Understanding the Motivational Benefits of Knowledge Transfer for Older and Younger Workers in Age-Diverse Coworker Dyads: An Actor-Partner Interdependence Model

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Burmeister, Anne; Wang, Mo; Hirschi, Andreas
• 署名单位: Erasmus University Rotterdam; Erasmus University Rotterdam - Excl Erasmus MC; State University System of Florida; University of Florida; University of Bern
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0021-9010
• DOI: 10.1037/apl0000466
• 发表日期: 2020
• 页码: 748-759
• 关键词: socioemotional selectivity theory; SELF-DETERMINATION THEORY; employee retention; Mentoring; actor-partner interdependence model

摘要

The growing age diversity in organizations in most industrialized economies provides opportunities to motivate both older and younger workers by enabling them to benefit from each other through knowledge transfer. In this study, we integrate self-determination theory with socioemotional selectivity theory to argue that the alignment between workers' age and their roles in knowledge transfer can generate motivational benefits for them. More specifically, we argue that receiving knowledge from coworkers (i.e., actor knowledge receiving) is more closely aligned with younger workers' goal priorities, whereas having coworkers receive one's knowledge (i.e., partner knowledge receiving) is more closely aligned with older workers' goal priorities. We expect that these motivational benefits manifest in younger and older workers' need fulfillment at work, which can shape their subsequent intention to remain with the organization. We used an actor-partner interdependence model to test our hypotheses with time-lagged data from a sample of 173 age-diverse coworker dyads and found support for most of our hypotheses. The age-specific motivational perspective that we adopt has implications for self-determination theory and research on knowledge transfer and mentoring.