Knowledge transfer as transformative dialogue: a pedagogical view on learning and meta-knowledge transfer in a leadership development program

Introduction

Knowledge transfer is a significant challenge in all organizational development and change processes. It is a key element in learning from experiences, and in making information and knowledge available throughout organizations. Research shows that knowledge transfer involves much more social complexity than simply information processing in organizations. For example, Bygdås (2014) argues that knowledge is created through people's dynamic social learning processes and not transferred or moved from one setting to another. He claims that knowledge transfer is not a mere “copy and paste” event and that knowledge in an organization needs to be anchored in social and collective learning processes in practice. Similarly, Sprinkle and Urick (2018) claim that only explicit knowledge can be transferred through training and development programs. Other forms of knowledge, such as tacit knowledge and practical wisdom (including an understanding of the organization's value system), require learning through experience in the specific organizational practice. Cultural and contextual barriers in social practice often impede attempts to utilize new knowledge to improve everyday work performance (Asrar-ul-Haq and Anwar, 2016; Lopes and Santos, 2021). To overcome these barriers, the organization needs a so-called absorptive capacity to facilitate and maintain new knowledge (Cohen and Levinthal, 1990).

Knowledge transfer is also a pedagogical challenge to facilitate leaders' learning and transfer through leadership development programs, which are often expected to help leaders to lead and communicate learning and knowledge processes (Atwood et al., 2010). However, the effectiveness of such programs is still debated (Soderhjelm et al., 2021). Other research also describes the transfer challenge, albeit using various similar names such as training transfer (Gilpin-Jackson and Bushe, 2007), learning transfer (Johnstal, 2013) or transfer of knowledge (Soderhjelm et al., 2021). With regard to leaders' responsibility to manage and communicate learning and knowledge processes, and since leadership development programs often highlight such contents, this pedagogical transfer challenge is more crucial than ever to consider.

Some researchers argue that leadership programs lack clear evidence regarding their positive transfer effects (Grint, 2007; Kellerman, 2012). However, other studies (e.g. Ladyshewsky and Flavell, 2011) show positive outcomes on academic leadership for program coordinators, with lasting transfer effects on participants' abilities to perform the role. Another recent example is Tafvelin et al.’s (2021) study of transfer of leadership training, which shows the usefulness of the program for leaders' daily work and their learning opportunities. The authors argue that the transfer of soft and interpersonal leadership skills requires social support for leaders in their everyday work. Many other studies find that training transfer, including learning, transfer and maintenance of knowledge and skills, requires continuing support and feedback from superordinates and peers, the autonomy and opportunities to perform new knowledge, and an organizational climate that supports learning and follow-up (Soderhjelm et al., 2021; Packard and Jones, 2015; Holtzhausen and Botha, 2021; Davies and Heysmand, 2019). Leadership development is thus not only a change of leaders' individual knowledge and skills, but it also entails complex contextual interventions in the organizational culture (Gilpin-Jackson and Bushe, 2007).

This paper's aim is to contribute analysis of the links between leaders' creation of knowledge in the setting of a leadership development program and the transfer of knowledge to their own organizations. Since the program's purpose is to help leaders lead knowledge and learning processes in organizations, it is expected that meta-learning (learning about learning) and creation of meta-knowledge (knowledge about knowledge) will occur. While meta-learning and meta-knowledge are crucial in organizational development and innovative efforts (Cohen and Levinthal, 1990), studies of meta-knowledge transfer are rare – particularly regarding soft leadership skills. However, the transfer of meta-knowledge has attracted most attention in studies of information systems and digital communication (Leonardi, 2014). The focus in this paper is, therefore, on the following research question: What potentials and challenges for knowledge and meta-knowledge transfer do the participants in the leadership program perceive?

Theoretical points of departure

The leadership development program featured in this study is a pedagogical intervention to facilitate learning and knowledge transfer. A central pedagogical point of departure, then, is that knowledge is created through individual and collective learning processes. Individual learning is a process of action, experience, reflection and understanding through which people create knowledge (Kolb, 2015), while collective learning is a process of collaborative action, dialogue, joint reflection and shared understanding whereby people create collective knowledge and competence (Dixon, 1994; Ohlsson, 2014). Both individual and collective learning, therefore, require subjective and intersubjective activities, and include people's active interpretations and meaning making. Furthermore, knowledge creation in organizations is an ongoing process of cultural and social interaction (Nonaka, 2004) situated in social practices and communities of practice (Lave and Wenger, 1991). Social perspectives on learning and knowledge creation reveal the complex relationships between learning individuals, collective learning, and the social and cultural settings in specific contexts (Billett, 2006). Kolb (2015) describes a distinction between personal and social knowledge, where individuals' personal concrete experiences are potentially tangible for others through a socially formed conceptual language. Similarly, although from another theoretical angle, Wenger (2004) describes learning as an interplay between social competence and personal experience. Individual and collective learning in organizations are therefore always embedded in a specific culturally and socially formed context. This context forms what is accepted as knowledge and skill, and people learn through varying modes of participation and belonging. Moreover, this clearly links to the ever-present aspects of power and conflicting interests related to learning and knowledge in organizations (Alvesson and Kärreman, 2001; Field, 2017; Flood and Romm, 2018).

