Knowledge Transfer Across Hierarchical Lines:The Importance of Structure and Type of Knowledge

Knowledge transfer across hierarchical lines is essential for organizations to function. Yet, how managers transfer different types of knowledge to their subordinates, in different organizational structures, remains understudied. Drawing on knowledge work and management literature, we adopt a case- based approach using sports teams (football, and ice hockey) as archetypal context to explore the nature of the knowledge transfer that occurs in both tall and flat organizational structures. Based on in-depth interviews with players and coaches, observations of team meetings, practices, and games, our findings revealed different knowledge transfer patterns in the two cases. Football (tall) involved declarative knowledge transferred through three mechanisms: scripting, simplification and individual directives. In contrast, ice hockey (flat) involved procedural knowledge transferred through three different mechanisms: general principles, exemplifying and experiential learning. The relevance and generalizability for practitioners and managerial research is discussed and future research is addressed.