Temporary Employees Matter: Temporary Employees’ Roles In Effective Organizational Knowledge Management
Master thesis, MSc BA, specialization Human Resource Management University of Groningen, Faculty of Economic and Business
June 2015
YI LI S2732475 Plutolaan 329 9742GK Groningen tel.:+31(0)633196868 e-mail:y.li.45@student.rug.nl
Supervisor:
dr. Susanne Tauber
Acknowledgement: I would like to express my gratitude to my supervisor dr. Susanne Tauber, who gave me lots of valuable comments and support during the entire period of this master thesis.
ABSTRACT
With the development of technology, knowledge gradually replaces the traditional production factors and becomes a sustainable resource for enterprises. Therefore, research focuses more and more on the knowledge management within organizations.
Meanwhile, the intensive labor market and fierce competition drive the emergence of a new employment form, namely temporary employees. As temporary employees are taking up more and more shares of the labor force, effective management of temporary employees’ knowledge is vital for modern organizations. However, research so far has paid limited attention to knowledge management, focusing on temporary employees. Hence, in this research, a conceptual model about temporary employees and knowledge management was developed based on previous theory and research. The associations between different status of employees (temporary versus regular employees) and their relationship quality on the effectiveness of knowledge management were hypothesized and were tested by an experiment in the lab and an online questionnaire survey. The recommendable HR practices for knowledge management among temporal employees were derived from the results of the research.
Key words: knowledge management; temporary employees; relationship quality
INTRODUCTION
The rapid development of information technology has changed our world and created a new period, which is called the information age in human history (Okediji, 2004). It brought about a revolution of traditional industry that knowledge intensive industries become the dominant factor driving the increase of modern economic (Okediji, 2004).
In addition, it created a knowledge-based economy (Humbert, 2007), where knowledge becomes an important power of economic development, in addition to land, labor and capital. Hence, it calls for organizations to pay more attention on the management of knowledge to keep their competitive advantages. Through knowledge management, the information and knowledge can be integrated and recycled in the internal knowledge system so that it can be used as an intellectual asset for management and applications in the originations (Lodhi & Mikulecky, 2010). The inimitable intellectual asset can help organizations make right decisions and be more creative in order to face the changing business environment. The organizations that fail in knowledge management are lacking innovation abilities (Darroch &
McNaughton, 2002). They cannot provide good quality and services to meet the market demand so that they fall behind other competitors. Consequently, figuring out the factors affect the effectiveness of knowledge management is critical for modern knowledge-based organizations.
At the same time, organizations are forced to adapt rapidly to the dynamic external environment and the dramatically changing market. Driven by these, a new form of employment, which is called temporary work, has been fostered and widely used by modern organizations. By doing so, the organization is able to hire or fire employees to meet the requirements of the business at any given time (Castanheira & Chambel, 2006). The work agencies, where the temporary employees officially belong to, are responsible for HR issues such as selecting and hiring temporary employees, training and compensation management. Basically, temporary employees earn less than a permanent counterpart, receive fewer or no health benefits and seldom become regular employees from their temporary positions (Diane, 2005). In this way, the organization saves money on human resources management. Consequently, the human cost of the organizations will decrease compared to hiring all regular employees.
However, as the social identity theory stated, the difference perceived by people could lead to different social behavior (Turner & Reynolds, 2010). Those unequal treatments and short work time period may arouse a higher turnover rate in the organization and less commitment from the temporary employees to the organizations compared to regular employees. As mentioned above, effective knowledge management can sustain organizations competitive advantages (Grant, 1996).
Consequently, knowledge transmission between temporary employees and regular employees is also important. This is particularly true for the more valuable tacit knowledge (Malhotra, 1998), which is not obvious and hard to imitate. According to Szulanski (1994), one of the four barriers to successful sharing and transferring of knowledge is the lack of a positive relationship between the giver and receiver. Given this, the relationship between temporary employees and regular employees and the relationship between temporary employees and the organizations could be important factors affecting the knowledge management within organization.
The work of tempting has changed vastly that the number of temporary employees increased sharply during the past years. For instance, 2.9 million employees in U.S.
held temporary work in 2013, which is a 28% increase since 2010 (Dill, 2014).
Hence, the effects of temporary employees and their knowledge management are also crucial for the organization. However, current research mainly focused on the internal and external knowledge management among organizations’ regular employees. Given the limited scope of prior research into knowledge management among temporary employees, my research will examine the effects of work status (temporary versus regular) on knowledge management within the organization using knowledge transfer and knowledge retention as indicators. I will analyze the exchange of knowledge between temporary employees and regular employees from a relationship perspective, based on social identity theory and focusing on two relations: temporary employees with co-workers at individual level; temporary employees and organization at organization level. In addition, the relationships between temporary and regular employees as well as between different employees and their organization as mediators of this effect will be considered in this research.
