Culture and Knowledge Transfer Capacity: A Cross-National Study

Increasing interest exists in understanding the factors that explain knowledge transfer capacity (KTC) at the societal level. In this paper, the authors posit that national culture may explain the differences among countries in their knowledge transfer capacities. The authors adopt House and colleagues’ (2004) national culture taxonomy as the theoretical framework to derive and test eighteen hypotheses relating national culture values and practices to societal KTC. KTC correlates positively with gender egalitarianism values, uncertainty avoidance practices, and future orientation practices. KTC also correlates negatively with uncertainty avoidance values, future orientation values, institutional collectivism values, in-group collectivism values, humane orientation practices, in-group collectivism values and practices, and power distance practices. Further analysis using gross domestic product (GDP) as a control variable revealed that only humane orientation practices influence KTC. The research findings are discussed, research limitations are identified, and implications are drawn.