2003

Book Reviews

work environment. To combat oppression, black

women managers carve a different role from
white women and attain upward mobility
through moving outside their organizations for
career advancement.
Social class is pivotal to charting a womans
path to success. Women from lower class families have to overcome obstacles of getting an
education, finding a guardian angel to help
them, and getting around their at risk family
status. However, the intersection of gender, race,
and class is not evenly developed in this book,
and the concluding chapters become more of a
conversation between black and white women
managers, irrespective of their origins and
class.
This lack of continued cross-referencing of
class throughout the book leads to reifying the
categories of gender and race and losing sight
of how they are socially constructed and how
they grow out of power relationships from a multiplex of interactions. Rather, the book often
casts these differences between women as
stemming from black and white as preassigned
categories of race. Perhaps the difference question between black and white women managers is not the most fruitful way to unpack the
complexities among race, gender, and class.
Another concern that this book raises that
might be unpacked in more depth is the source
of the discrimination that black women managers face. Power differentials are articulated
throughout the book, particularly in the sections
on perceptions of the concrete wall, daily doses
of racism, informal interactions, and challenges
to authority. The sources of these forms of power
lack clarity in the book. At times I saw them as
stemming from stereotypes that keep women,
and particularly black women, in their place. At
other times these sources of power are structural, such as concrete walls constructed
through the integration of patriarchy, bureaucracy, and racism. Yet throughout the book
power seems to reside more systemically in
deep-rooted racial values and beliefs that are
reconstituted from society to organizations.
More attention to analyzing the sources of these
power relations would yield insights about subtle differences in the life histories of these
women and about suggestions as to how organizations could address the problems of advancing black women into management positions.

679

Despite these reservations, this book is a significant publication and a must read for scholars interested in diversity, race, and gender relationships in organizations. It moves beyond
stereotypes as a way of understanding differential treatment of black women managers, it acknowledges history and oppression through individual experiences, and it captures the
mixture of patriarchy and racism that perpetuates discrimination of both black and white
women in their journey up the corporate ladder.
REFERENCES
Fox-Genovese, E. 1991. Feminism without illusions. Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Helgesen, S. 1990. The female advantage: Womens ways of
leadership. New York: Doubleday.
Hennig, M., & Jardim, A. 1978. The managerial woman. New
York: Basic Books.
Kanter, R. M. 1977. Men and women of the corporation. New
York: Basic Books.
Rosener, J. B. 1990. Ways women lead. Harvard Business
Review, 68(6): 1112.

Sticky Knowledge: Barriers to Knowing

in the Firm, by Gabriel Szulanski. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2003.
Reviewed by Joseph T. Mahoney and Charles Williams, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,
Champaign, Illinois.

As researchers began to study knowledge as

an essential resource for competitive advantage, a natural first question they had concerned
why firms often fail to leverage the knowledge
they possess in the form of existing best practices in the firm. Best practices in R&D activities,
process improvement projects, or redesigned operations do not readily spread within organizations. Transfer of practices tends to be sticky
because of multiple factors, including the nature
of knowledge and the choices and attributes of
its seekers and providers. For example, in a survey of 431 United States and European organizations conducted in 1997 by Ernst & Young, only
14 percent of the respondents judged their organization satisfactory in transferring existing
knowledge internally. The remaining 86 percent
found it lacking (Ruggles, 1998). This book on

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Academy of Management Review

sticky knowledge addresses an important question for managers: Why dont best practices
spread within organizations? Gabriel Szulanski,
professor of strategy and management at
INSEAD, explores the effect of knowledge barriers and motivational barriers on knowledge
transfer.
Motivational barriers to knowledge transfer
are well known in the management literature.
Interdivisional jealousy, lack of economic incentives, resistance to change, and turf protection
are examples of the many potential motivational barriers to knowledge transfer. Szulanski,
however, adds another set of reasons, besides
motivational ones, that may explain why knowledge may not transfer.
Szulanski calls this alternative set of reasons
knowledge barriers. Examples of knowledge
barriers are the recipients level of knowledge
prior to the transfer, the recipients ability to
shed prior practices, and the pre-existing social
ties between the source and the recipient. These
factors are different from motivational barriers.
Indeed, Szulanski finds that knowledge barriers
in some circumstances overshadow motivational barriers to the transfer of best practices
within the organization.
Szulanski first discusses the characteristics of
knowledge that lead to stickiness in the transfer
of best practice. A critical characteristic concerns the concept of causal ambiguity (Lippman
& Rumelt, 1982). Causal ambiguity increases
stickiness, since a completely successful recreation of knowledge is impossible owing to
irreducible uncertainty that prevents a complete
understanding of how features of the new context affect the outcome of the re-creation effort.
Szulanski next discusses the characteristics of
the source that lead to stickiness. One critical
characteristic is that the source lacks motivation
to share crucial knowledge. A second critical
characteristic is that the source lacks credibility.
Szulanski then turns to the characteristics of
the recipient that lead to stickiness. Here he
identifies the lack of prior-related knowledge,
which highly influences absorptive capacity
(Cohen & Levinthal, 1990). A recipient that lacks
absorptive capacity will be less likely to recognize the value of new knowledge, less likely to
re-create that knowledge, and less likely to apply such knowledge successfully. Szulanski also
predicts that the motivation of the recipient will
affect the stickiness of knowledge.