In the next sessions, I will review the research on knowledge management and present hypotheses about the effects of work status on the knowledge management and describe how I will test the hypotheses in the end.
THEORY
Before figuring out the effects of work status on the knowledge management and the relationship quality, it is important to identify the definitions of the knowledge management, social identity theory, status of employees and the relationship quality.
Hence, in this section, the theoretical concepts related to this research will be briefly introduced.
Knowledge management
Definition of knowledge management
Knowledge management is a relatively new research area and keeps changing with the development of society, economy and science technology (OECD, 1996). There is no standard definition of knowledge management. However, scholars have suggested different perspectives on knowledge management from different perspectives.
Davenport (1994) illustrated that knowledge management is the process of capturing, distributing, and effectively using knowledge, mainly focuses on the knowledge level.
However, some definitions of knowledge management are more related to the organizational performance and employees within the organization. Bassi (1993) argued that knowledge management is the process of creating, acquiring, and using knowledge in order to improve the organizational performance. According to Bukowitz and Williams (1999), knowledge management is the use and enhancement of knowledge assets to make the firm be able to meet the tactical and strategic requirements. Davenport and Prusak (2000) also presented a broad definition similar to Bukowitz and Williams (1999), which stated that "Knowledge management is managing the corporation's knowledge through a systematically and organizationally specified process for acquiring, organizing, sustaining, applying, sharing and renewing both the tacit and explicit knowledge of employees to enhance organizational performance and create value."
Knowledge management is fundamentally about involving the right knowledge and right people to meet different demands. Knowledge transfer is therefore perhaps the
single most important aspect in this process, since it is the foundation of the vast majority of knowledge management initiatives (Pleton, 1999). Moreover, knowledge retention involves retaining knowledge in the organization so that it can be used later.
It is also an important component of knowledge management (Alan, 2012).
Knowledge transfer and retention could be best practices in terms of reducing the costs associated with turnover, and perhaps more important, in sustaining business performance in an organization (Alan, 2013). Therefore, knowledge transfer and knowledge retention can be used to indicate the organizational knowledge management.
Why is knowledge management important?
Previous scholars have elaborated many reasons why knowledge management is important and useful for the organizations. The reasons can be concluded as followed:
Effective knowledge management has positive impact on preventing potential knowledge loss of the organization (Bartczak, 2005); it enables organization to gain competitive advantage (Malhotra, 2005); it can help firms coordinate with other competitors and meet the various needs of customers and provide qualified service (Steiner & Hartmann, 2006); it can prevent low knowledge diffusion and/or the isolation of organizational departments, individuals, or community partners (Chan &
Chau, 2006). In sum, effective knowledge management can keep up the creativity, function, and performance of the organization (Kothari, Hovanec, Hastie, & Sibbald, 2011).
Types of knowledge
It is also necessary to make clear the types of the knowledge. The management of knowledge can be divided into two aspects based on different types of knowledge.
The first type is explicit knowledge, which is stored in documents, procedures and blueprints that can be easily transferred (Brown & Duguid, 1998). The other type is tacit knowledge that is based on personal experience (Polanyi, 1962), which is deeply rooted in action, commitment and involvement in a specific context (Nonaka, 1994).
Since tacit knowledge is not easily imitated or bought by other competitors, tacit knowledge is also regarded as being the most valuable source of knowledge and the highest potential in making breakthroughs in the organization (Wellman, 2009).
Therefore, this research will mainly focus on the tacit knowledge management within the organization.
Status of employees
There are several classifications of status of employees. In this research, the status of employees is classified into two categories: temporary employees and regular employees, based on the intentions of the employer and the characteristics of the job.
Temporary employees can be defined as individuals who are employed by work agencies, providing services to an employer without becoming employees of the organization (Mangum, Mayall, & Nelson, 1985). Regular employees, also called permanent employees, are those who are directly employed by a single employer to work permanently on a job (Galarneau, 2005) with a work contract of unlimited duration.
Thus, differences between these two statuses of employees mainly refer to length of contract and job security. Temporary employees work for a specific period of time or until a specific project is completed. Permanent employees have no specified end date of employment and generally remain employed until they are laid off, choose to quit, or retire (Burgess & Campell, 2001). This leads to high rates of member fluctuation within organizations and a lack of job security on the side of temporary employees.
