Date of Conferral

2021

Degree

Ph.D.

School

Management

Advisor

Maja Zelihic

Abstract

Many tactical-echelon military unit training programs do not reach their stated objectives for growth in organizational skills and increased mission capability due to a less than complete understanding of how the training audience transfers the training program's new knowledge into operational processes. The subsequent squandering of valuable resources, such as time, people, and materials, limits the unit's ability to accomplish its assigned tasks and overall mission. Cohen and Levinthal’s absorptive capacity theory describes how organizations transfer new knowledge. Their theory is applied here to better understand how soldiers in tactical-echelon military units perceive the transfer of knowledge from external sources. The dependent variables were absorptive capacity's four components, acquisition, transference, assimilation, and exploitation, and the independent variable was U.S. Army military rank, with two subsets, officers, and enlisted soldiers. Recruited through personal connections and online survey source, the 401, who were a combination of reserve and national guard soldiers, participated in the study. A MANCOVA was used for data analysis. The results of the study indicated that military rank did not significantly impact the perception of the dependent variables, acquisition, transference, assimilation, and exploitation. An increased understanding of the variables affecting knowledge transfer in military units would benefit the soldier’s task performance. The improved task performance would then manifest itself in overall mission performance supporting civil governance, protecting civil rights, upholding democracy worldwide, and will greatly reinforce positive social change.

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