SOCIAL TIES, KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER MEDIATORS

SOCIAL TIES, KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER MEDIATORS AND THE QUALITY OF TRANSFERRED KNOWLEDGE: A RELATIONAL VIEW
SHIHAO ZHOU
Faculty of Education, the University of Hong Kong,
Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong
shihao.zhou@gmail.com
MINHONG WANG
Faculty of Education, the University of Hong Kong,
Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong
magwang@hku.hk
The aim of the study is to explore the effect of social tie on knowledge transfer. Two frameworks have been proposed. The first framework focuses on how social ties influence knowledge transfer performance by influencing a variety of knowledge transfer mediators. The second framework focuses on how social ties influence the quality of transferred knowledge. Based on the two frameworks, an empirical study was conducted to examine the relation of social tie to knowledge transfer mediators and quality of transferred knowledge. The study has shown that different social ties play different roles in trust construction and tacit knowledge transfer. The findings inform scholars of more attention to the content of social ties in knowledge transfer research. Besides strength and structure, social ties may differ in content, and this difference will significantly affect individual’s knowledge searching behavior and the outcome of knowledge transfer.
1. Background
Knowledge transfer has been regarded as one of the biggest challenges of knowledge management (Zander and Kogut, 1995). The inherent complexity of work requires knowledge workers rely on each other, share knowledge and ideas so that they can gain high performance. Social tie has been proved as an important factor in interpersonal knowledge transfer. Burt (1992) advocated that networks across structural holes can connect actors who are themselves unconnected, thus achieve more novel information. Granovetter (1973), in his pioneering paper, argued that weak tie is of greater importance in encouraging information exchange to avoid redundancy, while in the continued studies, Hansen (1999) proved that although weak tie facilitates knowledge transfer in low-tacit environment, strong tie is more likely to lead to tacit knowledge transfer because it loads more trustworthiness.
However, recent studies indicated that people will call for different relations to provide different benefits (Cross, Borgatti and Parker, 2001). That is, besides structure and strength, social networks may be different in content. A common way to describe the content of personal relationships is to distinguish it from instrumental and expressive ties (Podolny and Baron, 1997). Instrumental networks are links arising in the process of performing formal work roles (Ibarra and Andrews, 1993). For instance, the relationship between department manager and department secretary or between upstream process engineer and downstream process engineer is instrumental. However, expressive tie, which is informal, attaches more emotional matters and mainly provides friendship and social supports (Ibarra, 1992). Tie content also influences knowledge transfer activities. For example, Podolny and Baron (1997) claimed that individual’s networks related to his/her formal position are important to transfer task advice and workflow output/input, whereas his/her informal network and friendships are more important to transfer other information and social support such as job satisfaction and political intelligence. Therefore, scholars have explicitly called for new research to pay attention to the effects of social tie content on knowledge transfer (Cross and Cummings, 2001).
The aim of our study is to explore the role of tie content in knowledge transfer process. In the present study, two conceptual frameworks were proposed. The first framework focuses on the relations of social ties, knowledge transfer mediators (factors influence individual’s knowledge transfer behavior) and knowledge transfer performance (volume and quality of transferred knowledge). We contend that when knowledge transfer occurs via different channels, knowledge seeker’s (hereafter “ego”) behavior will be different. The second framework focuses on the relations of social ties and quality of transferred knowledge. Knowledge transferred via different social ties may have different characters and qualities. As few researches link tie content and interpersonal knowledge transfer directly, this research attempts to fill this gap.
2. Framework 1: Social Ties and Knowledge Transfer Mediators
2.1. The cognition- and affect-based trust
Trust is indeed important in knowledge transfer, and in knowledge transfer and social network mixed research, trust is believed to mediate the link between social network and knowledge transfer (Levin and Cross, 2004; Lin, 2007). It should be noted that trust is not a unitary concept, instead, there are two functions of trust: one based on cognition, the other based on affect (McAllister, 1995). Cognition-based trust is based on the trustor’s rational evolution of the trustee's skills, knowledge, and competencies to solve related problems. Actually, at some extent, cognition-based trust on a knowledge source is associated with the perceived expertise on this person. Given that a trustor has a high cognition-based trust on a trustee, the trustor will certainly perceive the trustee as an expert. Affect-based trust is composed by emotional bonds between trustor and trustee (McAllister, 1995). Affect-based trust, also called benevolence-based trust, is the trustor’s faith toward a trustee that the trustee is honest, benevolent, warm-hearted and, most importantly, harmless to the trustor himself (Mayer, Davis and Schoorman, 1995).