Besides that, temporary employees belong to the agency that recruited them. The training and orientation are usually done outside the organization. Their promotions and self-development are harder to realize comparing to the regular employees.
Moreover, temporaries are paid by the agency that assigned them to the job, not by the company for which they are working (Moreau & Young, 1994). The gaps of compensation and benefits such as in medical insurance and annual leave between two types of employees are large (Galarneu, 2005). In general, using temporary employees may create an environment in which employees feel undervalued (Parker, Griffin, Sprigg & Wall, 2002). This might lead to poor morale and less willingness to collaborate with other co-workers (Wandera, 2011). In other words, the relationship quality between temporary and regular employees as well as the organization might be not good.
Integrating the above considerations, it can be assumed that knowledge transfer and retention among temporary employees is more difficult to attain as compared to regular employees. Further, I expect that this effect is mediated by the quality of the
relationships between temporary and regular employees as well as between different employees and their organization.
Social Identity
The concept of social identity was presented by Tajfel (1972), which refers to "the individual's knowledge that he belongs to certain social groups together with some emotional and value significance to him of this group membership" Then, the concept was developed into individual level: how a system of social categorizations "creates and defines an individual's own place in society" (Tajfel, 1972).
Many researchers argued that social identity theory is a theory that predicts perceived group status differences leads to certain intergroup behaviors and how people perceive the legitimacy and stability of those status differences as well as the ability to transfer from one group to another (Tajfel & Turner, 1979; Turner, Ellemers, Spears, & Doosje, 1999). In this research, the different status of employees may perceive differently and form different feeling to the co-workers and the organization.
Social identity will be an effective approach to use in the analysis and it will indicate the relationship between temporary employees and their coworkers as well as the organization and examine the how the relationship will be.
The Relationship Quality
The relationship quality in this research can be defined in two levels. At the individual level, the relationship quality includes the trust from the temporary employees to their co-workers. Trust can be defined as the extent to which a person is confident in, and willing to act on the basis of, the words, actions and decisions of another (McAllister, 1995). At the organizational level, the relationship quality includes the elements the loyalty and the sense of belonging from the temporary employees. In this research, loyalty can be defined as employees’ identifications and commitment to the company, and by being motivated to perform excellent (Martensen & Grønholdt, 2006). Loyal employees would like to put extra efforts in their work and help the organization function effectively. (Niehoff, Moorman, & Blakely, 2001) . The sense of belonging, which is also called organization commitment by many scholars, refers to the mental and physical job involvement and organizational identification of the employees.
Therefore, organization commitment could be used to indicate the relationship quality between the employees and the organization.
As aforementioned, the management of knowledge is not easy, especially regarding the transferring and retention of tacit knowledge. Tacit knowledge is embedded in a social context. Therefore, relationship quality is a critical factor for successful knowledge management. Previous research found empirical support for this assumption. Szulanski (1994) stated that the lack of relationship between the giver and receiver is the barrier successful sharing and transferring of knowledge. Research conducted by the van Wijk, Jansen and Lyles (2008) also revealed that relationship quality, which indicates the relationship between employees in trust and value, was associated with the success of transferring tacit knowledge. The results show that employees have high level of trust and shared value with others interact and communicate frequently. They have a common understanding of collective goals can facilitate the knowledge sharing and transfer within the organization. Therefore, the relationship quality of the temporary employees and their co-workers as well as their organizations may also influence the effect of knowledge management.
Based on previous research about the knowledge management and the effects of relationship quality on knowledge management as outlined above, I developed the following conceptual model.
Conceptual Model
The conceptual model summarizes the three central hypotheses of my research.
First, I expect that the status of employee (regular versus temporary) is related to the efficiency of knowledge management. Additionally, knowledge transfer and knowledge retention are important aspects of knowledge management. I hypothesize that temporary employees are less willing and more difficult to sharing tacit knowledge (knowledge transfer) and that the high turnover of temporary employees
Status of Employees
Relationship Quality
Knowledge Management H1
H2 H3
FIGURE 1
will result in the loss of knowledge (Knowledge retention). Therefore, hypothesis one can be given as follows.
H1:Opposed to the regular status, temporary employment status negatively affects knowledge management.
