Demographic Variables predicting Employees Willingness to share Tacit Knowledge in Service Occupations

Abstract

Review of literature on tacit knowledge sharing revealed a dearth of empirical research on the connection between demographic variables and willingness to share tacit knowledge. This study therefore extend tacit knowledge sharing literature by exploring the influence of age, gender, job tenure, and educational level on willingness to share tacit knowledge among 328 (nurses = 258; doctors = 70) health workers, whose ages averaged 32.35 (SD = 2.97). Results showed that willingness to share tacit knowledge increased with age. Employees with longer job tenure also reported high willingness to share tacit knowledge than employees with short job tenure. Moreover, female health workers were more willing to transfer tacit knowledge than male health workers. Moreover, willingness to share tacit knowledge increased as employees level of education increased. This suggests that management of service occupations may need to consider these demographic variables when designing knowledge management policy.

Keywords: demographic variables, tacit knowledge transfer, service occupation