Michał Chmielecki

Background. Management over the last decades has seen knowledge sharing become a key tool for the success of a variety of institutions. Many companies and other organizations have developed knowledge management programs as the key to their future development strategies. There are a number of organizations that have identified knowledge sharing as one of their core management tools. Yet despite its growing popularity, knowledge sharing remains a complex and challenging task.
Research aims. This article attempts to identify the main group of knowledge sharing barriers in Polish universities and to verify if there are any specific cultural elements that create those barriers.
Method. The primary data for this article was collected by conducting 47 in-depth inter-views (IDI) with academic staff from 9 universities in Poland.
Key findings. The research reveals that the most important are the individual knowledge sharing barriers, mostly associated with the lack of trust among academic staff.

Background: Knowledge transfer between the HQ and subsidiary has recently been targets of increasing research interest. However, the role of expatriate managers and local staff perspective on this process has not been examined enough.

Research aims: This paper has two main objectives: first to develop a conceptual framework (model) of knowledge transfer between the headquarters and local subsidiary, and second to empirically evaluate this process in five foreign subsidiaries based in Poland from a knowledge-based perspective.

Methodology: Our study relied on qualitative case study methods. The authors report the empirical findings from five multinational subsidiaries (two German, two American and one Indian) located in Poland. 68 semi-structured interviews were conducted among HR specialists and managers.

Key findings: The transfer of knowledge has always been in one direction, that is from the headquarters to its foreign subsidiary in Poland. Both the headquarters (as a sender) and the subsidiary (as a receiver) have been prepared in terms of tools and institutions to accumulate the knowledge. A key link in the knowledge transfer has included expatriates – their skills and abilities such as openness, willingness to learn and motivation for learning, ability to transfer their knowledge and experience to others, and ability to build positive interpersonal relations.