Practical dimensions of knowledge transfer in the diverse modern labour market – a research-based discussion

Abstract

Nowadays knowledge has clearly gained the attribute of domination and has been widely recognized as the one from intangible resources, which has great importance for shaping competitive advantage. Knowledge, therefore, has become a new foundation of organisations’ well-being, and in the future the property will be the ability to gain control over knowledge. At present, we are pointing to a new dimension of social inequalities, the base of which is access to knowledge. Therefore, one of the ways of bridging these inequalities can be the conscious and controlled shaping of knowledge transfer between groups of knowledge agents, representing diverse, often overlapping, social and organizational categories. The study has a theoretical-empirical character. Its purpose is to synthesize a work on literature devoted to the transfer of knowledge and to indicate the dimensions of this process in view of the existing diversity in the labour market. The aim of the empirical part is to check in which groups of knowledge agents and by using which instruments, which sub-processes of knowledge transfer are implemented. The general research hypothesis is the assumption that the course of the knowledge transfer process depends on which groups of knowledge agents it concerns. It caused the emergence of detailed hypotheses and specific research questions. In order to find answers to these, the method of critical analysis and empirical research, based on a questionnaire based on in-depth interviews, was used. The results obtained from empirical research prove that sharing knowledge is the domain of professionalists and the dimension of the intergenerational exchange of knowledge. Acquiring knowledge is most often carried out at the level of specialists’ relations with other employees and between generations. Sharing knowledge is the domain of specialists and is usually and most often performed during their contacts with other employees. Dissemination of knowledge, in turn, is the chief subprocess of the hierarchical dimension of knowledge transfer.