Time scales of knowledge transfer with learning and forgetting

Knowledge transfer provides opportunities for interpersonal cooperation and becomes increasingly important in organizations. Although the benefits of knowledge transfer have been discussed in many settings, the temporal behavior of the knowledge transfer process has not been fully understood. Moreover, we still lack a clear picture of how knowledge transfer performance is jointly influenced by learning and forgetting, which are essential agent behaviors in knowledge transfer. In this paper, we systematically characterize the time scales of the spreading and fixation of knowledge in a networked system through theoretical and numerical analysis. Our knowledge transfer model is based on the Moran process which describes the competition between knowledge learning and forgetting. Besides the knowledge fixation time, we also consider the knowledge spreading time, which measures the time needed for the new knowledge to reach all the agents before fixation. Four distinct phases in the knowledge transfer process are established. The boundary and time scale of each phase is determined theoretically and computationally. Our theory provides a simple and inspiring relationship between time scales, knowledge stock, and system size. As the first systematical investigation on time scales and structure of knowledge fixation process in the organizational knowledge transfer literature, this research highlights the pattern of intra-organizational knowledge transfer and its performance implications, which can be used to understand the relational profiles and learning potential in multi-agent firms.