Characteristics of knowledge transfer in supply chain partnership: propositions and case study. Paper presented at the British Academy of Management 2007 Conference, Warwick, UK.

Supply chain partnership as conduit of knowledge transfer is attracting more and more attention from practitioners and academics. The previous researches conducted appear to overlook influence of differences of supply chain partnership from other types of interfirm alliances on the nature of knowledge transfer. The literature suggests there are many types of alliances, such as franchise, R&D alliance, joint-venture, licensing agreement, etc. Supply chain partnership is a specific type of alliances because of its vertical functional cooperative interface, loosely defined contractual agreement, more indirect performance target, and potential extended network based partnership. According to the analysis of uniqueness of supply chain partnership, this paper discusses the particular characteristics of supply chain knowledge transfer and the relationship factors that are more likely to affect the conduction of knowledge transfer in supply chain partnership. In this paper a number of propositions were developed regarding knowledge transfer in supply chain partnership using existing theories. Case study of an IT manufacturer’s supply chain was conducted to demonstrate the empirical validity of the propositions.