October

Finally, Szulanski emphasizes context. An important contextual aspect for both the source
and the recipient of knowledge is the nature of
their pre-existing relationships. An arduous relationship might create additional hardships to
the transfer of knowledge.
Szulanski further advances the management
research literature by introducing four stages of
transfer initiation, implementation, ramp-up,
and integration in which stickiness may arise
for different reasons. Initiation stickiness is difficulty recognizing opportunities to transfer and
then acting on them. Implementation stickiness
includes poor communication between the
source and recipient. Ramp-up stickiness typically corresponds to the degree of causal ambiguity of the practice. Integration stickiness occurs when there is a failure to achieve a truce in
intraorganizational conflict (Nelson & Winter,
1982).
Szulanski presents a wide variety of empirical
support for the proposed model and predictions.
The four types of stickiness are illustrated with
findings from in-depth fieldwork in different settings: Rank Xerox (now Xerox Europe), Banc One,
and Centel, which is a subsidiary of Sprint. Following these case studies, Szulanski presents
the empirical results of statistical analyses that
stem from data collected through a two-step
questionnaire survey. The research relies on 271
surveys studying the transfer of 38 (technical
and administrative) practices in 8 companies:
AMP, AT&T Paradyne, British Petroleum, Burmah Castrol, Chevron Corporation, EDS, Kaiser
Permanente, and Rank Xerox. The empirical results largely corroborate the theory developed
in the book, with some interesting surprises,
such as the finding that knowledge retention
and recipient motivation act as barriers to transfer in the ramp-up phase of transfer. Szulanski
finds that knowledge barriers to transfer have a
larger effect on the stickiness of knowledge than
motivational barriers, and the two barriers
jointly explain nearly 75 percent of the variance
in stickiness.
Szulanskis study is one of the earliest and
most exhaustive on the transfer of knowledge
within corporations. This book presents much of
the best thinking on the challenges of knowledge transfer. In exploring the implications of
the study, the book suggests that researchers
delve deeper into the stages of knowledge transfer, the individual constructs that are most influ-

2003

Book Reviews

ential on stickiness, and potential interactions

between the different constructs. These suggestions focus on the challenges of leveraging
knowledge across the organization, but opportunities also exist to link this research to other
issues such as knowledge generation.
Because the field of strategy has focused on
the difficult issues involved in leveraging
knowledge resources within firms, we have underemphasized the link between knowledge
and the environment. If knowledge is linked to
the environment, then one unexplored barrier to
transfer is that knowledge is not equally applicable in all contexts. This idea opens the possibility that knowledge is sticky because it will
not function in all areas of the company. Thus,
we may need to expand our view of the firm as
a bundle of knowledge resources that are applied uniformly across contexts. If operational
knowledge cannot not be applied uniformly
across all contexts, then other aspects of the
firm, such as the capability to adapt or to manage across diverse settings, may be fundamental sources of competitive advantage for firms.
In addition, the link between the environment
and the firms may vary, in which case firms may
manage this link in order to preserve the applicability of knowledge over a variety of contexts.
This factor might lead to a variant of Thompsons (1967) notion of buffering, in which firms
isolate essential knowledge within the organization so that less adaptation is required to
transfer the knowledge to a variety of settings.
Extensive buffering of core knowledge, however,
may reduce the capability of the firm to perceive
or react to important changes in the environment. This factor, in turn, suggests a potential
tradeoff between organizing to leverage existing resources and organizing to create new
knowledge-based resources.

681

Moving away from the closed system approach to knowledge could lead management
research in new and productive directions. In
addition to tradeoffs between leveraging existing knowledge and generating new knowledge,
firms may face a link between the phase of
industry evolution and the internal approach to
knowledge. There may also be natural phases of
knowledge in the life cycle of organizations, as
they move from renewal (e.g., creation of knowledge resources) to expansion (e.g., leveraging
existing knowledge). These phases will require
different approaches to organizational structure
and different approaches to knowledge.
Sticky Knowledge presents research findings
with meaning for scholars and managers. The
book manages to explore complex theoretical issues in straightforward language, and provides
the details of analysis in appendixes directed at
active researchers. Szulanski combines an interesting set of studies on knowledge, and his book
represents an excellent summation of what we
currently know about the transfer of knowledge in
organizations. This book will take its rightful
place as a major contribution to research on organizational capabilities.
REFERENCES
Cohen, W. M., & Levinthal, D. 1990. Absorptive capacity: A
new perspective on learning and innovation. Administrative Science Quarterly, 35: 128 152.
Lippman, S. A., & Rumelt, R. P. 1982. Uncertain imitability: An
analysis of interfirm differences in efficiency under
competition. Bell Journal of Economics, 13: 418 438.
Nelson, R., & Winter, S. 1982. An evolutionary theory of economic change. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Ruggles, R. 1998. The state of the notion: Knowledge management in practice. California Management Review,
40(3): 80 89.
Thompson, J. D. 1967. Organizations in action. New York:
McGraw-Hill.