본 연구는 개인의 심리적 차원과 지식이전간의 인과관계를 밝힘으로써 조직에서의 지식이전 현상에 대한 보다 본질적인 해석을 가능하게 하였다. 지식이전은 전수자와 수혜자의 양자 간의 관계에서 발생하는 현상이며, 그 대상이 상당부분 가 시적인 형태로 객관화하기가 불가능한 암묵지의 형태로 존재한다는 사실에 근거하여 지식을 이전하는 주체인 전수자의 심 리적 속성으로부터 지식이전 현상을 설명하고자 하였다. 분석은 전수자의 다양한 심리변수와 지식이전간의 다차원적인 경 로관계를 규명하기 위하여 구조방정식 2단계 접근법을 실시하였다. 연구 결과, 단순감정을 제외한 우리의식, 윤리성, 자 기이익, 관계감정 변수가 지식이전에 유의한 영향을 미치는 것으로 나타났으며, 특히 한국적 특수-친밀관계의 우리의식이 형성된 관계에 있어서는 그 어떠한 부정적 기제도 부(-)적 영향력을 상실하게 되며 여전히 활발한 지식이전이 이루어짐을 알 수 있었다. 본 연구는 지식이전 심리모형을 제시함으로써 지식이전에 대한 보다 근본적인 이해를 가능하게 하였으며, 이를 통해 실제 조직의 지식경영을 활성화시키기 위한 토대를 제공할 수 있을 것이다. 또한 한국적 토착심리학에 근거한 한국인 고유의 지식이전 현상을 설명함으로써 문화 비교 연구의 발판을 마련하는 계기가 될 수 있을 것으로 기대된다.
Enterprises have progressed knowledge management rapidly and broadly to obtain and sustain competitive advantage for the past years. Few of them, however, have succeeded in the knowledge management though they have had many preceding mechanisms such as evaluation, reward etc.(Ambrosio, 2000). Moreover, most of the existing researches on the knowledge transfer have suggested only superficial factors observed in the process rather than the fundamental cause-effect relation between those factors and knowledge transfer. This research aims to understand the knowledge transfer in organizations in the light of two perspectives. Firstly, this study focuses on the relation between giver and recipient, the two subjects of the activity where knowledge transfer arises. Secondly, this study aims to understand the knowledge-related phenomenon in terms of psychological properties of individuals as this activity focuses on the “knowledge,” which is not externally revealed. In general, knowledge lies in tacit form that cannot be disclosed as an objective one. Therefore, a recipient cannot clearly grasp which level of knowledge a giver is offering nor evaluate the transferred knowledge objectively. The giver, however, can express and transfer the knowledge he/she holds in a different way depending on his/her will. In other words, the psychological state and/or intention of a giver may have a significant effect on the result of knowledge transfer. This research, therefore, aims to identify the relation between knowledge transfer and the ethics, self-interest, pure emotion and relational emotion incorporated in the knowledge transfer, centered on the relation between recipient and giver, or we-ness, recognized by the giver as a major factor. For this aim, this study started raising the following questions. First, do various psychological characteristics of individuals actually have effects on knowledge transfer? Second, can the extent of knowledge transfer vary depending to the giver’s perspective on the relation with the recipient? Third, when an ethical issue is incorporated in the activity of knowledge transfer, how the knowledge transfer of an individual who faces an ethical dilemma is changed and what could be the relation among the factors? To answer those questions, 537 data on the organizations that have adopted and managed KMS relatively well was used for analysis. We conducted confirmatory factor analysis and hypothesis testing according to the two-level approach of structural equation using AMOS 5.0 and the fit of the model showed good figure as TLI=0.938, CFI=0.943, RMSEA=0.050. We-ness, ethics, self-interest, and relational emotion related to knowledge transfer have positively effects on the knowledge transfer (hypothesis 1, 2, 3, and 5 adopted). On the contrary, the pure emotion did not have an effect on the knowledge transfer (hypothesis 4 rejected). Hypothesis 6 that relational emotion has more effects on knowledge transfer than pure emotion was adopted. The result of interaction effect analysis about moderating variable explains that we-ness has negative moderating effect on the positive relation between knowledge transfer and other factors like ethics, self-interest, and relational emotion lying knowledge transfer. Thus, H 2-1, 3-1, and 5-1 were adopted. These results show that we-ness-based relationship, for example, Korean’s specific intimacy, which is once established among organization members, outshines any negative influence of negative mechanism during knowledge transfer and, rather, spurs brisker knowledge transfer. This research is different from others in the sense that it is the first empirical study that correlates the human psychological aspects with knowledge transfer based on the Knowledge Transfer Psychological Model. We tried to identify the knowledge transfer phenomenon by investigating why many organizations have failed in knowledge transfer and what properties it has. For empirical study, we drew various psychological factors and correlated them with the knowledge transfer process in the actual organizations. We believe this research can give a significant guideline to a successful management of an organization as it handles the ethical issues possibly arising in the knowledge transfer process to help the actual organizations to set up standard when facing ethical dilemmas. Last but not least, the research has a huge significance in both academic and practical field as it explains the Korean-specific knowledge transfer process on the basis of the indigenous psychology, which would be a good ground for a cross-cultural comparative study.