Tacit Knowledge Transfer In New Product Development Process, The Project Characteristics

In the field of knowledge management and organization learning, attentions have been focused on the tacit knowledge transfer in the processes of new product development (NPD). But there are too many viewpoints that contradict each other, and few studies were based on task characteristics and different innovation activities.In the context above, this paper studies knowledge transfer on the level of project. Four questions have been proposed. The first is to explore the relationships between the project characteristics and knowledge transfer. The second is to examine the moderating role of task characteristics to the relationships above. The third is to explore the differences of the role of the project characteristics and the role of the task characteristics in idea generating activities and problem solving activities. The fourth is to establish a framework to explain the similarities and differences of the result from the perspective of knowledge properties and knowledge transfer processes.The researcher finds that in activities, the project priority, the team learning orientation, the tie strength have positive relationships with the knowledge transfer, but the team centralization plays a negative role. In the idea generating activities, as the task complexity increases, the roles of team centralization and tie strength are strengthened, but the role of learning orientation is weekened; as the task uncertainty increases, the roles of project priority and learning orientation are strengthened. In the problem solving activities, as the task complexity increases, the roles of project priority and tie strength are strengthened; as the task uncertainty increases, the roles of learning orientation and team centralization are strengthened, but the role of tie strength is weekened. The researcher has explained every result after comparing them in two kinds of activities and established a framework from the prospective of knowledge properties and knowledge transfer processes to explain the similarities and differences between the results.