Lost in Transfer? Exploring the Influence of Culture on the Transfer of Knowledge Categories

ABSTRACT Supported by an extensive review of four-domains of literature (knowledge management, organizational learning, culture, and retail), this study examines the influence of national culture on transfer of knowledge categories in top supermarkets in Africa and the United Kingdom (UK). Data from in-depth semi-structured interviews with 40 store managers (SMs) were used to examine how the SMs transfer the five sales performance drivers – selling-related knowledge, the degree-of-adaptiveness, role-clarity, cognitive-aptitude, and work-engagement – to their subordinates. The study finds these UK supermarkets’ knowledge transfer (KT) practices as embedded in problem-based learning (PBL) and project-based learning. SMs from African supermarkets exploit various opportunities to build interpersonal relationships and trust with knowledge-holders, thereby facilitating learning and KT. This study links such behaviors to “Ubuntu” – a well-established African philosophy/ethic. The study finds socialization, externalization, and internalization as common knowledge assets in African supermarkets, in contrast to socialization and externalization in their UK counterparts. This study found that, despite these variations in their strategic priorities regarding knowledge assets, these five sales performance drivers are transferred successfully in supermarkets in both continents that participated in the research. This offers a new insight that challenges the extant theorizing that KT praxis varies among diverse cultures.