An Empirical Study On Cost Factors Of Knowledge Transfer By Latecomer Firms

Under the knowledge-based view, knowledge is gradually replacing traditional factors of production, as the chief resource for enterprise development. And most of the firms in our country are latecomers, lack of technological knowledge and resources. In order to obtain sustainable competitiveness and catch up the first movers, they must transfer knowledge more efficiency to achieve knowledge innovation. This paper focuses on the later comer firms, explore the knowledge transfer process and the cost factors with them.This article starts with review of abundant literature and summarizes of knowledge transfer model that depicts knowledge transfer paths in three dimensions: knowledge attribute, knowledge carrier and transfer process. We point out that the process of knowledge transfer involving the enterprise internal individual level, team level, and organizational level. The conversion between tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge accumulated more knowledge, thus forming a single level of knowledge spiral; and different levels of knowledge's interaction forming the interactive spiral which from external knowledge to obtain knowledge innovation, from individual level to the enterprise level.Then, on the basis of academic analyze, this article gives the theoretical model and the hypothesis for influence factors with knowledge transfer, which consists of dependent variables(transfer capacity), mediating variable(transfer activities), and independent variable(knowledge ambiguity, network dyad, knowledge receivers). And then make investigation with questionnaire, and analyze the investigation results with SPSS and LISREL. The results are: the relationship between transfer activities and transfer capacity is positive; the relationship between the knowledge distance and knowledge activities is negative; the relationship between the organization distance and knowledge activities is negative; the relationship between the cooperative relationship and knowledge activities is positive; the relationship between the transfer channels and knowledge activities is positive; the relationship between the absorptive capacity and knowledge activities is positive; while there is no marked affecting relation between the knowledge ambiguity and knowledge activities; there are no notable differences in transfer performance and transfer activities with different industry of firms; and there are significant differences in transfer performance and transfer activities with different scale of firms.Finally, in accordance with the research results and the concrete circumstance of China, the article provides advices for improving knowledge transfer performance of latecomer firms, expect to get meaningful results and have certain reference for technological learning and knowledge transferring of later comer firms.