Impact of age differences on knowledge transfer in work teams

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Torsten Biemann; Professor Dr. Sven Voelpel
• Subject Area: Accounting and Finance
• Term: from 2011 to 2015
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 200443012

With the demographic change and the imminent waves of retirement, a threat of knowledge loss for organizations becomes more and more apparent. One means of prevention is an increased intergenerational knowledge transfer from older to younger employees. By integrating ideas from social network analysis in a multilevel framework, we aim at analyzing the effect of age and age differences on the transfer of knowledge between individuals in work groups. We plan to empirically investigate age effects at three different levels of analysis; an effect of age difference at the dyadic, of age at the individual, and of age diversity at the team level. Our research model allows for disentangling effects at these three levels and, thereby, testing assumptions derived from theories and theoretical approaches at the dyadic level (i.e. social exchange theory, similarity attraction, and tournament theory), individual level (i.e. expectancy theory and future time perspective), and team level (i.e. economic exchange theory and age climate). In addition, we intend to analyze the long-term effects of knowledge sharing on individual and team performance. In summary, we aim to contribute to the literature on knowledge transfer by applying a finer-grained theoretical framework and empirically assess effects of age on knowledge exchange within this framework.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants