What makes for successful repatriate knowledge transfer? Implications for repatriation and global leadership

Knowledge transfer (KT) is an important global leader competency, given their role as knowledge brokers and capacity builders. However, KT skills and the transfer process itself have received scant attention from both global mobility and leadership scholars. Similarly, multinationals have seldom systematically collected and utilized repatriate knowledge, despite the competitive advantage it represents in a global knowledge economy. To fill this gap, an exploratory qualitative study employing critical incidents and interviews with a multi-country sample of 47 German, Japanese and U.S. repatriates identified variables that facilitate knowledge transfer attempts to the work unit. Our findings corroborate the proposed variables in a conceptual model of the transfer process and articulate the transfer skills that help explain their ability to transfer. Most importantly, our findings introduce an interactive transfer model that explicates the micro-process of transfer in the repatriate-work unit relationship. We conclude with implications for global leadership research and HRM practice.