thesis_Daniela Noethen_print final - Jacobs University

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knowledge transfer between employees as a means to prevent knowledge loss. To this end, I wanted to investigate the following questions: • How can knowledge transfer be encouraged and impaired? • Beyond general knowledge transfer, what about intergenerational knowledge transfer? • Can day-to-day knowledge transfer really be an adequate pathway to the prevention of knowledge loss? In the following, I will evaluate, one by one, the answers obtained to the above questions before taking a broader perspective and discussing the attainment of the broader objective of this dissertation. 5.3.1. Encouraging and impairing knowledge transfer In paper one, I gave a brief review of the literature on predictors of knowledge transfer, concluding with the statement that a clear understanding of the underlying pattern of influencing factors is still missing, and that some of the results found in the extant literature are actually contradictory or inconclusive. Therefore, I slightly modified the original research question from “what are the most important influencing factors?” to “why do we not know about them so far?”, and looked for measures that could be taken to lead to clearer results in the future. The resulting two distinctions have been amply discussed (see chapter two, and section 5.1.2.). And although I have contributed to the literature on predictor variables by adding new explanatory factors (age, autonomy at the individual level) and consolidating existing ones (intrinsic motivation, perceived supervisor support), the original research question remains unsatisfactorily answered. What is missing here and should be done in the future is a meta-analysis on predictors of individual level knowledge transfer (of course, 184
employing the distinctions recommended in paper one), similar to the one that has been conducted by van Wijk and colleagues (2008) for the business unit and organizational level. 5.3.2. Intergenerational knowledge transfer What led me to investigate intergenerational knowledge transfer was rather a fuzzy interest than a clear research question. The issue of age effects at different levels arose from the results of the first study, but it would have been equally interesting to investigate if predictors of intergenerational knowledge transfer differ from those of “general” knowledge transfer, how knowledge transfer from older to younger employees differs from transfer in the opposite direction etc. As there is, so far, very few theoretical and basically no empirical literature on this topic, there of course remain many questions to be answered with respect to the construct of intergenerational knowledge transfer. One of the many possible questions that can be posed, I did answer, namely, “is more knowledge shared when the age difference between source and recipient is larger.” But I would like to answer many more in future research. 5.3.3. Day-to-day knowledge transfer as a pathway to prevention of knowledge loss For this question to be answered, a sound measurement of knowledge loss would be necessary. Although first attempts have been made (Massingham, 2008), a lot of work still needs to be done to obtain such a measurement. Thus, I opted to indirectly address the threat of knowledge loss by looking at a situation in which such a threat would be present: when employees expect or intend to leave their organization. Thus, instead of looking at the influence of knowledge transfer on knowledge loss, I investigated the question of what happens to knowledge transfer with colleagues in situations that might bear the risk of knowledge being lost for the organization. Of course, by applying this twist, the original research question cannot be fully answered. 185
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Knowledge Transfer in Teams and Its
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Table of Contents Contents Acknowle
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Acknowledgements Acknowledgements T
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Acknowledgements Last but not least
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General Introduction and of older w
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General Introduction in the smooth
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Outline Outline The core of the pre
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Outline on knowledge sharing, as we
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Knowledge, Knowledge Management, an
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Multilevel Investigation of Anteced
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Intergenerational Knowledge Transfe
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