Second, due to the different characteristics of the two types of employee statuses regarding job security and duration of contract, I expect that temporary employees tend to be less loyal to the organization. Meanwhile, the difference in treatment and contract form might decrease the sense of belonging among temporary employees as well as the trust from the temporary employees to the regular employees and their organization. It can be hypothesized that the relationship quality of temporary employees is worse compared to the regular employees both regarding their permanently working colleagues and regarding the organization. Consequently, hypothesis 2 can be stated as:
H2: Compared to regular employees, the relationship quality of temporary employees with their co-workers and with the organization is less good.
Third, I hypothesize that the direct effect of employment status (temporary versus regular) on knowledge management is mediated by the relationship between temporary employees and their co-workers as well as the organization. It is likely that good relationship quality between two sides will improve the tacit knowledge sharing and facilitate the retention of knowledge, which are both indicators of effective knowledge management. A negative relationship will result in opposite outcomes.
Therefore, the third hypothesis can be written as followed:
H3: The effect of employee status (regular versus temporary) on knowledge management is mediated by relationship quality with co-workers and with organization.
The above hypotheses were all examined using questionnaires. Experiment can demonstrate the cause-effect relationships, so it is valid to use the experiment controlling the conditions to collect data and test the hypotheses (Cherry, 2015).
Therefore, the hypotheses were first tested in a lab experiment. Participants filled the questionnaires in an experimental situation. Additionally, a field study is in the real
world context and increase validity (Monahan, Lahteenmaki, McDonald& Cockton, 2008). Therefore, a filed study was also conducted in working in a multinational company that adopts temporary employees in China. The elaboration of the two studies was shown in the following session.
Study 1
METHOD Procedures and Participants
I used a between-subject factorial design to test the hypotheses: status of employee (temporary vs. regular). In the experiment, all participants were students of University of Groningen, who voluntarily participated in this research. The participants were randomly assigned to two experimental conditions.
First, a description of the background information was given at the beginning of the experiment. The students were asked to imagine that they worked in international IT company, which hired both regular employees and temporary employees. The compensation and other benefits were not equal between two types of employees.
Second, a specific introduction with each situational work condition was given.
Situation A refers to the status condition as regular employees and Situation B refers to the status condition as temporary employees. In the end, the students filled a questionnaire about their feelings towards the company and other co-workers, according to the situation they were manipulated. The details of the manipulations in the experiment are presented in Appendix A.
Manipulation check items were included both in beginning and at the end of the survey. For instance, “In the working situation described above, what is your employment status in Company A?” and “In my project team, there were more temporary employees than regular employees”. 110 students filled the questionnaires for each situation. The manipulation checks were significant (p < 0.05), therefore no participants were deleted according to the checks and the data is 220 (N = 220).
43.2% of the participants were female. Most of the participants are aged from 16~25 (95%), had experience working as a regular employee (50.2%) and temporary employee (74.9%).
Measures
All questions were measured by using a seven point Likert scale. The answers ranged from 1 to 7: 1 referred to “strongly disagree” and 7 represented “strongly agree.”
Furthermore, the other answers ranged from 1 to 7: 1 referred to “regular employee”, 4 referred to “everyone in the team”, 7 represented “temporary employee”. All full scales are presented in the Appendix B.
Relationship Quality
This relationship quality was measured by modifying existing questions from Marsden and Campbell (1984); Costa and Anderson (2010); Tyler and Blader (2000);
Sleebos (2005); and Mael and Tetrick (1992). The relationship quality was examined by 20 items. For example, “ I would trust more _____.”and “I would feel more completely accepted by _____.”
Knowledge management
In order to indicate the knowledge management within the organization, the items for measuring the knowledge transfer and retention were developed based on the earlier research by Grutterink, Van der Vegt, Molleman and Jehn (2013) and Holste and Fields (2010). For instance, “I would more willingly share my personal rules of thumb and insights into our common task with _____.” or “I would be more willing to learn from personal work experiences of ____.” There were 22 items measuring knowledge management.
Data preparation
Factor analysis
The factorability of the scales of relationship quality and knowledge management was examined initially.
A principal components factor analysis using Varimax rotation was performed to focus on the subscales of relationship quality and knowledge management separately.
The results showed that there were three clear factors representing the subscales of relationship quality: "Organization identification", “Trust & Acceptance” and “Value
& Respect”. The reliability of three subscales are α = .86, α = .77 and α = .70, respectively. Eight items loaded onto Factor 1, explaining the 21.74% of the variance.
