The Influence of an Integrated View of Source’s Expertise on Knowledge Transfer

Abstract

Many studies focus on the effect of a source’s expertise, but little attention has been paid to what happens in the event of a misalignment between who is knowledgeable (cognitive expertise) and who is regarded as being knowledgeable (social expertise). The emphasis on expertise alignment in this study suggests the importance not of simply having a transactive memory system, but rather, of having an accurate transactive memory system in place. Using experimental data from a sample of 134 participants, the results indicate that the knowledge transfer is greater in the source’s cognitive-social expertise alignment than in the misalignment, but the source’s cognitive expertise could be a more significant criterion for the knowledge transfer in the expertise misalignment. In the view of source-recipient dynamics, knowledge transfer is greater in the low cognitive expertise gap condition than in the high cognitive expertise gap condition. The results contribute to the understanding of the role of a source’s expertise in knowledge transfer from a socio-cognitive perspective.