A knowledge transfer frame work within the Indian it industry context

Abstract

The recent years has seen a phenomenal growth of the Indian IT industry, to the extent that it has emerged as a key topic of discussion the world over. The success of the Indian IT industry is in part driven by the ability of the Indian IT professionals to quickly build up a knowledge base, both in terms of delivery as well as technology. While the Indian IT companies focused on the build up of the delivery knowledge, the technology knowledge has been brought into India primarily through the Indian subsidiaries of global technology MNCs. This report studies the process by which the Indian subsidiaries were able to build up their knowledge base through knowledge transfers from the parent company. At different points in time, different types of knowledge flows into the Indian subsidiary. Therefore, before we go on to the process of the knowledge transfer, we need to identify and classify the different types of knowledge. Apart from differentiating delivery knowledge from technology knowledge, knowledge can also be classified on the dimensions of software knowledge and product knowledge. Thus, a combination of the two classifications leads to four types of knowledge that an Indian subsidiary needs to build on - software delivery, software technology, product technology and product delivery. However, as the Indian subsidiary progresses up the Value-chain' from being just a resource center to being a critical value chain partner to the parent organization, at different milestones along this journey, the above four types of knowledge is built up to varying degrees. These varying degrees of knowledge existence within an organization are modelled as Tiers' of knowledge. Each ofthe four knowledge types has three 'tiers' of knowledge levels. The process of moving from one milestone to the next milestone in the value chain journey sees the knowledge build up to the next higher tier. This knowledge build up process happens through knowledge transfers from the parent organization to the Indian subsidiary. The process of knowledge transfer happens through different modes, channels or medium. These different processes can be classified using the framework suggested by Nonakaand Konno [5]: Socialization - Externalization - Combination - Internalization. They also suggest that the knowledge build up process happens in the form of spiral movement across the four processes. However, the study of the actual project reveals that this movement along the spiral is not always a smooth climb upwards. Rather, the knowledge build up process does involve some back and forth movements, especially between the combination and internalization processes, before the organization moves on to the next higher tier of knowledge. Apart from these processes, the various organizational processes affect the knowledge transfer process, as they impact the motivation and the performance of the employees both at the parent organization as well as at the Indian subsidiary.