An Empirical Study On Tacit Knowledge Transfer Mechanism From Social Network

The 21st century is the era of knowledge economy. The enterprise rule changes largely, from raw material and land competitions gradually to take knowledge as the main competition. Compared to the dominant knowledge which quite easy to gain, the tacit knowledge has a more vital role in the enterprise. But as the tacit knowledge has invisible, ordinary drive system promotes the tacit knowledge transfer with difficulty, therefore researching the tacit knowledge transfer from the social network angle has the huge practical significance.Based on IT industry, the main purpose of this article is discussing the factors that affect tacit knowledge transfer through the views of social network and knowledge transfer inner driving force and studying the relation between the affecting factors and the tacit knowledge transfer performance. This article starts with review of abundant literature and summarizes the affecting factors of knowledge transfer. On the basis of academic analyze, this article gives the explanatory variable based on the social network theory----social network structural characteristics, as well as mediating moderator and variable based on knowledge transfer inner driving force, and further proposes the research model and hypotheses. This article makes investigation with questionnaire in IT industry and analyzes the investigation results with LISREL and SPSS.According to the result of investigation and data analysis, several important research results are drawn. The results are:in the influence of strong knowledge transfer motivation and organizational culture environment, the relationship between network density, network degree centrality and the tacit knowledge transfer effect is positive; similarly, the relationship between knowledge absorption ability and the tacit knowledge transfer performance is positive; but mediating influences of knowledge absorption ability to the tacit knowledge transfer performance were not supported. Besides, in accordance with the research results and the concrete circumstance of China, the article provides two advices for improving enterprise knowledge management and expects the future research.