It is clear that these eight items are all relate to the feelings to the organization. This factor loads onto reported level of the identification and commitment of employee to the organization. This factor was labeled "Organization identification". Six items that loaded onto Factor 2 relate to the trust between employees, explaining 14.08% of the variance. This factor was labeled “Trust & Acceptance”. Four items were loaded onto Factor 3 that identified the level of respect between employees, explaining 11.75% of the variance. So the Factor 3 was labeled “Value & Respect”. There is only one item loading on Factor 4 and Factor 5. For the item (I would have more confidence in the ability of ___ to perform tasks), it is more related to trust. So I put this item into Factor 2. Moreover, the item (I have a number of qualities typical of company A employees) did not show any connection with any scales. Thus, I excluded this item, computed the other items with means and form three subscales: "Organization identification", “Trust & Acceptance” and “Value & Respect”. Results of the factor analysis are shown in Table 1.
The other principal components factor analysis using Varimax rotation showed the four subscales of the Knowledge management. Seven items loaded on the Factor 1, representing the intention to leave the organization that can be labeled “Knowledge retention”. This factor explained 17.96% of the variance. Five items loaded onto Factor 2, showing the willingness to obtain knowledge from others. So Factor 2 was labeled “Knowledge collection”, explaining 17.58% of the variance. Five items loaded onto Factor 3, measuring the level of sharing knowledge with other members.
Therefore, Factor 3 was labeled “Knowledge donation”, explaining 10.78% of the variance. Four items loaded onto Factor 4, explaining 9.88% of variance. These items illustrated the level of people acknowledging others’ knowledge. So Factor 4 was labeled as “Expertise affirmation”. I formed four subscales: “Knowledge retention”,
“Knowledge collection”, “Knowledge donation” and “Expertise affirmation”. The reliability of each subscale is α = .86, α = .52, α = .67 and α = .86. The item (I feel closer to ___ at my workplace) reduced the reliability. So I deleted this item from the
“Knowledge collection” subscale and got the reliability, α = .71. The results are shown in Table 2.
So the three subscales (Trust & Acceptance, Value & Respect and organization identification) and the four subscales (Knowledge retention, knowledge connection,
knowledge donation and Expertise affirmation) were used to measure the relationship quality and knowledge management.
Data analysis
The data collected from the experiment were transformed into a SPSS file and analyzed. The item (I don’t act like a typical Company A person) was reversed. The reliability for each subscale was calculated using Cronbach’s alpha. The means of each subscale was computed and saved for the analyses. In order to measure the knowledge management mediation by relationship quality, I computed the subscales named knowledge collection, knowledge donation and expertise affirmation into a scale called knowledge transfer.
RESULTS Status of employees and knowledge management
It was expected that opposed to the regular status, the temporary employment status negatively affect the knowledge management. A one-way multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was conducted to test the hypothesis. A statistically significant effect was obtained, p < .001. From the result, there was a significant difference on knowledge retention, knowledge donation, knowledge collection and expertise affirmation.
The results showed that the type of employee status had different influence on knowledge collection, F(1, 213) = 28.49, p = .000, η2 = .12. People who acted as regular employees would be more willing to collect knowledge from others (M = 3.3, SD = .79) than those who acted as temporary employees (M = 3.05, SD= .80). The expertise affirmation was also affected by the status of employees significantly, F(1, 213) = 151.72, p =. 000, η2 = .42. The participants who were in the situation as regular employees are less likely to identify other’s expertise (M = 2.81, SD = 1.00) than in the situation as temporary employees (M = 4.44, SD = 1.04). Furthermore, there was a significant effect from status of employees on knowledge retention, F(1, 213) = 16.86, p = .000, η2 = .07. The participants who were in the situation as regular employees (M = 5.20, SD = .85) would be more likely to keep their knowledge in the organization than in the situation as temporary employees (M = 4.70, SD= .94).
However, there was no significant difference on the knowledge donation by different status of employees, p>0.05. Table 3 presents all the results.
In the “Knowledge collection”, “Knowledge donation” and “Expertise affirmation”
subscales, 1 meant “regular employee”, 4 represented “everyone in the team”, 7 referred as “temporary employee”. Therefore, I ran a one-sample T test in each employee status condition and used “4” as test value to see whether employees tend to prefer everyone in the team to conduct the knowledge management activities or prefer to conduct within own type of group.
