Sticky Knowledge: barriers to knowing in the firm

By: Gabriel Szulanski, 2003, Sage Publications
Reviewed by Alton Chua

This book represents a major step in unravelling the complexity of knowledge transfer. Grounded on an empirical study, it explains why best practices within the organisation do not spread as easily as they ought to. The book is structured into nine highly readable chapters and five technical appendices. The first three chapters introduce the notion and the consequences of "stickiness"-a term used to describe the inherent difficulties of knowledge transfer. A conceptual model to examine stickiness is presented in Chapter 4 and 5. To illustrate the different types of stickiness, Chapter 6 details three real-life case studies. The results culled from a study involving eight companies are statistically analysed in Chapter 7. The final two chapters discuss the implications and succinctly highlight the main findings unearthed from the study. The appendices include explanatory notes on the research design, a template to construct the questionnaire and a sample copy of the cover letter to potential respondents.

An important theoretical contribution of this book lies in the approach in which stickiness is examined. First, Szulanski develops a framework to elicit the factors that cause stickiness. He considers the properties of a given transfer situation and identifies four elements, namely the knowledge to be transferred, the source, the recipient and the context of the transfer. The elements are further divided into nine predictors of stickiness. Among them include causal ambiguity, the lack of absorptive capacity of the recipient and the lack of retentive capacity of the recipient. Causal ambiguity refers to the partial understanding of why the use of certain knowledge leads to a certain outcome. The lack of absorptive capacity is the inability to recognise the value of the new knowledge while the lack of retentive capacity is the inability to institutionalise the use of the new knowledge. Not only is Szulanski’s framework parsimonious, it affords an expanded perspective to the potential barriers of knowledge transfer.

In addition to eliciting these predictors, Szulanski develops a typology of stickiness. He segments the knowledge transfer process into four sequential stages which are demarcated by specific milestones. These stages are initiation, implementation, ramp-up and integration. Each stage corresponds to distinct type of stickiness. For example, initiation stickiness is the difficulty in recognising an opportunity to transfer knowledge while ramp-up stickiness refers to the problems that keep the recipient from matching or exceeding the expectations of post-transfer performance. Such a process-oriented approach breaks down the complexity of a knowledge transfer implementation into manageable stages. This provides a bounded scope for practitioners to rapidly identify and diagnose problems.

The results, culled from an empirical study involving eight companies, showed that different predictors correlated differently to the types of stickiness. For example, unproven knowledge and the perceived unreliability of the source were found to have stronger correlations to initiation stickiness than other predictors had. In addition, some predictors such as causal ambiguity significantly correlated to all four types of stickiness. More interestingly, the results also revealed that the recipient’s motivation and retentive capacity intensified, rather than mitigated ramp-up stickiness. Szulanski accounts for these counter-intuitive findings by attributing them to the unchecked enthusiasm and unlearning barriers of the recipient. While the analysis and explanation of the results are crisp, the underpinning methodology is less cogent. The results, obtained from running separate regressions for the four types of stickiness, are presented as if each type is independent of the other. Given that the types of stickiness are defined by the sequential attainment of milestones along the process of knowledge transfer, a particular type of stickiness is likely to exert a cascading effect on the succeeding ones. Implementation stickiness, for example, could be due in part, to the consequences of the initiation stickiness experienced earlier in the transfer process. Hence, such a process-oriented definition scheme would have confounded the influence of the predictors on each type of stickiness.

Nonetheless, on the whole, this book has lucidly challenged conventional wisdom which tends to narrowly confine knowledge transfer barriers to the lack of incentives and motivation. By introducing the notion of stickiness and offering an approach to measure it empirically, this book reveals significant but hitherto obscured barriers such as causal ambiguity and the lack of absorptive capacity of the recipient. Researchers and students who wish to replicate the study will find the appendices to be of immense help. For practitioners with practical concerns, this book offers invaluable insights into the nature and sources of knowledge transfer barriers within the organisation, even though specific ways to overcome these barriers have not been proposed.

Alton Chua is an Assistant Professor at Universitas 21 Global, an online Business School established jointly by Thomson-Learning and a consortium of 16 research-intensive universities world-wide. Alton teaches Enterprise Knowledge Management in the MBA program. His research interests lie primarily in knowledge management and communities of practice. Alton has authored numerous papers in international refereed publications such as Journal of the American Society of Information Science and Technology, International Journal of Information Management, Journal of Intellectual Capital and Aslib Proceedings. He has also been consulted on a number of KM-related projects. Alton holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science, a second bachelor’s degree in arts, a master’s degree in education and doctorate in business administration.