This theoretical starting point, with basic roots in social constructivism and pragmatism, also has some crucial epistemological implications. First and foremost, knowledge appears in different forms (Kolb, 2015; Kim, 2004), and a major epistemological distinction is between knowledge of a practical kind, a skilled action, and a theoretical, conceptual understanding. Following Kim (2004), this is a distinction between operational and conceptual knowledge, which are described as know-how and know-why, respectively. A related epistemological distinction is between tacit and explicit knowledge as different forms of knowledge. Tacit knowledge is the individual's concrete, subjective experiences, thoughts and feelings that are not shared with others (Rowley, 2000). It is also part of an organization's underlying and often habitual ways of knowing, which are in many respects taken for granted. Explicit knowledge refers to the codified, communicated, and documented aspects of knowledge that can be shared with others and collectively transformed into joint understandings, overt interests and intended actions. Collective learning in teams and organizations both requires and creates explicit knowledge, and individuals' tacit knowledge emerges as explicit knowledge through these types of collective learning processes (Kim, 2004; Brix, 2017). These complex and ongoing learning processes also encompass and generate a different kind of knowledge, namely practical wisdom, which is often referred to as the Aristotelian concept of phronesis (Flyvbjerg, 2006; Grint, 2007). Practical wisdom includes values and beliefs that help the individual to handle unexpected problematic situations and ethical dilemmas (Rowley and Gibbs, 2008). This kind of knowledge, therefore, also contains practical and ethical aspects of knowing, which potentially guide actions congruent to the organization's value system and moral standards. The organizational meta-knowledge refers to knowledge about available or stored knowledge, for instance knowledge about who knows what, or where this knowledge can be found within the organization (Leonardi, 2014). Meta-knowledge includes awareness of what kind of knowledge that is produced in the organization, and how this knowledge is created. This links meta-knowledge to the organizational meta-learning through which the organization learns about its own learning loop processes (Argyris and Schön, 1978; Tosey et al., 2011). Reflective collective learning processes in the organization potentially facilitate meta-learning and thereby meta-knowledge (Cohen and Levinthal, 1990; Ohlsson, 2014).

This view of learning and epistemological conceptualizations provides the analytical tools for this study of a leadership development program. The basic pedagogical purpose of training and development programs for leaders is that they should enable knowledge, at least in some respects, to be decontextualized and transferred to new organizational settings. The idea of knowledge transfer, therefore, needs epistemological clarification regarding different aspects of knowledge. Taking various types of knowledge into account, Carlile (2004) elaborates a framework for analysis of knowledge transfer with regard to development and innovation in organizations. He distinguishes between three types of boundaries at different levels: the syntactic level, the semantic level, and the pragmatic level. Managing knowledge across these different boundaries requires three different types of knowledge-managing process. The process to move knowledge across the syntactic boundary needs forms of codified and objectified knowledge that can be used as boundary objects. Knowledge transfer at this level is mainly described in terms of processing of information. At the semantic level, the boundary consists of subjective interpretations between people, which raise demands on managing processes of translating knowledge. These translating processes include the identification of different meanings and interests, as well as attempts to negotiate and create shared understanding. Finally, knowledge-managing processes on the pragmatic level of boundaries require transforming knowledge and interests, which means that actors have to learn new knowledge, see the interests of others, and create new shared common interests together. These processes of translating and transforming include practical and political efforts, as well as power relations between actors in the organization. Thus, pedagogical interventions to facilitate learning and transfer of knowledge need to consider the complexity that characterizes people's learning and knowledge in organizations.