For the regular employees, we can see that there was a significant difference with “4”
in “Knowledge collection”, and “Expertise affirmation” subscale separately: t(107) = -4.88, p < .001; t(107) = -13.85, p < .001. The participants acted as regular employees preferred to collect information from other regular employees (M = 3.63, SD = .78) and affirmed the expertise of other regular employees (M = 2.81, SD = .90). However, they preferred to donate their knowledge to all the workers (M = 3.91, SD = .72), t(108) = -1.26, p = .212. The results are shown in Table 4. For the temporary employees, we can see that there was a significant difference with “4” in “Knowledge collection” and “Expertise affirmation” subscale separately: t(109) = -12.49, p < .001;
t(109) = 4.53, p < .001. The participants acted as temporary employees preferred to collect information from other regular employees (M = 3.05, SD = .80) and affirmed the expertise of temporary employees (M = 4.45, SD = 1.42). However, they preferred to donate their knowledge to all the workers (M = 3.90, SD = .80), t(109) = -1.31, p = .194. The results are shown in Table 5.
Therefore, we can conclude that the different status of employees indeed had influence on the knowledge management; the status of temporary employee negatively affected in knowledge collection and knowledge retention. Hence, the first hypothesis was accepted.
Status of employees and relationship Quality
It is assumed that compared to regular employees, the relationship quality of temporary employees with their co-workers and with the organization is less good. A one-way multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was conducted to test the hypothesis. A statistically significant effect was obtained. There was a significant
effect of status of employees on the trust, value and organization identification (p <
.001).
In the “Trust & Acceptance” and “Value& Respect” subscale, 1 meant “regular employee”, 4 represented “everyone in the team”, 7 referred as “temporary employee”. For the “Trust & Acceptance” scale, the MANOVA showed a marginal significant main effect of employee status, F (1, 213) = 118.77, p = .000, η2 = .358.
Participants were more likely to trust both temporary employee and regular employee in a situation when employee status was temporary (M = 4.21, SD = .80). While in a situation where employee status is regular, participants were more likely to trust regular employees better (M = 3.10, SD = .68). The employee status also had a significant effect on value, F (1,213)= 18.52, p= .000, η2 = .08. For participants who were in the situation as temporary employees are more likely to respect each other’s value (M = 4.23, SD = 1.15) than in the situation as regular employees (M = 3.67, SD
= .74). There was also a significant effect on organization identification by different employee status, F(1, 213) = 62.13, p = 0.000, η2 = .27. The participants in the situation as regular employees were more likely to identify the organization (M =4 .99, SD = .74) than in the situation as temporary employees (M = 3.92, SD = 1.01).
The results are shown in Table 3.
I also ran a one-sample T test in each employee status condition and used “4” as test value to see whether employees tend to build good relationship with everyone in the team or tend to have good relationship with their own type of group.
For the regular employees, we can see that there was a significant difference with “4”
in “Trust & Acceptance” and “Value& Respect” subscale separately: t(109) = -13.83, p < .000; t(109) = -4.93, p < .000. In a situation where employee status is regular, the participants preferred to trust regular employees (M = 3.08, SD = .70) and respected the value of regular employees (M = 3.64, SD = .77). For the temporary employees, we can see that there was a significant difference with “4” in “Trust & Acceptance”
and “Value& Respect” subscales separately: t(108) = 2.67, p < .001; t(108) = 2.14, p
< .05. The participants acted as temporary employees tended to trust temporary employees (M = 4.21, SD = .80) and respect the value of other temporary workers (M
= 4.23, SD = 1.14). The results are shown in Table 4 and Table 5.
Therefore, the hypothesis 2 is accepted.
Relationship Quality as a Mediator
Finally, the question of whether the effect of employee status (regular versus temporary) on knowledge management is mediated by relationship quality was investigated.
The SPSS PROCESS bootstrapping macro for simple mediation was performed to test the effect of relationship quality on the relation between status of employee and knowledge transfer as well as knowledge retention. The mediator was trust, value and organization identification. The employee status was independent variable.
Furthermore, the knowledge retention and knowledge transfer were performed as a dependent variable separately. There was a significant indirect effect of status of employees on knowledge transfer through trust, β = .43, Z = 6.36, p < 0.001.The bootstrapping intervals corroborated this finding as it did not include 0, bias-corrected and accelerated 95%CI [.28, -60]. There was also significant indirect effect of status of employees on knowledge retention through organization identification, β = -.34, Z
= 6.36, p < 0.001.The bootstrapping intervals corroborated this finding as it did not include 0, bias-corrected and accelerated 95%CI [-.51, -.19]. The results can be found in Figure 2 and Figure 3.
This means that status of employees does indirectly impact the knowledge transfer through trust and indirectly impact the knowledge retention through organization identification. The third hypothesis is therefore accepted.
DISCUSSION
This study was intended to investigate whether different status of employee had a different effect on knowledge management. Simultaneously, relationship quality was tested whether it had a mediation effect on the relationship between status of employee and knowledge management.
