Knowledge Management, Organizational Learning, Innovation, and Technology Transfer: What They Mean and Why They Matter

Introduction: An Underlying Issue

Most of the articles included in this journal involve a conceptual model for technology transfer (TT) that addresses questions such as the following: What is technology transfer? How does it apply to the particular case that comprises the article's focus? What happens inside the "black box" of the technology transfer process (innovation, diffusion, and adoption)? What contextual variables influence the effectiveness of technology transfer?

The examples of technology transfer described in this journal usually have an organizational or societal focus. Because the purpose of studying technology transfer is to increase our ability to describe it conceptually or direct it toward economic or other objectives, these cases involve an implicit or explicit change model. So we must discuss the concept of organizational or societal adaptation through "learning" or "knowledge management." This raises other issues:

• • How do information, knowledge, and wisdom work together in the information and communications technology (ICT) equation?

• • How does ICT relate to organizational learning (OL) and knowledge management (KM)?

• • How do knowledge management and organizational learning relate to innovation diffusion and adoption?

• • How do ICT, organizational learning, knowledge management, and innovation diffusion and adoption relate to technology transfer?

• • How do these linkages relate to organizational effectiveness?

• • How do they relate to the sustainability of best practice public policy innovations?

The ICT Equation: Information, Knowledge, and Wisdom

ICT is fundamentally about how people process and use information within organizations and society. ICT is both timeless, in that the essence of society is the communication of ideas and perceptions, and timely, in that modern conditions necessitate the transformation of human relationships through ICT (United Nations, 2003). It is both value neutral, in that the medium is the message (McLuhan & Lapham, 1994), and value laden, in that all social interaction may be viewed as the process of making sense out of information, sharing this understanding, and using it purposively to improve organizational effectiveness or the human condition (Szewczak & Snodgrass, 2002).

The most general way of understanding the importance of ICT is by viewing the relationship among information, knowledge, and wisdom. Information is simply raw bits of data. Knowledge is categorized or sorted data, with the sorting carried out based on some implicit or explicit relationships. And finally, wisdom is the application of knowledge to make individual or organizational choices (Cleveland, 2002). This means that receiving, sorting, and using information is a process determined not only by the nature of the information itself, but also by the perceptions, values, and instincts of the people who perceive and interpret it.

Organizational Learning and Knowledge Management

Human interaction occurs within a patterned social and cultural context. First, from the descriptive perspective of general systems theory (GST), human interactions are sociopsychological processes (perception, cognition, and communications) that occur as patterns within a structural and functional organizational context (Katz & Kahn, 1978). Second, because organizations not only presumably evolve to ensure their survival within a complex and shifting environment, but also to achieve their members' or leaders' intentional objectives, this patterned interaction has normative implications. Successful organizations are of necessity capable of learning and change (Thompson, 1967).

The fields of organization theory and administration behavior include literature on organizational learning from varied perspectives—individual, group, organizational, segments of the economy, national, and even civil society as a whole (Casey, 2003). Organizational learning is complex. First, for social psychologists, it means understanding how individuals' perceptions and interactions give rise to infinitely more complex organizational behaviors, and how that organizational culture in turn shapes individual perceptions and behavior (Smith, 1997). Second, for organization theorists and managers, it requires explaining organizational change. Some argue that achieving organizational coherence (e.g., commonality of purpose), and homogeneity (of culture or values) is essential, whereas others argue for difference, diversity, and creativity. Two bodies of literature from the natural sciences—the theory of self-producing systems (autopoiesis) and the theory of nonlinear systems (complexity theory)—may offer a new perspective on this problem (Goldspink & Kay, 2003), to be supplemented by specific managerial applications or organizational knowledge creation and...