Congratulations to Dr Corro van Waveren on obtaining his PhD degree

Posted on September 20, 2022

Prof Elma van der Lingen  (Head of Department) would like to congratulate Dr Corro van Waveren on obtaining his PhD degree at the EBIT Graduation Ceremony on 7 September 2022.
 
​Title:
​Projects and Knowledge Transfer: Understanding Knowledge Acceptance, Characteristics, and Transfer Mechanisms in Engineering Projects
 
Abstract:
More and more organisations in the private and public sectors are operating in a projectized manner where organisations either provide unique and customised products and services or organisations that choose to run their normal operations in a projectized way. Furthermore, the unique and temporary nature of projects causes project team members to focus on the short-term goals of the project, therefore, not seeing the capturing and transferring of project knowledge as a priority or important for the long-term benefits to the organisation or consecutive projects.

From a project perspective, the successful transfer of knowledge may be seen as how the knowledge that was transferred impacted the achievement of project objectives, and therefore the success of the projects. In practice, project success as a measurement of knowledge transfer success is conceptually too removed from when and where the knowledge transfer actually took place, as many other factors also influence the ultimate success of the project. This dissertation, therefore, focuses on knowledge acceptance at the end of a knowledge transfer event as a measure for the transfer outcome. As the first objective of this PhD study a measurement framework was developed that can be used to measure the acceptance of knowledge in projects.

The acceptance of knowledge is regarded as a function of the knowledge that is transferred and relates to the classification of knowledge types, the details of the content and the context of the knowledge itself, and how this knowledge will satisfy the needs of the recipients in the knowledge exchange. The second objective of this study was therefore to investigate the knowledge features and the appropriate channels through which the knowledge flows to gain knowledge acceptance.

As part of knowledge transfer, knowledge transfer mechanisms or tools and techniques are used to transport the knowledge from the source to the recipient(s) through the knowledge transfer process. An extensive set of knowledge transfer mechanisms exists but a proper classification and referencing method for these transfer mechanisms was lacking. This led to the development of a knowledge transfer mechanism classification framework as the third outcome of this research project.

As a fourth and final objective of this research study, the moderating effect of the knowledge transfer mechanism on the transfer process was explored to gain an understanding of the way the knowledge transfer mechanisms influenced the knowledge features to achieve knowledge acceptance. It was found that different configurations of moderators exist and that multiple configurations of moderators can lead to the same knowledge acceptance outcome.

The overall research study was conducted in different parts, using four sub-studies to reach each of the before-mentioned objectives. Different research methods were applied for each sub-study, including inductive and deductive approaches as well as qualitative and quantitative research choices.

The research study contributes to academics and practitioners by providing them with a framework that can be used to measure knowledge acceptance in projects, a classification system for knowledge transfer mechanisms from which appropriate knowledge transfer tools and techniques can be selected, and a proposed new conceptual model for future research, that can open up contemporary configurational thinking to investigate the more complex realities of knowledge transfer and how the use of knowledge transfer moderator configurations can lead to knowledge acceptance.

Keywords: Project knowledge classification, knowledge acceptance, knowledge transfer mechanisms, moderation model, mixed-method research designs.

Supervisor: Prof-Dr L.A.G. Oerlemans, University of Pretoria, ZA. Tilburg University, NL
Co-Supervisor: Prof M.W. Pretorius, University of Pretoria, ZA

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