Christine Tamásy, Vechta, Christina Stringer and Richard Le Heron, Auckland, New Zealand: Knowledge Transfer in a Globalising World Economy: Fonterra’s Management of its Mobile Work Force

Surprisingly little is known about the mobility of knowledge and expertise in multi-national enterprises. The paper has two aims; first it explores, using framings from economic geography, existing understandings of the spatiality of knowledge mobility in globalising firm networks, and second, it reports on an empirical study of flows of expertise in Fonterra Co-operative Ltd, a multi-national dairy giant headquartered in Auckland, New Zealand. The conceptual section of the paper discusses the generation, acquisition and transfer of implicit (‘tacit’) knowledge though the mobility of key personnel. We argue that the mobility of workers enables the spread of tacit knowledge in intra- and inter-firm networks, because organisational and relational proximity is integral to the transmission of difficult to communicate knowledge. The qualitative investigation of Fonterra outlines the conditions, practices and outcomes of knowledge management in this global organisation, which operates in both neo-liberalising and highly protected regulatory environments. Finally, implications for theory and practice are discussed.

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