Abstract: Tacit knowledge is an important asset of the organization. The successful transfer and absorption of tacit knowledge plays an important role in the success or failure of the project organization. Tacit knowledge transfer performance is affected by various factors, such as the proportion of transfer subjects, knowledge fuzziness, contact rate, learning willingness, and forgetting rate. Through analogy analysis of infectious disease transmission mechanism and project tacit knowledge transfer process, SIR model is introduced. Based on the type of project organization members and knowledge transfer process, an improved SIR model of project tacit knowledge transfer is established. The impact of various factors on knowledge transfer performance is simulated and analyzed. The law of tacit knowledge transfer is found by the simulation of various factors. The results show that knowledge fuzziness and forgetting rate have negative effects on knowledge transfer performance; the contact rate and learning intention of organizational members have positive effects on knowledge transfer performance, and those factors can effectively reduce the negative effect of other factors. Therefore, in order to promote the transfer of tacit knowledge, project organization should increase the ways of knowledge transmission and the number of knowledge learners, improve the indirect contact rate of members, reduce the rate of knowledge forgetting, and build a project-based learning project organization community.

Key words: tacit knowledge, knowledge transfer, SIR model