Previous studies have indicated that both instrumental and expressive relationships will enhance trust (Lin, 2007). Cognition-based trust is built on trustee’s prior work performance (McAllister, 1995). Normally, people will view track records of work performance as evidence of professional reliability. Instrumental link, which focuses on work and task related issues, can effectively convey these records. And friendship, although may be developed out of workplace, can release work-related information as well. On this basis, enhancing both instrumental and expressive ties is positively associated with cognition-based trust construction. The relation between expressive tie and affect-based trust is clear: expressive tie, which always accompanies emotional intensity and involves reciprocal affection (Aguilar, 1984) no doubtly attaches much affect-based trust. Work-oriented instrumental tie is positively associated with affect-based trust as well since individuals linked by work-relationships will have more interaction and cooperation experience, when knowledge seeking is needed, compared with other sources, ego will have much more “evidence” to ensure a close co-worker is benevolent. Stated formally:
P1a. Cognition--based trust is positively related to knowledge transfer performance.
P1b. Both instrumental and expressive ties are positively related to the cognition -based trust between ego and the knowledge source.
P2a. Affect-based trust is positively related to knowledge transfer performance.
P2b. Both instrumental and expressive ties are positively related to the affect-based trust between ego and the knowledge source.
2.2. Accessibility
Borgatti and Cross (2003) stated that “knowing that someone else has valuable expertise is important, but their knowledge is really helpful only if they are accessible” (p435). Thus, accessibility is also an important mediator of effective knowledge transfer. It is reasonable to assume that both instrumental and expressive ties will facilitate the accessibility of a knowledge source to ego. An instrumental tie between ego and a knowledge source indicates the existence of some formal communication mechanisms between ego and that source. For example, co-work relationship is a typical instrumental relationship. Co-workers are normally assigned in a same office and meet regularly, and that makes an ego’s co-worker more accessible to ego than to other knowledge seekers in different organization. Expressive tie also promote a knowledge source’s accessibility. In addition to workplace/working time, people linked by expressive ties may have opportunities to exchange knowledge via various private channels. Stated formally:
P3a. The accessibility of a knowledge source is positively related to ego’s knowledge transfer performance.
P3b. Both instrumental and expressive ties are positively related to the accessibility of a knowledge source.
2.3. Relationship diversity
Recent academic papers have shed light on the relations of power, social network and knowledge transfer. Relationships with powerful organizational members are positive related to knowledge transfer. Burt (1992) argued that senior managers are more likely to have larger social network, and that will consequently increase their social capital and information richness. Those organizational members in higher hierarchical level than ego can access information and resource that ego cannot access himself/herself. Thus connections with those members are important for ego’s knowledge searching effectiveness (Cross and Cummings, 2004). Pervious social tie content research showed that ego is more likely to employ instrumental tie to connect high-status organization members (Ibarra and Andrews, 1993), and Manev and Stevenson (2001) argued that people will form expressive tie with peers of similar gender, culture as well as organizational status. These findings indicated that ego is more likely to employ instrumental ties to touch those more powerful organizational members. Stated formally:
P4. Ego is more likely to employ instrumental ties to contact organizational members of different backgrounds.
We propose our first framework based on above discussion (Figure 1). In this framework, we focus on the relations of social tie content, knowledge transfer mediators and knowledge transfer performance.

Figure 1: framework 1, social ties, knowledge transfer mediators and knowledge transfer performance
3. Framework 2: Social Ties and Quality of Transferred Knowledge
3.1. Knowledge tacitness
One often found distinction of knowledge is whether it is tacit or explicit (Nonaka, 1994). Tacit knowledge refers to the knowledge which is hard to articulate and transfer, and always relates to “complexity”, “uncertainty”, “non-codify” or “ambiguity” (Zander and Kogut, 1995). Explicit knowledge is just on the opposite, this sort of knowledge is always documented, easy to express and associated with fact and “know-that” (Polanyi, 1967). Hansen (1999) argued that strong tie is more effective than weak ties in the case that the transferred knowledge is tacit, because strong tie tends to load more trustworthiness; weak tie, on the other hand, is more effective when transfer low-tacit knowledge, because weak ties lead to a heterogamous and non-redundant network which will promote actor’s knowledge searching ability. According to Marsden (1988), expressive tie is stronger and more intimate than instrumental tie. Therefore, according to Hansen’s framework, expressive tie will be a better channel for tacit knowledge transfer while instrumental tie, which is weaker in general, will be more effective when transfer general, low-tacit knowledge. Stated formally:
P4. Instrumental tie is more effective in low-tacit knowledge transfer and expressive tie is more effective in tacit knowledge transfer.
