The Transfer of Financial Management Knowledge Innovations

Abstract

The article reports the findings of a study of a project that attempted to transfer financial management knowledge innovations to officials of small municipalgovernments. Because the project dealt with a type of knowledge and a set of clients that are not the typicalfocus of knowledge utilization research, it presented an opportunity to examine the generalizability of several of this research area's concepts and propositions. The study's findings suggest that a knowledge transfer project that attempts to serve organizations of various sizes must tailor its strategy to the size of target organizations, and that heterophilous change agents may be more successful than homophilous change agents in transferring knowledge innovations that will be accepted by the client without modification. The study demonstrated the utility of two research tactics proposed by other researchers on knowledge utilization, namely importing concepts from innovation research and looking for associations between variations in knowledge utilization and organizational characteristics.