Identifying Factors that Influence the Process of Knowledge Transfer in Offshore Organizations

Offshoring is a trend during which organizatios directly replaced Internal labor with foreign labor and the activities are transferred from the source. At this time organization’s need to transfer knowledge of the local unit of offshoring jobs has become evident. In the process of transferring, knowledge from the source to the recipient or user, is transmitted via factors that affect the process.The aim of the present study was to identify factors influencing knowledge transfer in offshoring organizations. Content analysis is a research method used in this study. After the content analysis of more than 60 studies, a model in four levels of factors impacting knowledge transfer were identified. At the first level, three dimensions of content, the individual and the context were identifid as the effective factors in knowledge transfer process. At the second level, the following components were extracted from each dimension which affected knowledge transfer, especially in offshoring firms. Knowledge is a vital component in the content level. Confidence,‌ motivation and capacity are effective in individual level and culture was identified to influence the context level. At the third and fourth level of the model, elements of these components as well as methods of knowledge transfer were presented. To assess the validity of this model, all aspects, components, parts and materials were confirmed by a number of experts who were aware of the model.