External Funding

In the upcoming years, many companies are at risk of losing knowledge under demographic change, as many older employees will retire and, consequently, leave companies. However, potential damage that might occur due to the loss of important knowledge could be controlled by amplifying intergenerational knowledge exchange, especially between young and experienced employees. In our project we want to detect age-related effects on intergenerational knowledge exchange in cooperation with Prof. Dr. Sven Voelpel (Jacobs University Bremen http://svenvoelpel.jacobs-university.de) by supervising research groups and integrating ideas of social network analysis into the process of analyzing different levels of the group (individual, dyad, and team level). The aim of this project is to illustrate opportunities to foster intergenerational knowledge exchange in organizations. To this end, we will examine individual differences, influences of the group, and theoretical explanatory approaches on the level of dyadic relationships in empirical studies. In a further step the differences regarding the exchange of knowledge will be related to the performance of employees and research groups. In summary, we intend to deliver a contribution to the analysis of knowledge exchange as well as empirically determined success factors for intergenerational knowledge exchange with this project.