3.2. Knowledge diversity
Knowledge diversity is important because it is believed that knowledge with a large extent of diversity is more useful than redundant knowledge (Wong, 2008). Knowledge transferred via different social ties also differs in the degree of diversity. Expressive networks always link persons with similar background, status and knowledge (Manev and Stevenson, 2001) thereby leads to a similar view or attitude toward their job and organization (Gibbons, 2004) and result in a homogenous network. In this kind of network, actors’ perspectives, skills, and knowledge are likely to be overlapping and redundant (Burt, 1992; Regans and Zuckerman, 2001). Thus, expressive ties tend to restrict diverse knowledge. On the contrary, instrumental network tends to consist of peoples of different gender, race, nationality, culture, and expatriate status (Ibarra, 1992; Manev and Stevenson, 2001), thus result in a heterogeneous network. The network heterogeneity will increase information non-redundancy and variety (Regans and Zuckerman, 2001), and will accordingly increase ego’s the capability to absorb diverse knowledge (Wong, 2008). Stated formally:
P5. Instrumental tie is positively associated with knowledge diversity and expressive tie is negatively associated with knowledge diversity.
3.3. Knowledge reliability
In many cases, acquiring knowledge takes risk, because it implies incompetence and dependence. Consequently, when acting knowledge seeking behavior, ego is vulnerable to the knowledge source (Levin et al., 2004). Therefore, the reliability of receipt knowledge is important to successful knowledge transfer. Compared with instrumental tie, expressive tie loads more trustworthiness (Marsden, 1988). As Aguilar (1984) stated, an important character of friendship is reciprocal, people will less likely to choose cheat in the reciprocal situations. That also explains why expressive tie is more trusted in general and why knowledge from expressive tie is more credible, more easily available and more relevant to ego (Brass, 1992). Thereby, the reliability of knowledge from expressive tie may be higher than that of knowledge from instrumental tie. Stated formally:
P6. Knowledge transferred via instrumental tie tends to be less reliable than those transferred via expressive tie.
We propose our second framework based on above discussion (Figure 2). In this framework, we focus on the relations between social ties and the quality of transferred knowledge.

Figure 2: Framework 2, social ties and the quality of transferred knowledge
4. An Empirical Study
According to the two frameworks, we conducted an empirical study in 2009. The theoretical model of the study is based on the above two frameworks, shedding light on the relations of social ties to knowledge transfer mediators and the quality of transferred knowledge. But because of the limited sample size, we didn’t involve all the above factors in the study, only cognition- and affect-based trust, as mediators, and knowledge tacitness, as outcome variable, were utilized. Figure 3 is the theoretical model of the empirical study. This study showed that pay more attention to the role of social tie content in knowledge transfer research is essential since the result of the study proved that when ego transfer knowledge via different social ties, his/her behaviors are different.






Figure 3: the theoretical model of the empirical study
4.1. Methods
A survey was conducted for data collection. The survey subjects came from part-time MBA students of a university in east China (N=152). The MBA students all have a full-time job in workday and go to the university in the weekend for further study. The majority of these students work in manufacturing and service industry, and most of them have at least three years work experience. Using MBA students with full-time work experience ensured all the subjects can report “real” relationships in their workplaces, therefore kept the validity of the survey. All the six latent variables in this research were measured using existing and tested scales. Instrumental tie and expressive tie were measured using Manev and Stevenson’s (2001) scale. As for trust, we chose four top-loading items to measure cognition-based trust from the work of McAllister (1995), and scale measuring affect-based trust was mainly based on the work of Levin et al., (2004). Cummings’s (2004) scale was employed to measure general, low-tacit knowledge transfer. This scale measured all kinds of knowledge in workplace, including report, techniques and data. Tacit knowledge transfer scale was adopted from the work of Lin (2007), focusing on only tacit knowledge such as experience, opinion and personal tips. Each indicator loading was equal to or greater than 0.6. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of each scale was greater than 0.7.
4.2. Data analysis and results
The statistic analysis software used was AMOS 7.0.The first step was confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), which examines validity and reliability of the scales from a measurement model. To confirm the measurement model, we first compared the hypothesized model (M0) with some alternative nest models. In view of instrumental tie and expressive tie both focus on the relationship between ego and the knowledge source, we first combined them into one factor, formed a five-factor model (M1). Then, because affect-based trust and cognition-based trust were highly correlated, it is also reasonable to merge these two factors and create the second nest model (M2). Finally, we merged the instrumental and expressive tie and cognition- and affect-based trust to be one antecedent, formed a three-factor model (M3). Compared with every nest models, M0 obtain a Δχ2 greater than 3.84, indicating the hypothesized model has the best fit for the data. The measurement model yields a chi-square value of 412.8 with 248 degrees of freedom (χ2/df=1.66). All fit indices of the model is satisfactory (CFI=0.95, TLI=0.94, RMSEA=0.06). Then, structural model was estimated for hypothesis testing. The structural model yields a chi-square value of 400.835 with 249 degrees of freedom (χ2/df=1.61). All fit indices of this structural model is satisfactory (CFI=0.95, TLI=0.94, RMSEA=0.06).
