The roles of boundary spanners and mentalizing skills in alliance Learning and knowledge transfer

Although there is growing awareness of the significance of learning and knowledge transfer in inter-firm collaboration, most studies have been at the firm or firm-to-firm level; few have investigated individual-level effects on learning and knowledge transfer. There is thus a gap in the literature on our understanding of micro-level issues. The individuals who are responsible for the day-to-day management of inter-firm collaboration are often referred to as boundary spanners. In this paper, we emphasize boundary spanners’ actions and interactions in learning and knowledge transfer between firms, and draw on theory of mind, particularly the concept of mentalizing skills. In this paper, we develop a conceptual framework that examines the role of boundary spanners’ mentalizing skills, and posit a set of propositions that suggest how differences in mentalizing skills among boundary spanners may influence a firm’s ability to reveal the true intentions of its partner, identify the partner’s ability to absorb new knowledge, and implement specific behaviors that will facilitate learning and knowledge transfer.