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Successful knowledge transfer (KT) between younger and older workers (YW and OW, respectively) is critical for organizational success, especially in light of the recent surge in employment volatility among the youngest and oldest segments of the workforce. Yet, practitioners and scholars alike continue to struggle with knowing how best to facilitate these exchanges. The qualitative study offers insight into this phenomenon by exploring how KT unfolds in YW/OW dyads.

The authors performed a reflexive thematic analysis of semistructured interviews with two samples of blue- and white-collar younger/older workers from the USA (N = 40), whereby the authors interpreted the “lived experiences” of these workers when engaged in interdependent tasks.

The analysis, informed by social exchange theory and exchange theories of aging, led to the development of the knowledge transfer process model in younger/older worker dyads (KT-YOD). The model illustrates that, through different combinations of competence and humility, KT success is experienced either directly (by workers weighing the perceived benefits versus costs of KT) and/or indirectly (through different bases of trust/distrust perceived within their dyads). Further, humility in dyads appears to be necessary for KT success, while competence was insufficient for realizing KT success, independently.

In exposing new inner workings of the KT process in YW/OW dyads, the study introduces the importance of humility and brings scholars and organizations a step closer toward realizing the benefits of age diversity in their workplaces.

The purpose of this paper is using competing hypotheses (a spillover hypothesis, based on Engagement Theory, and a provisioning hypothesis, based on Adaptive Cost Theory) to help explain why employees become disengaged from knowledge sharing.

Employed knowledge workers completed an online questionnaire regarding their job characteristics, their general health and wellness, perceived organizational support, job engagement and disengagement from knowledge sharing.

The findings provide empirical support for Adaptive Cost Theory and illustrate the relationship between Engagement Theory and the Disengagement from Knowledge Sharing. In particular, this research illustrates the importance of health and wellness for preventing disengagement from knowledge sharing. In addition, the findings introduce a new finding of tensions between job engagement and knowledge sharing, which supports knowledge workers’ complaints of “being too busy” to share.

This study uses cross-sectional methodology; however, the participants are employed and in the field. Given the theoretical arguments that disengagement from knowledge sharing should be either short term or transient, future research should follow-up with diary methods to capture this to confirm the study’s conclusions.

The findings of this study provide some insight for practitioners on how to prevent disengagement from knowledge sharing. New predictors and an interesting tension between job engagement and knowledge sharing are identified.

This study examines an alternative explanation for the lack of knowledge sharing in organizations, and uses competing theories to identify the reasons for the disengagement from knowledge sharing.

This paper to examine full knowledge sharing (KS) and partial KS in order to test the proposition that they are separate behaviors with different characteristics, risks, and motivations for the informer and subsequently different predictors.

Employed knowledge workers completed two questionnaires over a two‐week period regarding their attitudes, situational factors, individual differences, and KS behaviors with their close colleagues in their workplace.

Results support the proposition that they are different albeit related behaviors. Full KS is enabled by intentions for full KS. Partial KS is enabled by the uniqueness of the knowledge, interpersonal distrust of close colleagues, and inhibited by perceived value of knowledge. Management support, interpersonal trust and distrust enable intentions for both full and partial KS, then propensity to share further enables full KS, and psychological ownership further enables intentions for partial KS.

The findings from the study suggest that researchers should specify which sharing behavior they are examining (full or partial). Future research should also examine the outcomes of these two behaviors to see whether the assumed benefits of sharing knowledge apply to both of them.

The findings of the study provide some insight for practitioners on what motivates full versus partial KS.

The study challenges the assumption that KS is a single behavior, and starts to parse out the complexities within the KS literature with respect to predictors of actual KS behaviors.

Using the stressor‐strain model and media richness theory, this study seeks to investigate the relationship between receiving a harassing message via computer‐mediated communication and psychological health.

A sample of 492 individuals completed an online questionnaire. Three media characteristics are examined as potential moderators: media richness, anonymity of the harasser, and location where the victim received the harassing message.

The results suggest that virtual harassment is associated with diminished psychological health (both directly and mediated by fear of future harassment), and each media characteristic plays a role in understanding the level of fear of future harassment. Anonymity and location moderate the mediator's (fear) role in the stressor‐strain model.

This research addresses the need for explicit testing of the differentiating factors of various forms of workplace aggression as moderators. Specifically, media characteristics are relevant in the psychological experience of virtual harassment.

Virtual harassment appears to occur more frequently than face‐to‐face harassment, and often the two forms co‐occur. Implications for EAP counselors, computer usage and harassment policies are discussed.

This study is the first to examine how media richness, anonymity and location of harassing message impacts the individual outcomes of workplace non‐sexual virtual harassment. The results indicate that, while related to face‐to‐face harassment, virtual harassment appears to have more nuanced considerations for both practitioners and researchers.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how job engagement affects the experience of workplace aggression and the related outcomes. Job engagement is introduced as a context variable for the stressor-strain model to explain differences for targets of workplace aggression.

