Formal control, social control and their complement to knowledge transfer: From the buyer's perspective

Previous studies discussed knowledge transfer between two cooperation parties with control mechanism. But few argue the role of formal control, social control and their complement to knowledge transfer together. In this paper, we develop and test the role of the three factors together. Using the data collected from China Mobile, we find the empirical supports for our hypotheses. The results show that formal control is positively related to knowledge transfer, and social control is also positively related to knowledge transfer. In addition, there is a complement effect between formal control and social control to knowledge transfer.