The objective of this paper is the present the gaps in theories of knowledge transfer after intensive literature review in its related research domain. It starts from presenting the major researches on transfer of management systems and describes how the arguments were developed since the 1950s. Then the focus will be on the knowledge transfer discussions based on the strategic management and present the major gaps in previous studies. It was found that previous studies on knowledge transfer mainly discuss the dyadic transfer between the single organisations or departments. However, not many researches are focusing on knowledge transfer to an organisation community. This paper discusses that under certain circumstances, knowledge transfer to community may work better than the transfer to a single organisation.

This paper reviews prior empirical studies on the effect of product design on firm performance, by classifying them into three areas: (i) firm level, (ii) product level and (iii) design organization level. These studies support product design positively affects firm performance through the complex mechanism with mediation and/or interaction effects. These empirical results suggest further studies regarding (1) strategic context and product design process, (2) consumer cognition as mediation variables between design process and firm performance and (3) organizational mechanisms and key factors in design management.