How Networks of Practice and Organizational Identification Affect Inter-Group Knowledge Transfer

The increasing attention paid to communities of practice underlines the sharing of common values among peers as a premise to trigger knowledge exchanges. Strong group identities can favor knowledge flows within groups characterized by homogeneous competencies and activities performed, while they can limit the knowledge flows between different groups, thus reducing the exposure to new opportunities and stimula. The role played by organizational identification in the processes of knowledge transfer between professional groups has not been deeply explored so far and it represents the focus of our exploratory study. The evidence, collected in a hospital department where different professional groups operate jointly, show how voluntary inter-group transfer of knowledge can be traced back to organizational citizenship behaviors triggered both by high level of organizational identification and by the perceptions of equal level of organizational identification of coworkers.