thesis_Daniela Noethen_print final - Jacobs University

Intergenerational Knowledge Transfer in Work Teams: A Multilevel Social Network Perspective
where N is the group size and Γ is the Gamma function. A table of q values for different
group sizes can be found in Cureton (1968).
Team tenure was measured with one item, specifying years and months of affiliation with
the present team. The difference in team tenure for a dyad was then calculated in equivalence
to the age difference, subtracting the recipient’s team tenure from the source’s team tenure.
Knowledge transfer. In accordance with previous research, we measured knowledge transfer
as a frequency (Cummings, 2004; Kankanhalli et al., 2005). Following a round robin design
(Gleason & Halperin, 1975; Warner, Kenny, & Stoto, 1979) or sociometric technique with a
fixed roster (Reagans & McEvily, 2003; Wasserman & Faust, 1994), we supplied participants
with a coded list of the names of their team colleagues (information obtained from the
respective coordinating unit within the administration) and asked them how often they had a)
shared knowledge with and b) sought knowledge from each of their colleagues within the last
three months, rating the frequency on a five-point Likert scale ranging from “very seldom” to
“very often”. Answers in the survey were coded accordingly, so as to allow for assignment of
colleague ratings to the right source and recipient without including actual names in the
questionnaire. With this procedure, we obtained, for each dyad, information about four
processes; the frequency of the source sharing knowledge with the recipient, of the recipient
seeking knowledge from the source, the frequency of the recipient sharing knowledge with
the source, and of the source seeking knowledge from the recipient.
To receive an estimation of the frequency of transfer from a source to a recipient within a
dyad, two items, namely the source’s rating concerning the frequency of sharing knowledge
with the recipient, and the recipient’s rating concerning the frequency of seeking knowledge
from the source, were averaged. By averaging the subjective information from two sources,
we thus obtained a more objective measure of the dependent variable. The correlation
between the source’s and recipient’s rating reached 0.47. Similar to the calculation of an
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