge transfer.

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Some findingsThe aim of this study was to examine quantitatively and qualitatively the relationship between knowledge characteristics and factors to knowledge transfer. I found that the Centre of Modernization Egyptian Industry has an effective role in the field of knowledge transfer from many sources; suppliers, buyers, universities, and competitors. Relevant to the level of adoption initiative and the level of implementation, obviously, were at each site in all companies. These companies get (transfer) their knowledge from many sources. This depends on the classification which I have covered about types of knowledge from a functional perspective:

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Organizational knowledge transfer to these companies from Universities (staves in all industrial and managerial areas) where work with Private Expert Houses that are funded by (EIU-CMEI) and European Union.

Technological knowledge transfer to these companies is from two sources, on the one hand, from equipment suppliers (UK, Germany, France, and Italy) and expertise (employees) for long time from European Union. On the other hand the tacit knowledge comes from expertise and technical professional from competitive companies but by informal way.

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Future Directions

It has recently been suggested that it is preferred to study the factors of knowledge transfer in detail where one can include the main three elements to transfer process; the source; the recipient; and the organization (Schwartz, 2007)

and go deepen toward tacit knowledge only .

Therefore I propose three titles of studies that would be useful in this field; the first is: Evaluating the Relationship between Tacit Knowledge Characteristics and The Source of Knowledge; the second is: Evaluating the Relationship between Tacit Knowledge Characteristics and The Recipient of Knowledge; and the third is: Evaluating the Relationship between Tacit Knowledge Characteristics and The Organizational Factors. Each of the studies will be expected to follow a similar methodology as outlined in our approach in this paper.

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LOGO Mamdouh RefaiyDr.

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