Methodology

This paper presents empirical results from a research project conducted during 2020–2022. A researcher observed a leadership development program, L-Lab, which was organized and led by two experienced management consultants. The program was a step-by-step process with eight regular meetings (totaling 13 days) over the course of a year (2020–2021). Four participants joined all the meetings and all the activities in the program. Some of the meetings were also open to other professional consultants. The main aims of the program were to teach how to lead and manage learning and knowledge processes at workplaces and in organizations, and to facilitate the creation of theoretical and practical knowledge, as well as pedagogical tools for enhancing learning through collaboration. Different methods of leadership were discussed at the meetings, and after the meetings the participants were expected to apply and transfer what they had learned during the program to their home organizations. The program offered a mix of theoretical perspectives on learning and knowledge creation in organizational contexts, as well as practical collaborative training sessions. The first meeting was an introduction to the theme of leading learning processes. Other meetings included views on learning in practice, emphasizing for instance the importance of narratives, systems and power, and action learning. The program also comprised several design workshops, where the participants worked together and exchanged experiences and perspectives. Since the program's basic pedagogical idea was to facilitate collective learning processes, all the meetings included practical collaborations followed by reflection and dialogue sessions. The researcher and one of the leading consultants planned the research project together, and the researcher joined a meeting in the beginning of the program (November 2020) in order to introduce the background for the project.

In order to answer the central research-question the basic rationale and strategy for data collection and analysis was to give the researcher access to the participants own learning experiences and their reflections on transfer potentials at several occasions during the project period. The data were collected mainly through interviews and the participants' written reflections on their learning experiences during the program. Additionally, three group conversations were carried out – the first as an introduction to the research plan, and the following two as feedback seminars. The individual interviews with each one of the four participants were conducted in several steps. Interview 1 was done in March 2021, and interview 2 was done in May 2021 (Table 1). In a third step in November 2021, each participant was interviewed together with their line manager from their home organization. For just one of the participants (interviewee 1), there was a third individual interview (Table 1). The total number of interviews was 13. The interviews were structured into two basic themes, with questions about learning experiences in the program and their opportunities to transfer knowledge to their home organization. The interviews with participants and their managers included questions about organizational and managerial conditions for knowledge transfer. The interviews lasted from 40 min up to 1 h and 30 min. Due to the pandemic, all the interviews, the research introduction and the first feedback meeting (May 2021) were conducted online. The second feedback meeting (February 2022) was done in person. In May 2021, the participants wrote and submitted a personal “learning log” of 3–4 pages, in which they described their experiences of what they had learned during the program.

The data were analyzed thematically in order to identify different qualities regarding participants' learning experiences and transfer potentials. In the first step, the analysis was concentrated on participants' responses to the main interview questions about learning experiences, the interaction with co-participants and consultants, and different transfer challenges. Thematically different descriptions emerged from the participants' verbalized experiences. In the second step of analysis, theoretically formed themes were used to conceptualize the central findings.

The four participants were all middle-aged women, and all were HR specialists with responsibility for leading knowledge and change processes. They were all informed about the principles of ethical research prior to their participation, and all of them confirmed in writing their interest to participate. All the interviews were carried out by the researcher, and the data were handled with confidentiality. According to the ethical considerations and in order to create a relaxed atmosphere at meetings and interviews, the researcher and the participants agreed that none of the interviews or meetings should be audio recorded. Instead, all the activities were documented through the researcher's field notes and retrospectively written summaries. To ensure validity, these notes were double-checked with each participant after their interviews.

Findings

In this section, the results are presented. First, the participants' experiences of knowledge creation and knowledge transfer potentials, followed by descriptions of their transfer challenges.

Discussion

The participants in the leadership development program described several positive outcomes and also some enduring challenges regarding knowledge transfer. They claimed they had learned new tools for managing knowledge processes, and underlined the importance of concrete exercises during workshops and seminars. In their role as leaders, they had opportunities to transfer these tools to their own organizations and use them more or less immediately. Although some contextual adjustments were necessary, these tools appeared as knowledge in the form of practical skills and operational know-how (Kim, 2004), and a new theoretical understanding of know-why. These results confirm previous studies of transfer of explicit knowledge through development programs (Sprinkle and Urick, 2018; Tafvelin et al., 2021). A further quality in their knowledge creation was that the participants also claimed that they had learned collectively about learning and knowledge processes. This was expressed through their increasing ability to see their own learning processes and outcomes in the form of subjective understanding and knowledge, which also related to their ability to see the knowledge and perspectives of others. A reasonable interpretation of these findings is that the program contributed to the participants' collective learning processes and mutual conceptualizations of meta-learning and meta-knowledge (Ohlsson, 2014). They became aware of both their own and the others knowledge of how to lead processes. These dialogic meta-reflective processes include practical wisdom as important leadership ethics and soft skills, a kind of knowledge that normally, according to previous research, is difficult to transfer (Rowley and Gibbs, 2008). In these respects, increased social support and encouragement from colleagues and managers appear important for knowledge transfer (Gilpin-Jackson and Bushe, 2007; Tafvelin et al., 2021).

