Contribution à une étude pragmatique et contextuelle du transfert de connaissances

Abstract

Managerial practices have greatly evolved over the decades. Today, directors make a particular effort to capitalize on the knowledge to be found at the core of the strategic processes of innovation. An organization capable of well managing and transferring its knowledge possesses an undeniable competitive advantage. This memoir offers an accounting of the interaction between the actors directly involved in a transfer of inter-site knowledge during a period of over two years. It confirms and validâtes many theoretical elements covered by literature on this subject. In particular, it is the pragmatic and contextual approach of our intervention research which makes this cross analysis of departmental and intra-organizational co-operation between Mexico and Québec so fruitful and original, notably because we were able to make evident, concretely, the importance of paying attention to context when the time comes to plan and prepare a transfer of knowledge. In so doing, we have observed the primordial role of the cohesion between the members of a team involved in such a transfer; communication and collaborative Learning are just as important as a strict adherence to convention, of rules and pre-established stages, especially in the actual context of lean management, which adds restrictive and sometimes contradictory elements to the problems of transferring knowledge. This complementary work takes a look at the importance of context and of the major role of the protagonists during the transfer of knowledge. We have chosen to synthesize our results and illustrate the path of future research in the form of recommendations. These are paths to follow in order to prepare, direct and facilitate a future transfer of knowledge which takes into account the complexity and the difficulty of sharing and diffusing tacit knowledge.

Date	8 Jul 2016
Original language	French
Awarding Institution	École de technologie supérieure
Supervisor	Mickaël Gardoni (Supervisor)