Proposition 6 & 7 – Scaffolding and the Zone of Proximal Development

When knowledge is incongruent with current institutional logics, the zone of proximal development of workgroup members to receive that knowledge is narrow. Foreign knowledge that is incongruent with current logics is certainly socially different in

Scaffolding Activities

Colleagues Knowledge

Returnee Organization

Building Scheme / Language

Mentoring

Conducting Workshops

Syndicating Knowledge Providing Educational

Opportunities

Making Contact with Foreign Firms

Tailoring Information Explicating Knowledge

Helping With Interpretation and Translation

Informal Relationship Building Developing Local Skills

Earning Respect & Trust Creating Structures Finding a Champion D eg re e o f I ns tit ut io na l I nc on gr ue nc e f ro m t1 t1 t2 t3 tn ZPD ZPD ZPD ZPD

Effective Knowledge Transfer

Effective Knowledge Transfer

Effective Knowledge Transfer

Effective Knowledge Transfer

(P8a) (P8b)

(P8c) (P8d)

(P8) (P7)

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that the roots of the tacit knowledge are from a completely different society. It is

spatially distant in that examples of where such knowledge has been applied are foreign. It can be temporally distant if it will take time to implement the new knowledge, and its hypotheticality is often greater because it is novel, and as such, unproven to work in the current context. We found that returnees were able to lower psychological distance and thus address their colleagues’ ZPD by engaging in scaffolding activities. A comparison of returnees who told narratives of how they attempted to scaffold compared to those who did not reveals this as a crucial aspect of returnee knowledge transfer.

An example from the second field trip of the main study comes from a senior manager at a financial institution. Like many other returnees who were successful at transferring knowledge, he sought out opportunities to promote his knowledge to colleagues in a way that was educational and non-threatening. He held short lectures or seminars to explain knowledge that he learned overseas which he thought could be helpful to other workgroup members. For him, the seminars were a way of introducing new ideas to his colleagues and superiors in a setting that was not overly intimidating for them.

I had to have sessions because I needed to persuade my colleagues of my expertise and I tried to show my contribution to my organization and to my colleagues. That was my way of getting people to understand my method. So, if they don't understand, they will fear you or your ideas or they will reject that way of doing things…People here want to learn. They want to know the knowledge that I gained overseas. In a seminar, they don't feel that there is any threat because it is only a lesson.

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As a counter example, an extremely frustrated manager (Team Leader) from the marketing department of a financial institution spoke quite disparaging about his

opportunities to transfer the knowledge he gained during his MBA to his organizations. He gave a few examples of when he tried to transfer knowledge, but what was clearly lacking was an explanation about how he attempted to lower the psychological distance or frame his knowledge within a zone of proximal development that would be acceptable to his colleagues and superiors. After noticing that he had not provided any explanation about how he ‘sold’ his knowledge, the interviewer probed him with the question; ‘Do you have a technique to sell your knowledge?’ His response included:

I try to sell my ideas, and I wrote some personal letters to explain my ideas to them. However, their typical response is that "well that sounds good" but it is too hard to implement those ideas…I am looking for opportunities to make use of my skills. During my MBA program, I was focused on marketing. Here is Korea, marketing is less developed in many companies. So, basically, at first I approached our senior managers and top executives, and told them we need a marketing department. Actually, even though we do marketing, we do not have a unified marketing department, which is in charge of organizing the marketing activities of our company. But for them, having a department is a big job and so they rejected my idea. (Returnee #36, Company G)

What we noticed from this interview was that it lacked an explanation about what he did to lower psychological distance between the knowledge that he possessed and the decision makers in his firm. Setting up a new marketing department would most likely require money and effort. Because this had not been done before, the senior managers may not have been able to think about it in concrete terms. As such, we might expect them to construe the idea at a much higher level and thus discount the likelihood of success and the potential rewards. In other words, the idea of setting up a new marketing

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department would be psychologically distant and thus be discounted. The returnee recognized that the institutions in which he worked, his superiors and colleagues were very conservative, but presented that as a reason why his initiatives were rejected rather than discuss how he attempted to reshape their thinking. Contrary to this experience, one of the most successful returnees at bringing about large institutional change was from the very same organization. This returnee also went abroad to complete an MBA.

A senior manager from the same financial institution used the knowledge he had gained from his MBA and the network of people he had met during that time to lead his firm through its first international joint venture. However, this project came after nearly a decade of more incremental activities on his part. Upon returning to Korea after his MBA, this returnee realized that his colleagues and superiors lacked some basic financial literacy and information about foreign markets. He believed that this was a problem because at the time the Korean financial market was beginning to open up and foreign investors were entering the Korean market. He felt that members of his organization were at a disadvantage because of information asymmetry. He took it upon himself to train his junior employees, colleagues, and superiors.

All of a sudden the local markets became dominated by what was happening overseas, so everyone was keen to know what was going on in the overseas markets. Later on, the government tried to provide such information to the local markets about what was going on overseas, but, I did that before the government ever did. So, usually in the morning, I gathered them [the dealers] together at 8:00 am for 30 minutes. We would go through all the important events. Thus, before I met them I would read all the important financial newspapers, like the Wall Street Journal, and watch CNN before I left home. By doing so, I could understand what was going on in the U.S. markets. I sometimes explained to them the specific techniques or market structures or government institutions that are forming the U.S. market systems. For example, there are some specific differences between the local market practice and the U.S. market practice. In order for them to

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understand the market, they needed to understand the structure of the market in foreign countries. So, I needed to explain this to them. So, every day I did that for five days a week. We kept that up for about one year.

(Returnee #29, Company G)

This returnee engaged his workgroup members with knowledge that they needed immediately. He provided that knowledge to them in a format that was within their zone of proximal development. As such, the knowledge was well received and utilized. He was successfully able to lower the psychological distance between this important foreign knowledge and the individuals in his organization. This became a successful knowledge transfer story, in and of itself, and set the stage for him to make a larger contribution to his firm.

As shown in Table 13, the lowering of psychological distance by offering new foreign knowledge to workgroup members incrementally was a pattern that clearly emerged from the successful returnees. From the above example, we see that

incrementally seems to mean that returnees first introduce knowledge that is recognized as immediately relevant by other workgroup members and is less incongruent with current institutional logics. Over time, returnees are able to introduce new knowledge that is more incongruent with the original institutional logics of the workgroup. Thus, we propose that:

Proposition 6: When the knowledge that returnees attempt to transfer is within the workgroup’s Zone of Proximal Development, the likelihood of successfully transferring that knowledge is greater.

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Proposition 7: Over time, returnees are more likely to be successful at transferring knowledge that is incongruent with institutional logics if they transfer knowledge in incremental steps.