An Investigation of Environmental Factors That Influence Knowledge Transfer in the Air Force

his research asked the following question: is there a correlation between types of organizational culture and factors influencing knowledge transfer? It hypothesized that organizations scoring high on the cultural factors of openness to change/innovation, and task-oriented organizational growth would be fertile to knowledge transfer. Second, it hypothesized that organizations scoring high on the factors of bureaucratic and Competition/confrontation would be infertile to knowledge transfer. The research looked at Air Force squadrons, surveying a representative sample of the 1,495 active-duty squadrons included in the study with a 62- item, 5-point Likert-type instrument. Overall, 51 squadrons were surveyed, and 22 produced usable results. Both squadron and individual results were analyzed--and both were similar. Squadron results showed that organizations scoring high on the factors of openness to change/innovation and task-oriented organizational growth appeared to score consistently high on three of the four measures of fertility to knowledge transfer. Organizations scoring high on the factors of competition/confrontation appeared to score consistently low on three of the four measures of fertility to knowledge transfer. The factor bureaucratic produced no significant correlations.