Designing For Knowledge Worker Retention & Organization Performance

This paper illuminates significant relationships between three major Knowledge Management (KM) design dimensions and the perceived ability of 150 organizations to retain their knowledge workers. Knowledge worker retention is a critical challenge for today's organizations as they face increasing global competition with its demands for even more such workers, while dramatically shifting workforce demographics hasten their exit. KM design initiatives that accelerate knowledge creation, acquisition, and particularly knowledge capture, sharing and retention, are receiving unprecedented levels of investment as a result. While many factors impact organization financial performance, this research indicates that successful knowledge worker retention is significantly related with higher reported financial performance. The implications of these results are noted.