Networking competence and its impact on the employability of knowledge workers

The mediating role of social informal learning in the relationship between learning climate and employability

Purpose

This study examines whether learning climate relates to employability competences through social informal learning (i.e. feedback, help and information seeking).

Design/methodology/approach

Multiple regression analyses and structural equation modeling were used to test direct and indirect effects in a sample of 372 employees working in two Dutch governmental institutes.

Findings

The analyses confirmed that learning climate has an indirect effect on employability competences through feedback, help and information seeking. More specifically, the findings suggest that learning climate is important for employees' engagement in proactive social informal learning activities. Engaging in these learning activities, in turn, relates to a higher level of employability.

Originality/value

This study employs an integrative approach to understanding employability by including the organization's learning climate and employees' social informal learning behavior. It contributes to the extant literature on professional development by unraveling how proactive social informal learning relates to employability competences. It also provides new insights on learning climate as a determinant for social informal learning and employability.

Social Facilitators of Specialist Knowledge Dispersion in the Digital Era

The digital revolution has triggered disproportions resulting from unequal access to knowledge and various related skills, because the constituting new civilization is based on specific, high-context, and personalized professional knowledge. In response to these dependencies, and in line with the sustainability paradigm, the issue of diffusion of knowledge, especially of the professional type, is of particular importance in eliminating the increasing digital inequalities. Therefore, the main challenge is to stimulate the free dispersion of intellectual workers’ knowledge. Their openness and commitment, devoid of opportunistic and knowledge-flow restraining attitudes, are prerequisites for the development of a sustainable society (synonymous with Civilization 5.0 or Humanity 5.0). The article endeavors to verify trust as the leading factor of effective specialist knowledge exchange. Its purpose is to analyze and diagnose the components, enablers, and types of trust that affect the diffusion of specific forms of professional knowledge in different groups of organizational stakeholders treated as knowledge agents. Systematic scientific literature analysis, expert evaluation, and structured questionnaires were used to develop and verify the hypotheses. Direct semistructured individual interviews, focus-group online interviews, computer-assisted telephone interviews, and computer-assisted web interviews were also applied in the paper. The research results confirmed the assumption that reliability-based trust, built on competence-based trust and reinforced by benevolence-based trust, is the foundation of the exchange of professional knowledge. It also supported the hypotheses that this process depends on the group of knowledge agents, the dominant form of trust, as well as its enhancers and types of exchanged knowledge. Conducted explorations constitute a theoretical and practical contribution to the subject of professional knowledge exchange. They fill the research gap regarding vehicles of trust as a factor of specialist knowledge diffusion and provide general, practical guidelines in terms of shaping individual components of competence-, benevolence-, and reliability-based trust due to the type of transferred knowledge and the group of knowledge agents involved in its circulation.

Tacit vs explicit knowledge as antecedents for organizational change

Purpose

The aim of this paper is to explore the dichotomous role of knowledge through an examination of tacit and explicit knowledge in organizational change contexts.

Design/methodology/approach

The study's aim is achieved by an analytical review of the seminal and contemporary knowledge management literature.

Findings

The paper contributes to the current body of knowledge management literature by analyzing a wide range of key literature and presenting a contemporary overview that compares the role of tacit and explicit knowledge within organizational change contexts.

Research limitations/implications

The findings contribute toward theoretical development in the knowledge management field by providing researchers with future research directions to build upon previous theoretical understandings and advance our collective knowledge of the research domain.

Practical implications

The paper offers practical and pragmatic insights that will help firm managers to use tacit and/or explicit knowledge to manage organizational change.

Originality/value

This article presents an original comparative table that summarizes and compares the key understandings and insights from across the literature sources on a range of important aspects, and then presents implications for the two knowledge typologies. The paper also presents an original research framework containing a structured database of related calls for research by the latest academic publications. Furthermore, it provides specific and informed managerial recommendations for best practice in the integration of these knowledge typologies into organizational change management.