Page 35 - Crossing Cultural Boundaries - Cees den Teuling

2.1 Introduction to the literature review
Cultural barriers in international business
In the international business practice, there is still much to be gained by taking note of "cultural diversity" issues (Mitchell, 2009). Research into relevant elements also appears as a standard in the "business cases" of cross-border projects and transactions. This study aims at producing a positive contribution by the participants, in order to provide consistent and adequate knowledge tools for bridging "cultural gaps" and therefore improve the success ratio of the practice of cross-border business activities.
The actors
There is a consensus among practitioners and scientists in the organisational field that a better understanding of diversified cultures with the “actors” in the roles of the "transmitter" (knowledge holder) and/or "receiver" will deepen and improve the transfer of knowledge within an advisory relationship. The “actors” roles, i.e. the roles of “transmitter” and “recipient” are interchangeable and bi-directional. Depending on the issues discussed and elaborated, “role position” can be transferred from one participant to the other and back.
Knowledge Management and Knowledge Transfer
The subject of KM and KT is a heavy exploited field by academics and researchers. However, a vast group of them limit their research to inter-organisational or intercompany KT. Others focus on researching the directions of KT inside multinational corporations (MNC’s), especially the communication between the Head Offices and their subsidiaries (mainly) in foreign countries. The area of this research, i.e. the transfer of management and business knowledge between independent actors in a trans- boundary setting, has gained much less attention from the scientific and academic environment.
The conditions for cross-boundary Knowledge Transfer
The concept of cross-border KT is multi-disciplinary. The results and effectiveness of the researched cross-border transfer of business knowledge depend on and are facilitated by the capacity of the transferring and the recipient organisations. In addition, it is important for the recipient to have a qualitative Absorptive Capacity (ACAP) to exploit and to internalise the presented knowledge. The following chapter covers also an extensive multi-disciplinary literature review, to explore the directions
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