A survey was conducted with a sample of 492 North American working adults from a large variety of industries and jobs.

Consistent with the hypotheses, fear and anger mediate the relationship between workplace aggression and strain. Job engagement moderated the relationship between workplace aggression and anger, such that aggression related to anger only for those employees who were engaged in their job. These data are consistent with the suggestion that engagement may create vulnerability for employees.

In this study, the authors highlight the need to include contextual factors that may explain differences in impact of workplace aggression and employee wellness.

While practitioners may seek to increase job engagement, there appears to be a greater cost should there be workplace aggression. Thus, the key implication for practitioners is the importance of prevention of workplace aggression.

With this study, the authors illustrate how job engagement may have a “dark side” for individuals. While previous research has shown that job engagement helps protect employee wellness, others show engagement decreases after incidents of workplace aggression. The authors suggest those who are engaged and targeted will experience worse outcomes. Also, the authors examine the role of anger for targets of workplace aggression as it relates to fear and strain in this study.

Knowledge management (KM) research lacks a common conceptual core; it is cross‐disciplinary, addresses a wide variety of phenomena, and has difficulty distinguishing itself from many related areas of research. The result is a fragmented field that is itself artificially split from the related literature on organizational learning. KM may be progressing through a predictable life‐cycle that could end in collapse of the KM concept unless researchers can develop more integrative core theories of learning‐ and knowledge‐related phenomena in organizations. The diverse body of organizational learning and knowledge management research provides an impressive foundation for the synthesis of such broader theories of learning and knowledge that are creative, new, and integrative.

The purpose of this paper is to help organizations capitalize on the potential advantages of age diversity by offering insight into two new moderators in the age diversity, work group performance relationship – status congruity and cognition-based trust.

The authors surveyed 197 employees and 56 supervisors across 59 work groups to test for the moderating effects of status congruity and cognition-based trust on the age diversity, work group performance relationship.

The results demonstrated, on the one hand, that under conditions of status congruity (i.e. when there were high levels of perceived status legitimacy and veridicality) and/or when perceptions of cognition-based trust were high within the group, the relationship between age diversity and work group performance was positive. On the other hand, under conditions of status incongruity and/or low levels of cognition-based trust, this relationship was negative.

The findings contribute to the literature by being the first to provide empirical evidence for the theorized effects of status on the performance of age-diverse work groups and also by demonstrating the effects of cognition-based trust in a new context – age-diverse work groups.

Arising from the study’s findings are several strategies, which are expected to help organizations enhance perceptions of status congruity and/or trust and ultimately the performance of their age-diverse work groups.

The paper is the first to empirically demonstrate the moderating effects of status congruity and cognition-based trust on the age diversity, work group performance relationship. The study also establishes important distinctions between the effects of objective status differences vs status perceptions.

How organizations communicate with shareholders during times of great uncertainty, such as during transformational change, is a relatively neglected area within the change management literature. We use the concept of “change conversation” and speech act theory to analyze GE's letters to shareholders 1980‐1999. We found five consistent change conversations through which GE's management sought to reassure shareholders and reduce their uncertainty around the expected outcomes of GE's transformational changes: warnings; actions; explanations; achievements, and predictions. These were underpinned by three types of speech acts: assertives, expressives, and commissives. We suggest that internally and externally oriented change conversations differ, the former being best characterized as operational change conversations and the latter as supportive change conversations. We suggest that successful change managers engage in both types of change conversations.

This chapter discusses the contribution of the narrative and interpretive work of Dianne Ferguson (and Phil Ferguson) to the discourse of inclusive education research and practices. The chapter explores the concept of authentic inclusion that accepts a discourse contextualized in a needs-based, individualized focus within a perspective of diversity. The chapter continues to reiterate Ferguson’s call to mesh general and special education even within our present day, and emphasizes the need for a genuinely inclusive yardstick – not only to beat the inclusion drum, but also to focus on what authentic inclusion actually looks like.

Adequate, appropriate training of quality managers is essential to the development and implementation of effective quality management systems. This study reports on a survey of 235 Australian quality managers to determine their perceptions of their training and development needs, the extent to which these were being met, and their views on the future of their discipline. The study found that there was a general lack of systematisation, most programs were short‐term and delivered by a fragmented set of providers. Many managers had received no training in the past five years. While the respondents were generally satisfied with the training they had received, there was evidence that their insight into their own needs was imperfect. The respondents were divided between those who thought quality management would remain a discrete field and those who saw it being absorbed by other management systems. The challenges of developing an appropriate training and development regime in this environment are discussed.