This article describes advances in the study of knowledge transfer in organizations over the fifteen years since Argote and Ingram (2000) appeared in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. Argote and Ingram developed mechanisms of knowledge transfer and discussed factors that facilitate or impede transfer. Conditions under which knowledge transfer improves organizational performance were identified and conditions under which knowledge transfer is a source of competitive advantage for organizations were theorized. The current article concludes that research subsequent to the publication of Argote and Ingram has both increased the depth of our understanding of knowledge transfer and broadened the factors considered as predictors and consequences of transfer. Challenges to studying knowledge transfer, primarily in the area of measurement, are described, and new measurement approaches are discussed. We conclude with a discussion of future research directions that are likely to be productive and suggest that expanding the study of knowledge transfer to new problems domains, such as entrepreneurship, would advance knowledge of those domains as well as increase understanding of knowledge transfer.

This study advances understanding of the conditions under which a new worker improves organizational performance. We argue that the extent to which new group members have experience working as specialists or generalists is a critical factor in explaining performance after the new member joins. We conceptualize specialists as those who concentrate on a particular component of an organization’s task, whereas generalists perform all components of the task. As such, a specialist must coordinate with other group members to complete the group’s task, which makes a specialist more interdependent with other members and in possession of more organization-specific knowledge than a generalist. We predict that (1) groups receiving specialist new members do not perform as well after the new member joins as compared with groups receiving generalist new members and (2) groups with new members whose work experience and recipient group structure are aligned (i.e., generalist movers into generalist groups and specialist movers into specialist groups) perform better than groups with new members whose experience and recipient group structure are not aligned. We test our hypotheses using a laboratory study in which we manipulate the extent to which new members and incumbent members of recipient groups work as specialists or generalists. Participants work as generalists or specialists in three-person groups and receive a new member who acquired experience as a specialist or generalist in another group. We find support for our hypotheses and provide evidence on mechanisms through which potential new members’ backgrounds enable them to contribute significantly to their recipient groups. New members who acquire experience in a structure similar to that of their recipient organizations report that they experience greater fit with their new groups, which enables their recipient groups to perform better than groups where new members’ experience and recipient group structure are not aligned. Additionally, our results suggest generalists may be more likely than specialists to transfer knowledge to their new groups.

We assess the role that organizational learning plays in the development of dynamic capabilities which confer sustained competitive advantage on firms. We argue that learning from the experience of others is a mechanism for developing dynamic capabilities. We examine how firms can learn from the prior experiences of their founders and other employees and identify the conditions under which this learning is most likely to occur. We develop how characteristics of the organizational context and characteristics of the knowledge being transferred condition a firm’s ability to learn from others. The chapter concludes with a set of expectations that we hope will stimulate future research on the important question of how learning from the experience of others enables firms to develop dynamic capabilities.

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Building off studies that link inventor mobility and the flow of knowledge across firms, I argue that inventors with prior organizational experiences are not unconditional sources of outside knowledge. My results support that firm knowledge does not transfer across firm boundaries by the movement of inventors in isolation, but as a combined result of firm capability development and the presence of employees with direct experience.