 In this topic, we are going to discuss about transferability of knowledge across national borders. This topic particularly discusses the possibility of transfer of knowledge across national borders. So, this is a discussion about those factors which affect the transferability across national borders. So, the important point which an important dimension which affects this transferability is the psychic distance. Psychic distance before defining psychic distance, let us first of all talk about what contributes towards psychic distance. Appropriate knowledge in one country may not suit the needs of firm in other countries because of the culture, the social values, because of the context, the knowledge which is useful and effective in one place, it may not be suiting the needs in other countries. So, factors such as different language, business culture and institutional framework make up as a psychic distance which is perceived by the managers. So, psychic distance is something which is the perception which is perception of people working in these organizations. So, if the language is different, psychic distance is going to be high. If the institutional frameworks are different, for example, if in one country the institutions are more bureaucratic, in other countries the institutions are more participative, then the psychic distance is going to be different. And then definitely the business culture, if the business culture is business oriented, professionally it is business oriented, then at another place, if the business culture is more of a collective culture, is more of a culture in which the professional norms are not really held very strictly, then it is going, the psychic distance is going to be high. So, a clash between national cultures may jeopardize the international transfer of knowledge. So, the more psychic distance is there, the more difficult it would be for knowledge to be transferred internationally. So, the knowledge which is being transferred, it may need to be changed, adapted, adopted according to the different context, and evaluating what are the differences between one culture and the other and how much is the psychic distance between one culture and the other. According to that, the knowledge has to be transferred and the human resource managers, they need to take care of this thing that how much is the psychic distance while trying to transfer knowledge from one place to the other. Geographical proximity and cultural affinity, both of these two things, they affect knowledge transfer between countries and organizations. So, one is geographical proximity. So, the countries that are close to each other, it is easy to transfer knowledge there. Because of being close to each other, there are a lot of factors that match your environment, it matches, the terrain matches, your culture is obviously, the national borders are human borders. Your cultural borders vary in some places, not in some places. So, if the geographical proximity that countries are close to each other, the knowledge transfer there is an easy task, instead of where geographically located, who are far located from each other over there, the knowledge transfer is something which is difficult to do. And then cultural affinity, cultural affinity means cultural similarity, cultural harmony. So, it is possible that two countries, they are geographically located alongside each other, but they are culturally different because of some factors which affect the culture of that place. So, both these things, geographical proximity and cultural affinity, they would affect the knowledge transfer in these organizations. Theoretically, it is said that to transfer any knowledge from one place to another, it is necessary that cultural affinity and geographical proximity should be there. But when we look at the history of mankind, we see that knowledge is like, it is like cross-fertilization of ideas. So, from one place, cross-fertilization is in plants, that Poland flies from one place to another, and from a very far place, it is fertilized, and the plants develop, they get fertile ground, so they start growing there. It has the same qualities. It cross-fertilizes from at great distances because it is something which makes the human mind curious to know about different things from different areas of the world. So, we have seen that nations have always been learning from one another. We keep on learning from nations which are existing at the same cross-section of time, and we keep on learning from nations from historical perspective as well. And we have always seen that rising civilizations, they have spread knowledge to other parts of the world. So, whichever civilization has been rising in a particular part of the world, the knowledge which was developed by that civilization has spread to all over the world. So, we see that the Persian civilization which was before Christ, and then the Greek and Roman civilization which was around the Christ era, then the Islamic civilization when Islam spread in the world civilization, and the knowledge that was created by the Islamic scholars that also was spread all around the world. And then finally, renaissance of the European countries, and then the British colonialism that spread a lot of knowledge all across the world. So, British Empire, it spread its knowledge and knowledge in the form of technology, knowledge in the form of organizational structures. So, this is this transferability of knowledge from one place to the other. Now, the UK is 7,000 miles away from us, but despite that, their culture, their systems, their traditions, they still see us in our culture. So, knowledge transferability, it takes place from civilizations that are rising on the globe. What contributes nations can learn, but in some context, extent to which non-homegrown practices can be adopted is limited. But it is something which is happening at a very fast pace, and it is something which goes against the theory that non-homegrown strategies cannot be adopted as we are adopting all the business strategies that are developed in the American context. National culture and other societal institutions can enhance or diminish countries' ability to aware knowledge from other nations. And for that particular thing, we look at the example of India versus Japan. Although they have a similar kind of culture, both have collectivist cultures, but collectivist cultures have more qualities and dimensions, where Indian and Japanese cultures differ. Japanese culture is a societal mix of harmonious industrial relations, highly educated and skilled workforce, relative cultural homogeneity, and a sense of collective identity. So, these are the things which are characteristic of the Japanese culture. They have harmonious and homogeneous culture. Whereas in Japan, it helps the managers to develop management practices, such as flexible working arrangements, quality circles, and collective decision making. So, it is very much easy to establish these quality circles which are based on teamwork. It is as easy to establish flexible working conditions because people are conscious about what they need to do and they do it collectively. But when we look at India, India has also got a collectivist culture, but it differs in its collectivism on the basis of how collectivism is applied to various different strata of the society. So, in India, there is confrontational industrial relations, there is cultural heterogeneity. In addition to the other division of ethnicities, then inter-communal hatred and conflicts, you know that very well, rigid caste system, corruption in certain quarters, and massive poverty and a high rate of illiteracy, especially among manual workers. So, because of all these factors, although India also has a collectivist culture, but it is very difficult to replicate and establish the management practices which are so flourishing in Japan, which are so successful in Japan, it is because of this kind of culture in India, heterogeneous culture, non-harmonious culture, conflict-oriented culture, the practices of flexible working hours, of quality circles, of teamwork, of collaborative decision making, all of these practices cannot be established and managers' ability to establish these kind of practices, management practices in organization is, it diminishes because the culture over there is not congenial, it is not helpful to absorb these kind of management practices. So, these are kind of almost impossible to implement. So, that is how the national cultures of different countries, they can affect the transferability of organizational knowledge, which is management practices are also part of the organizational knowledge. So, it is difficult to transfer such kind of knowledge from one culture to the other because of their differences in culture. So, cultural affinity and geographical proximity are two important things which affect the transferability of knowledge within different national borders.