thesis_Daniela Noethen_print final - Jacobs University

Preventing Knowledge Loss When Employees Expect to Leave
4. Preventing Knowledge Loss When Employees Expect to Leave:
Effects of Expected Turnover on Knowledge Transfer and Interactions with
Perceived Supervisor Support 5
This is the last of the three empirical chapters of the present dissertation. With this paper, I
shift the focus from predictors of knowledge transfer to knowledge transfer in situations that
bear a threat of knowledge loss for the organization. More specifically, I am looking at
situations in which employees expect or intend to leave the organization. Ideally, this would
be situations in which the employees’ knowledge is safeguarded against loss by increased
knowledge transfer to other employees, but there is good reason to belief that employees in
such situations are less inclined to share their knowledge with colleagues. Thus, with this
paper, I examine if knowledge transfer in such situations is actually a preferable prevention
strategy.
4.1. Abstract
The prevention of knowledge loss is a pressing issue in the era of the knowledge-based view
of the firm (Grant, 1996, 1997), not only because of the large cohort of baby boomers now
starting to retire, but also because turnover rates among the younger generations are on the
rise. Increased knowledge sharing can be one strategy to counteract organizational or group
knowledge loss prior to employees’ turnover. However, knowledge sharing is a discretionary
behavior which can be encouraged, but hardly demanded of employees intending or expecting
to leave the organization. The objective of the present work was to investigate the effects of
voluntary turnover intention and expected involuntary turnover on employees’ knowledge
sharing within teams, as well as to examine a buffering effect of perceived supervisor support
5 I thank Torsten Biemann and Sven Voelpel, who will be co-authoring this paper upon publication,
for their input and collaboration.
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