The influence of age on the adoption of knowledge management practices

In: nurturing knowledge behavior| research results

11 May 2009

Introduction

generationgap “Baby boomers,” “Gen Xers,” the “me generation,” “Generation C” -our societies are fond of labeling different age groups as if to suggest that each group is quite different from the others.

It is interesting to see the differences among age groups with regard to knowledge management.

When it comes to technology adoption decisions, age, in fact, matters. Younger people where faster, more effective and more efficient in technology adoption (Morris and Venkatech, 2000). And having to use and learn new technology and processes are often the most visible changes that come into peoples lives when there organization adopts a knowledge management strategy and practice.

Another research found a perceived resistance to training among older workers (except very high skilled) by interviewing HR-officers. And since adopting a knowledge management strategy automatically means change management and training, this might be of influence.

Results from the Research

Our research “The Human Factor in Knowledge Processes” divided the participants into 10 periods of five years. The comparison between these age groups showed some interesting results.
[For the research demographics click here]

age-and-behavior-in-knowledge-processes

The frequency of seeking knowledge inside the organizations slowly increases over age, but then there are significant drops in the final age category (60-64). The most experienced people seem to search less for information within their own organization. This is also the case for searching for knowledge outside the organization, though the effect is less strong.

mirrors_main Looking at the graph, age shows a small positive tendency when it comes to reflection: the older one is, the more reflection seems to take place. However, one seems to be less likely to actually formulate and share those lessons within the organization. This is important: one of the most important sources of knowledge for the organizations from which the participants in the research came from, namely the most senior staff with the most experience, indicates to contribute the least when it comes to disseminate this knowledge effectively through technology. They are the ones that will leave the organization to retire, but with them an enormous amount of knowledge also leaves. Of course it is impossible to capture all experience into words, but the formulated lessons that are learned throughout one’s career and by working for your organization, might be an important knowledge source for your employees.

Actively sharing and discussing lessons learned with other organizations also decreased for the last age group, and so did the participation in CoPs.

Here is were the technical adoption probably plays a role. In the research older people perceived the organizational technology and processes to share and store knowledge as more difficult and had more doubts about their usefulness.

Interestingly enough, according to the research results, this was not due to their motivation. And all age groups think the knowledge practices are good, and that they are valuable for themselves and the organization. The intention to be active in these terrains keeps on increasing over age. So they want to formulate lessons and share experiences on CoPs, but in the end they don’t. This indicates that there are other factors influencing the actual behavior.

There is no one golden solution, except for tailoring change individually. In our research time pressure, perceived system difficulty and trust in the organizational processes stood out as possible important issues that may play a role in the decreased activity. Older people indicated more issues. Most of them can be effectively addressed and adhered upon by (knowledge) managers and leadership. But these factors differ from situation to situation, and person to person.

Conclusion

In the research there was a tendency for the age group ranging from 60 to 64 to contribute less to organizational repositories and online discussions. The group with the largest work experience does share face-to-face, but is less active in formulating lessons and using online tools to share knowledge.

These findings have important implications for the process by which knowledge management technology should be developed, introduced, and managed within organizations. Understanding specifically who the user is can have an important influence on a given technology’s acceptability to that user. Only by understanding the underlying drivers of individual technology acceptance and usage decisions can organizations effectively deliver appropriate support mechanisms designed to help the user perform his or her job (Morris and Venkatech, 2000).

To use all knowledge in your organizations effectively, design and implementation of your knowledge management technology and processes should be carefully adapted to the individual, with special attention given to your organization’s senior staff.

Sources:
- Morris, M.G. and Venkatesh, V. “Age Differences in Technology Adoption Decisions: Implications for a Changing Workforce,” Personnel Psychology, 53, 2000, 375-403.

10 Responses to The influence of age on the adoption of knowledge management practices

Barbara Fillip

May 12th, 2009 at 11:00

This research area is very important in the current context. We have many organizations where the average age is 45-50, struggling to hire young people. To attract young people (among other reasons), these organizations invest in social media. Yet there is little thought put into why and how those in the 45-65 age range are going to share their knowledge with the 20-something folks that are coming in. Are the more experienced workers expected to pick up social media to facilitate knowledge transfer across generations? Would they rather be a mentor to younger employees and share their knowledge face-to-face?

Johan Lammers [weknowmore.org]

May 12th, 2009 at 12:00

Dear Barbara,

Thank you for your reaction. You have formulated two enormously relevant questions. It would depend on the organization and to what extent they have the adoption of new social media integrated into their strategies.

All organizations should ask themselves important questions:
- Why do we want our staff to be active in social media tools?
- How relevant are they in working towards our mission and vision?
- And which are most effective in the specific context of the organization, and thus worth it to implement for the whole staff?

There is a range of social media tools out there. Would you want to have your older staff using Twitter? Or have them social bookmarking? Maybe this is less interesting then to have them blogging and contributing to the organization’s repository (by formulating lessons from for instance After Action Reviews). If it is only to attract young people, why would an organization make their older staff to use these same tools? ‘Blind’ adoption, implementation and steering of processes that are not always perceived as being effective can lead to resistance and frustration.

