Social Identity and Knowledge Transfer

组织中的知识转移变得越来越重要，因为公司更多地以分布式方式组织，以利用专业知识、劳动力成本和进入世界各地市场的机会的差异。更多地使用合资企业和战略联盟、更频繁的合并和收购以及更普遍的多单位组织形式也表明了知识转让的重要性。有证据表明，善于在其单位之间转移知识的组织比那些在知识转移方面效率较低的组织更有生产力，更有可能生存下来。这项研究考察了跨群体知识转移的一个关键预测因素：群体是否共享一种社会身份。我们假设，共享一个社会身份会影响跨群体知识转移的可能性和他们随后的表现。与其他群体相比，具有相同社会身份的群体成员通常更积极地看待自己的群体、其成员、其产品和过程。在一项实验室研究中，我们发现，与从另一组轮换过来的新成员共享更高社会身份的小组，很可能在创新改善其表现时采用轮换成员提出的创新，而在创新不能改善表现时拒绝创新。相比之下，与轮值成员没有更高社会认同感的群体可能会拒绝新成员的创新，即使他们本可以改善群体表现。目前的研究复制并建立在我们初步结果的基础上，以更好地理解社会认同影响知识转移和绩效的过程和条件。第一项研究旨在确定在相互作用的群体成员之间建立共享的上级社会认同并影响知识转移所需的最低条件。第二和第三项研究旨在评估群体特征和被转移知识的特征如何与社会认同相互作用，以影响知识转移。本研究对知识转移理论和共享社会认同理论具有一定的借鉴意义。由于知识转移可以对团队和组织绩效产生显著影响，因此本研究对于提高组织和工作团队的有效性具有现实意义。

Knowledge transfer in organizations has become increasingly important because firms are more often organized in a distributed fashion to take advantage of differences in expertise, labor costs, and access to markets that exist around the world. The increased use of joint ventures and strategic alliances, the increased frequency of mergers and acquisitions, and the greater prevalence of the multiunit organizational form also point to the importance of knowledge transfer. Evidence indicates that organizations that are adept at transferring knowledge across their units are more productive and more likely to survive than their counterparts that are less effective at knowledge transfer. The research examines a critical predictor of knowledge transfer across groups: whether the groups share a social identity. We hypothesize that sharing a social identity affects the likelihood of knowledge transfer across groups and their subsequent performance. Group members who share a social identity generally view their own group, its members, its products, and its processes more positively than those of other groups. In a laboratory study, we found that groups that shared a superordinate social identity with a new member who rotated in from another group were very likely to adopt innovations proposed by the rotating member when the innovations improved their performance and to reject innovations when they did not improve performance. By contrast, groups that did not share a superordinate social identity with a rotating member were likely to reject the new member's innovations, even when they would have improved group performance. The current research replicates and builds on our initial results to gain a greater understanding of the processes through which and the conditions under which social identity affects knowledge transfer and performance. The first study aims to determine the minimal conditions necessary to create the perception of a shared superordinate social identity among interacting group members and to affect knowledge transfer. The second and third studies aim to assess how characteristics of groups and characteristics of the knowledge being transferred interact with social identity to affect knowledge transfer. This research has implications for theories of knowledge transfer as well as theories about shared social identity. Because knowledge transfer can have a significant impact on group and organizational performance, the research has practical implications for improving organizational and work group effectiveness.