Trust And Knowledge Transfer Between Business Partners: The Mediating Effects Of Several Factors

In the era of knowledge economy of 21st century, knowledge has been gradually replacing traditional factors of production such as capital, labor and land to be the chief resource. Using and acquiring knowledge is one of the ways to gain and keep competitive advantages. In order to adapt such change, enterprises must focus on their abilities of knowledge management and knowledge transfer. This study only researches on the knowledge transferred between business partners.Previous literature has proved that the influence of trust between business partners on knowledge transfer is evident. However, it is not clear how the relationship between trust and knowledge transfer works. This study tries to answer it. This article starts with review of abundant literature. It summarizes related literature on knowledge, knowledge transfer, trust, communication, relationship commitment, cooperative operational behavior, fear of losing one's unique value and knowledge documentation, and then points out the deficiency of previous research. On the basis of academic analyses and the initial mode of relation between trust and knowledge transfer, the article gives the extended model and the corresponding hypotheses, makes investigation with questionnaire and analyzes the results with SPSS.According to the result of investigation and data analysis, several important research results are drawn and the model and hypotheses are adjusted. The results are:(1)Communication, cooperative operational behavior and fear of losing one's unique value have a mediating effect on the relationship between trust and knowledge transfer. Specifically, trust increases knowledge transfer through improving communication, increasing cooperative operational behavior and reducing fear of losing one's unique value.(2)On the contrary to the hypotheses, relationship commitment has an insignificant negative effect on knowledge transfer, while knowledge documentation has an insignificant positive effect on knowledge transfer. These phenomenons are interpreted in 4.4.Finally, the article shows important implications at both a managerial and theoretical level, provides advices for improving knowledge transfer performance between business partners, points out research limitations and expects the future research.