Abstract:  Control, as a kind of goal-oriented regulation process, has a potential impact on knowledge transfer. However, there exists little empirical researches concerning the different impacts of different control modes and absorptive capabilities on explicit and tacit knowledge transfer and the contributions of these two kinds of knowledge transfer to performance. Based on a survey on offshore IT outsourcing, this paper reveals that formal control plays a more important role in knowledge transfer, especially explicit knowledge transfer, than informal control. Moreover, tackit knowledge transfer relys more heavily on absorptive capabilites, and explicit knowledge transfer contributes significantly to tacit knowledge transfer. Lastly, compared with the significant impact of formal control, the contribution of knowledge transfer to offshore IT outsourcing performance is not significant.

Key words: knowledge transfer, control, absorptive capabilities, IT offshore outsourcing, performance