In general, my hypotheses were supported by the results. Status of employees does have an impact on the relationship quality and knowledge management within the organization. Regular employees were found to be more willing to collect and keep knowledge within the organization. On the contrary, the temporary employees were
more likely to affirm regular employees’ expertise. This can be explained by the finding of De Cuyper (2008) . Temporary workers want to increase their chances to become permanent workers through showing they are excellent citizens to the orgnization. Therefore, they would like to learn from others and donate their knowledge to others. The regular workers tend to be more committed to the organization. They are more likely to only trust other regular employees and respect regular employees’ value within the team. However, temporary employees were more likely to trust and respect the temporary workers. This difference is in line with the social identify theory that employees will act differently in terms of the perceived difference between employees (Turner et al., 1987).
The mediation effect of the relationship quality was confirmed in this study. This finding is in line with the prior finding that good relationship quality is associated with successful knowledge transfer and sharing knowledge within the organization (van Wijk, Jansen & Lyles, 2008). However, the mediation effect by value was not found. The different finding can be explained that the participants are relatively lack of work experience. Participants of this study were all students, so they might not understand the real situation and not know how to react to the situation manipulated in the experiment. So it is necessary to conduct a field study to test and compare the results.
Study 2
METHOD Procedures and Participants
An analogical survey was conducted to collect data from the real life. The questionnaire of the survey is the same as the one in the experiment, except the situation description and the manipulation check items. The questions were designed in English and were properly translated into Chinese. The questionnaire consists of three parts. The first part was about their feelings towards the organization; the second part was about their willingness to exchange knowledge and the intention to leave the organization; and the demographic information was presented in the third part, including the question indicating the status of employee. For the details of the survey, please refer to Appendix B.
I did a survey in an international IT company located in China, asking the employees to fill in the questionnaire via Internet. I reached all the participants through my network, who are currently working in the Chinese company. The purpose of the survey was explained and the confidentiality was guaranteed by announcing that the response would be anonymous. The survey was distributed to a department that has both temporary and regular employees. The email with the link of the online survey was sent individually with the permission from the department supervisor. I sent each set of 60 online invitations to participate the survey to the temporary employees and regular employees. I assumed to receive 120 responses, but I received 103 responses.
Of the 103 responses, 84 employees (N=84) completed the whole survey, which resulted in a response rate of 70%. 83.3% of the participants were female. 43 of the participants were regular employees in the department. Most of the participants (36.9%) are aged from 16-25.
Measures
All questions are same as those used to measure in the experiment with students. All the questions were measured by using a seven point Likert scale as well. However, the questionnaire was translated into Chinese properly so that the participants could have a better understanding of the questions and fill in the answers with their feelings.
All full scales are presented in the Appendix B.
Relationship Quality
This relationship quality was measured by modifying existing questions which are from Marsden and Campbell (1984); Costa and Anderson (2010); Tyler and Blader (2000); Sleebos (2005); and Mael and Tetrick (1992). The relationship quality was examined by 20 items. For example, “ I would trust more _____.” and “I would feel more completely accepted by _____.”In order to keep the consistency, I computed same items as I did in the previous experiment to form three subscales: Trust &
Acceptance, Value & Respect and organization identification. The reliability of three subscales are α = .87, α = .80 and α = .86 prospectively.
Knowledge management
In order to indicate the knowledge management within the organization, the items for measuring the knowledge transfer and retention were developed based on the earlier
research from Grutterink, Van der Vegt, Molleman and Jehn (2013) and Holste and Fields (2010). Like “I would more willingly share my personal rules of thumb and insights into our common task with _____.” or “I would be more willing to learn from personal work experiences of ____.” There were 22 items measuring knowledge management. I formed four subscales with the same items I computed in the experiment. The reliability of the four subscales are α = .79, α = .88, α = .89 and α = .92 prospectively.
Data analysis
The survey data was transformed into a SPSS file and analyzed. The item (I don’t act like a typical Company A person) was reversed. The reliability for each subscale was calculated using Cronbach’s alpha. The means of each subscale was computed and saved for the analyses. In order to measure the knowledge management mediation by relationship quality, I computed the subscales named knowledge collection, knowledge donation and expertise affirmation into a scale called knowledge transfer.
RESULTS Status of employees and the Knowledge management
To test whether the temporary employment status negatively affect the knowledge management. A one-way multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was conducted to test the hypothesis. A statistically significant MANOVA effect was obtained, p < .001. From the result, there was significant difference on knowledge retention, knowledge collection and expertise affirmation.