Nevertheless, the results also reveal and confirm transfer challenges and difficulties related to different organizational absorptive capacities (Cohen and Levinthal, 1990). Some findings suggest that the leader needed more personal courage to implement learned practical leadership skills, which in turn may have led to transfer challenges in the form of personal thresholds. Although all the participants described relatively high levels of autonomy in their role as leaders, and thus good opportunities to transfer and use learned know-how, they still needed supportive settings for practicing. If leaders are allowed to join courses and development programs, but no one is interested in their new knowledge, then knowledge transfer will be constrained. A lack of dialogue and follow-up conversations between managers and colleagues, as well as ignorance and undervaluing of the new knowledge, tend to impede collective learning and knowledge sharing. These results confirm studies that show learning barriers or restraining conditions for knowledge creation in organizations (Asrar-ul-Haq and Anwar, 2016; Lopes and Santos, 2021).

However, regarding the links between knowledge creation in the leadership program and knowledge transfer potential, the findings indicate an important relationship between learned dialogic wisdom and the organization's absorptive capacity to create meta-knowledge. Some findings show that the participants and their managers, through dialogue processes, were transferring meta-knowledge to their own organizations, including potential future strategies to manage development processes. They were, therefore, interpreting and understanding knowledge intersubjectively. According to Carlile (2004), these processes are more translating processes than transferring processes. Translating provides collective identification of knowledge in the organization, different interpretations and presumably conflicting interests. Moreover, meta-knowledge transfer also includes transforming processes. It seems to be a mutual creation of shared understanding, which means a collective synergetic learning process with new, transformed meaning as a potential outcome (Ohlsson, 2014). Additionally, this pragmatic view of knowledge transfer includes ethical aspects, which open up opportunities to make different knowledge interests and power relations in the organization explicit (Field, 2017). Although conflicting interests are structurally parts of an organization, and thereby not always possible to identify, the ethical virtue of listening to others' viewpoints and through dialogue trying to understand them means that different interests can be recognized and admitted. This does not imply that all conflicts in an organization can be resolved through dialogue or meta-knowledge transformation, but these pragmatic meta-knowledge transforming processes appear to be promising pedagogical alternatives.

These findings are in some respects intriguing regarding our understanding of soft-skill knowledge transfer, and meta-knowledge transfer in particular. To understand knowledge transfer potentials pedagogically, the social processes of interaction and communication must be understood as driving forces of collective learning and creation of new shared knowledge. The question of leaders transferring knowledge about how to lead learning and knowledge processes is not a simple matter of moving codified knowledge from the development program to new settings, but rather relies on ongoing processes of translating and transforming in the organization (Carlile, 2004). Thereby, knowledge about others' knowledge in the organization requires and stimulates subject-to-subject relations between people, through which dialogue processes and shared understandings potentially emerge (Dixon, 1994; Ohlsson, 2014). This is a co-creation process of knowledge in a new setting and context.

Implications

The identified processes of meta-knowledge transfer certainly have theoretical implications for the understanding of learning, knowledge, and transfer processes for leaders to lead knowledge in organizations. First, the transfer processes require management and staff who are receptive to mutual knowledge creation through transforming processes. Therefore, meta-knowledge transfer needs more than social support, the organization's absorptive capacity must also include conditions for mutually shared participation in co-creation processes. A second implication of this study challenge our understanding of the links between collective learning processes in organizations, including the more institutionalized organizational learning (Kim, 2004; Dixon, 1994), and the idea of knowledge management, including meta-knowledge creation and transfer (Cohen and Levinthal, 1990). Managing meta-knowledge processes in the organization requires ongoing participation in collective creation of new understanding and knowledge, which in turn is a driving force in the organizational learning process (Brix, 2017). Forthcoming empirical studies should further clarify these complex issues.

Moreover, the practical implications regarding pedagogical organizing of leadership development point to a need for supplementary dialogue between the leader of the development program and both the participating leader and manager.

Limitations

This study has some limitations. First, it is a relatively small case study, and the findings and tentative conclusions need further research and empirical support to strengthen their validity. Secondly, the aim of the development program, and all the participants' similar role as HR process leaders, in some respects delimited broader implications of the case study. Nevertheless, their central positions as process leaders certainly provide significant information about learning and knowledge transfer potentials, which benefit to this study. Thirdly, the fact that the interviews were not recorded would ordinarily be a big validity problem. However, this was mitigated here by the resulting opportunities to collect data on the dialogic process from the participants and their managers. The relaxed and open conversations (partially exemplified above) were a kind of mutual inventory problem-solving, and maybe would not have occurred in the presence of a tape recorder.