The relevance of knowledge transfer - A qualitative study of labour-intensive organisations with high employee turnover

Abstract: Title: The relevance of knowledge transfer - A qualitative study of labour-intensive organisations with high employee turnover Seminar date: 2015-06-05 Course: FEKH19, Degree Project in Strategic Management, Undergraduate Level, 15 ECTS Authors: Elina Jonsson, Hanna Sjöstrand, Linnette Ericsson Advisor: Anna Brattström Key Words: Knowledge transfer, Labour-intensive organisations, Employee turnover, Organisational learning, Key employees, Organisational culture, Organisational structure, Performance Purpose: To study how key employees, organisational culture, and organisational structure affect knowledge transfer in labour-intensive companies with high employee turnover. Methodology: We used a qualitative case study. We conducted a pilot study with three interviewees in order to identify what factors influence knowledge transfer. This was later delved into in a main study with six additional respondents to understand how the factors affect the transfer of knowledge. All nine interviews were semi-structured. Theoretical perspective: Previous literature shows that high employee turnover in companies has a negative impact on the company’s performance. This becomes more evident in labourintensive companies since they are dependent on the employees in their work processes. However, there are labour-intensive companies that are successful despite high employee turnover. Previous literature emphasises the importance of knowledge and knowledge transfer within the organisation. However, it is not clear how other factors influence this process when employee turnover hinders the transfer of knowledge. This is the theoretical basis of our work, and we therefore chose to examine how the factors we have identified affect knowledge transfer. The identified factors are key employees, organisational culture, and organisational structure. Empirical foundation: EF is a successful service company with high employee turnover, and is therefore a well-motivated choice for our study. We compared two cases within the company with different outcomes in performance, but otherwise equal. Respondents with insight into the knowledge transfer process in the cases were interviewed. The cases were then compared in the analysis to see how they differ in terms of the three factors. Conclusion: It was found that knowledge transfer is not as important as previous literature has stated. Instead, we can see that key employees, organisational culture, and organisational structure affect the learning process of employees, and, therefore, the performance of the company.