"This book develops a new theory about the challenges of transferring and sharing knowledge across organizational borders. Knowledge transfer refers to processes through which actors and organizational units exchange, receive, and are influenced by the experience and knowledge of others, and can manifest itself through changes in the knowledge bases and performance of recipients. The capacity of an organization to transfer and exploit knowledge from other organizations is a key to its competitiveness, progress, and survival. Thus, imitation is an important prerequisite for innovation. However, effective knowledge transfer is incredibly challenging; it sometimes succeeds, but it frequently fails. Over the last 30 years, considerable research efforts have been made to identify the factors that account for the variations in outcomes of knowledge transfer processes. Chapter 2 of this book contains a comprehensive review of transfer theories and research findings. However, despite great research efforts and many new insights, much of the variation in knowledge transfer processes and outcomes remains unexplained, which calls for a re-theorizing of the subject.

This book offers a new and fresh reframing of knowledge transfer across organizational borders. Based on extensive research, it outlines a new theory that conceptualizes knowledge transfer between organizations as acts of translation, resembling the translation of language and texts. The author shows how involved actors translation competence is a key to better understanding variations in knowledge transfer processes and outcomes. Thus, this new reframing both extends and challenges established theories of knowledge transfer"--.