thesis_Daniela Noethen_print final - Jacobs University

Preventing Knowledge Loss When Employees Expect to Leave
might have looked different had we collected at a company sample, or had we conducted the
study in a different cultural context.
Furthermore, the study had a cross-sectional design, which also entails certain limitations.
First, we cannot draw any conclusions about the direction of effects found. It might well be
that the negative relationship between expected involuntary turnover and knowledge sharing
runs contrary to what we proposed; possibly, those employees who do not share much
knowledge, e.g., because they are not very good performers and not very knowledgeable, are
those whose contracts are not prolonged, who are fired, or released into retirement earlier than
others, and those who are excellent performers and have a lot to share are the ones looking for
new challenges outside the organization. Furthermore, what we interpret as a buffering effect
of PSS might be explained likewise: those who do perform well and have valuable knowledge
to share, but are still forced to leave the organization, e.g., because there is no money to
continue their contracts, might receive supervisor support to share their knowledge with
colleagues. An alternative explanation was suggested by Chen and colleagues (1998) for the
negative relationship between turnover intention and OCB; the authors perceived turnover
intention to be the attitudinal, and a reduction in OCB the behavioral indication of a third
variable, namely withdrawal. Similarly, it is possible that expected involuntary turnover and
knowledge sharing are influenced by a third variable, and thus coincide as a consequence of
another factor. This should be further investigated in longitudinal studies that additionally
collect data on potential third variables, such as performance or job satisfaction.
Moreover, collecting data at only one point in time meant having to decide on a fixed
time frame for past knowledge sharing and intended / expected turnover in the future. We
decided to measure knowledge sharing within the past three month, and compared it to the
expectation to leave the organization within the next year. As we do not know at which point
in time employees intending or expecting to leave start to withdraw from their job, the time
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