The result of data analysis was reported in table 1. According to the result, both expressive and instrumental tie significantly influence the mediators (cognition- and affect-based trust) (ET -> AT: β=.71, t=8.51; ET -> CT: β =.43, t=5.28; IT -> AT: β =.39, t=5.16; IT -> CT: β =.42, t=4.69). As for the mediators affect knowledge transfer: affect-based trust has a significant impact on both low-tacit knowledge transfer (β =.88, t=3.07) and tacit knowledge transfer (β =.69, t=1.99), however, cognition-based trust only significantly influences tacit knowledge transfer (β =.16, t=2.14), its impact on low-tacit knowledge transfer is not significant (β =.08, t=1.88). Based on visual inspection, we found that in low-tacit knowledge transfer, instrumental tie has a distinct larger effect than expressive tie; total effect of instrumental tie and expressive tie on low-tacit knowledge transfer equals to 0.60 and 0.26 respectively, implying instrumental tie is more important than expressive tie in low-tacit knowledge transfer process. However, in transferring tacit knowledge, the total effect of expressive tie (ET -> TK=0.50) is not significantly larger than that of instrumental tie (IT -> TK=0.45). Table 2 shows the relations of social ties to knowledge transfer mediators and quality of transferred knowledge.
Table 1. Results of Structural Modeling
Predictor Cognition-based
trust Affect-based
trust Low-tacit knowledge Tacit knowledge
Direct effects
Expressive tie 0.43 0.71
Instrumental tie 0.42 0.39
Cognition-based trust n.s 0.16
Affect-based trust 0.88 0.69
Total effects
Expressive tie 0.43 0.71 0.26 0.50
Instrumental tie 0.42 0.39 0.60 0.45
n.s=non-significant






Table 2. The relation of social tie to knowledge transfer mediators and quality of transferred knowledge
Effects of social tie on knowledge transfer mediators Effects of social tie on quality of transferred knowledge
Expressive tie -> Cognition-based trust significant Low-tacit knowledge transfer: effect of instrumental tie larger than effect of expressive tie
Expressive tie -> Affect-based trust significant
Instrumental tie -> Cognition-based trust significant Tacit knowledge transfer: effect of instrumental tie not significantly larger than effect of expressive tie
Instrumental tie -> Affect-based trust significant

This study confirmed the mediator role of cognition- and affect-based trust in the course of knowledge transfer, and proved that the effects of instrumental tie and expressive tie on trust construction are different. Especially, expressive tie imposes a larger influence on affect-based trust construction than instrumental tie do. These results offer additional support to previous studies that expressive tie loads more trustworthiness than instrumental tie (Gibbons, 2004). The results also proved that instrumental tie is more efficient than expressive tie in low-tacit knowledge transfer. An unexpected finding is that the effect of expressive tie is not significantly larger than that of instrumental tie when transfer tacit knowledge. One explanation is that neither informal nor formal network can be the best fit for sharing tacit knowledge (Willem et al., 2006). However, the effect of social tie on knowledge tacitness is still tested for proving the dominance of instrumental tie in low-tacit knowledge transfer.
5. Conclusion
Considering the relations of social tie to knowledge transfer mediators and the quality of transferred knowledge, this study informs scholars of more attention to the role of tie content in knowledge transfer research. Besides strength and structure, social ties could differ in content, and this difference will significantly affect individual’s knowledge searching behavior and the outcome of knowledge transfer. The two frameworks proposed in this paper can contribute to the following knowledge transfer research for providing a tie content perspective of studying individual’s knowledge transfer behavior.
The result of our empirical study supported the validity of the frameworks, proving that the effects of instrumental tie on trust construction and tacit knowledge transfer may differ to the effects of expressive tie. Managers may benefit from the findings of the empirical study, knowing how to increase knowledge transfer through promoting intra-organizational networking. For example, we found that instrumental tie is more effective in low-tacit knowledge transfer than expressive tie. This implies that for those organizations which mainly require low-tacit knowledge transfer, developing intra-organizational instrumental ties should be their first choice. However, the empirical study only tested a part of the frameworks. Deeper research may be conducted based on the entire proposed frameworks.
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