Intergenerational Knowledge Transfer in the Workplace: a Sociologcial Perspective

With the rise of knowledge economy, knowledge has become an important strategic organizational capital. Knowledge transfer has been considered as the basis of organizational competitive advantage, and related theories and practices flourish. Meanwhile, age diversity may be the most conflict-ridden diversity issue of the early 21st century. In recent years, intergenerational knowledge transfer has aroused the concern of edge organizations, which roots from baby boom generation retirement, especially in aerospace community. Intergenerational knowledge transfer is complex and important for organization sustainability, but many areas remain uninvestigated. The author's extensive domestic and foreign literature review shows that, while knowledge transfer is an active field, few papers have discussed intergenerational knowledge transfer from sociological perspective. Meanwhile, in the existing literature of intergenerational knowledge transfer, some studies focus on characteristics such as tacitness and other empirical research has focused on generational differences. However research on the basic questions, such as definition, characteristics, analysis framework and transfer mechanism are still in the exploratory stage, the common awareness has not yet formed, and there are many gaps in the field. In this paper, the authors: (1) review existing research on intergenerational knowledge transfer, summarize the existing research findings and search a new direction of the field; (2) provide an analysis framework for intergenerational knowledge transfer from properties and factors dimension, including knowledge, characteristic of generations, intergenerational relationships and knowledge transfer mechanism; (3) review the definition of intergenerational knowledge transfer from a sociological perspective and define it as the communicative process of knowledge from a generation so that it is learned and applied by another generation; (4) compare the differences between generational knowledge transfer and intergenerational knowledge transfer in terms of type, content, mode, and mechanism.