When Knowledge Network is Social Network: Understanding Collaborative Knowledge Transfer in Workplace

In workplaces, knowledge has the property of being individually kept and collectively shared. It is distributed and embedded among members but needs to be transferred and pooled through knowledge networks for successful collaboration. In order to understand and embody such networks, we employed a mixture of field observations, social network analysis, and in-depth interviews to examine the practices of knowledge transfer in a local financial institute (N=32). Results from the analyses show that there is a discrepancy between inbound and outbound knowledge transfer, and also suggest that expertise or social relation cannot solely account for members’ decision on whom to ask questions and share knowledge. We also found that scaffolding workers to connect to the right person with metaknowledge of the knowledge network is important. Our findings point to research and design opportunities to support knowledge transfer at the collaborative level within a knowledge community.