Mentoring is however the most effective knowledge transfer method when it comes to impact and depth. It can make tacit knowledge to become more tangible and tailored to specific situations, so it can be more easily grasped by the younger employees. In other words, it can prove to be more beneficial to have the knowledge sharing structured through such processes than through at least some forms of social media. However this is an individual-to-individual approach, and when the older employee leaves the organization this process usually stops. BY having your older staff contribute effectively to your organization’s repository more people benefit over a longer period of time. So it is worth examining how to stimulate them to do so.

More research is needed towards answering these questions and remarks in general, but in the end the people of your organization have their own preferences. Start a dialogue, be aware of these preferences, and steer towards them where ever possible normally proves most beneficial.

Elma Doeleman

May 12th, 2009 at 12:39

Another factor that may influence knowledge sharing by senior staff is they may feel threatened to be overrun by their younger colleagues who bring in other skills adapted to modern technology. This could be an argument for stimulating them to indeed get into Twittering or social bookmarking, learning this from their younger colleagues, by way of exchange of knowledge and skills, reducing the fear of becoming redundant and more important: experiencing the fun of the new technics.

Johan Lammers [weknowmore.org]

May 12th, 2009 at 13:23

Dear Elma,

Thank you for your comment, and I must say I totally agree. Especially stressing the fun of it, combined with the fact that it leads to positive outcomes like knowledge sharing, is an interesting approach.

Fun can prove to be a very important motivator in change processes, since it reduces initial fear. And if a few of your senior staff are active, following the social impact theory (see other post), it might lead the others to taking similar steps.

Nick Milton

May 12th, 2009 at 14:11

Looking at your graph, I can see no significant difference at all with age, with the exception of your last age bracket – the over 60s. In all other ages, I would say there seems to be no relationship between age and sharing behaviour. You say “significant drops in the last TWO age categories, and yet the 55-59 year old’s score higher than the 35-39 years old’s in many categories.

Lets look at the TOTAL score for the categories (I have had to try to estimate the scores from the graph)

20-24, 25.5
25-29, 24.88
30-34, 23.95
35-39, 25.4
40-44, 25.55
45-49, 24.9
50-54, 25.85
55-59, 24.5
60-64, 21.9

Now, take away the last point, and show me a trend! All figures are within +/- 5% or so. To me, your data shows there is no statistically significant age trend when it comes to knowledge seeking and sharing, the only exception being the oldest age group. I would want to know more about this older sample set before judging whether their result is significant

Your demographics, for example, show there are only 4 people in the youngest category, and only 10 in the oldest, so both of these points must some with much larger error bars

Johan Lammers [weknowmore.org]

May 12th, 2009 at 15:49

Dear Nick,

Thank you for your knowledgeable reaction. Reactions before and this one lead me to believe that using a blog with comments to react on all elements of the research results, leads to a better outcome in the end. So thank you for that.

Careful re-analysis of the results, following your points of attention, lead me to correct some of the results, and change this as such within the post. We wrongly included the category 55-59 into the significant results. However, the effect for the oldest age group is still there, which keeps the main message of this article relevant.

All processes should be adhered to when you want your knowledge management to be most effective. So we thought about taking them together in the analysis. However, we decided not to do so, because they are so different from nature and have different goals and effects. Internal knowledge sharing is not the same as sharing experiences within peer groups. Having your employees formulating lessons learned lead to other results than pure personal reflections. This makes an individual analysis of all knowledge management practices most relevant here.

About the demographics, this new analysis was based on a larger sample than presented in the earlier post. We are sorry for this inconvenience. The research was still running, when those first posts were done. They we’re already presented to give a first overview on which people participated, but we used the newest data to do the analysis. We planned and still intent to do a demographic update coming weekend (re-editing costs some time and we did not yet get to that), since it did not change the general picture. It did have however an effect on the total number of participants. This analysis was based on a sample of 479 participants, not 392.

In the presented demographics the total amount of the last age category was 12. The graph presents this a little bit distorted. The used sample of the oldest age group was 19, making it a meaningful amount to incorporate it into the study.

Finally, some of the differences are not big, but we are specifically focused at the relations between variables, not so much in their amount or in their concrete frequencies. These are often clouded by social desirability bias, and from a score ranging from 1-7 figures are never big.

Therefore we are also interested in small effects or visual tendencies. They might not always pass all scientific tests, but might still be of practical use in the real world. Using our research results to contribute to real-life policies and practices is our main objective. But we will always follow the principles of our Research Philosophy, making ethical and meaningful analysis of all our data.

Nick Milton

May 13th, 2009 at 13:10

Thanks for the reply Johan, and for the information on the demographics. Do you intend to publish the raw data? It would be interesting to look at some of these relationships in more detail.

Johan Lammers [weknowmore.org]

May 13th, 2009 at 14:26

Dear Nick,

We will publish all raw data when we have finished our own analysis of this research. Since this is a huge amount of data, it might take some time before we get to that point, but this data will be freely published. This is in line with our open access/open research approach. Everybody can use this data set, as long as we are mentioned as the source.

Nick Milton

May 14th, 2009 at 20:57

Thanks, that will be very useful.

I would personally be interested in looking at the standard errors of the mean figures, to see if there really is any relationship or whether the variations seen on the graph could be purely random. I would also like to understand the nature of the over 60s data set, which is the set that stands out as anomalous.