The results showed that the type of employee status had different influence on knowledge collection, F(1, 82) = 6.77, p = .011, η2 = .08. Regular employees would be more willing to collect knowledge from others (M = 3.66, SD = 1.41) than temporary employees (M = 2.87, SD = 1.36). The status of employees also had main effect on expertise affirmation, F(1, 82) = 9.8, p = .002, η2 = .11. The regular employees are less likely to identify other’s expertise (M = 3.02, SD = 1.45) than temporary employees (M = 4.09, SD = 1.68). And there was significant effect from status of employees on knowledge retention, F(1, 82) = 16.41, p = .000, η2 =. 17. The regular employees would be more likely to keep their knowledge in the organization (M = 5.68, SD = 1.34) than temporary employees (M = 4.53, SD = 1.28). However,
there was no significant difference on the knowledge donation by different type of employees status, p > 0.05. The details of the results can be found in Table 6.
Same as study 1, I ran one-sample T test in each employee status condition and used
“4” as test value to see whether employees tend to prefer everyone in the team to conduct the knowledge management activities or prefer to conduct within own type of group.
For the regular employees, we can see that there was a significant difference with “4”
in “Expertise affirmation” subscale separately: t(42) = -4.43. The regular employees preferred to affirm the expertise of other regular employees (M = 3.02, SD = 1.45).
However, they preferred to collect knowledge from all the employees (M = 3.66, SD
= 1.41), t(42) = -1.60, p = .117 and donate their knowledge to all the workers (M = 3.71, SD = 1.15), t(42) = -1.64, p = .108. The results are shown in Table 7. For the temporary employees, we can see that there was a significant difference with “4” in
“Knowledge collection” subscale separately: t(42) = -5.33, p < .001. The temporary employees preferred to collect information from other regular employees (M = 2.87, SD = 1.36). However, they preferred to donate their knowledge to all the workers (M
= 3.73, SD = 1.29), t(42) = -1.31, p = .190 and affirm the expertise of all the workers (M = 4.09, SD = 1.68), t(42) = .35, p = .729. The results are shown in Table 8.
Therefore, we can conclude that the different status of employees indeed had influence on the knowledge management; the regular employees were more willing to pass knowledge to others and learn from others’ knowledge than temporary employees; and the regular employees tend to keep more knowledge in the organization. This suggested that knowledge management was affected by status of employees. So the first hypothesis was accepted.
Status of employees and the Relationship Quality
It is assumed that compared to regular employees, the relationship quality of temporary employees with their co-workers and with the organization is less good. A one-way multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was conducted to test the hypothesis. A statistically significant effect was obtained. There was a significant effect of status of employees on the trust, value and organization identification (p <
.001). In the “Trust & Acceptance” and “Value & Respect” subscale, 1 was meaning
“regular employee”, 4 was meaning “everyone in the team”, 7 was meaning
“temporary employee”.
For “Trust & Acceptance” subscale, the ANOVA showed a marginal significant main effect of status of employees, F(1, 82) = 42.34, p = .000, η2 = .34. Regular employees trusted more regular employees (M = 3.14, SD= 1.05) while temporary employees tend to trust more temporary employees (M = 4.75, SD = 1.21). The status of employees also had a significant effect on value, F(1, 82) = 13.71, p = .000, η2 = .14.
The results indicated that for participants who were regular employees are more likely to respect each other’s value (M = 3.83, SD = 1.50) than those are temporary employees (M = 5.05, SD = 1.52). There was also significant effect on organization identification by different status of employee, F(1, 82) = 29.36 , p = 0.000, η2 = .26.
The regular employees were more likely to identify the organization (M = 5.63, SD = 1.10) than temporary employees (M = 4.27, SD = 1.19). The details of the results can be found in Table 6.
I also ran a one-sample T test in each employee status condition and used “4” as test value to see whether employees tend to build good relationship with everyone in the team or tend to have good relationship with their own type of group.
For the regular employees, we can see that there was a significant difference between
“4” in “Trust & Acceptance” subscale: t(40) = -5.36, p < .000. The regular employees preferred to trust regular employees (M = 3.14, SD = 1.05). They were more likely to respect the value of all the employees (M = 3.83, SD = 1.50), t(40) = -.74, p = .464.
For the temporary employees, we can see that there was a significant difference with
“4” in “Trust & Acceptance” and “Value& Respect” subscales separately: t(40) = 3.96, p < .001; t(40) = 4.43, p < .001. The temporary employees tended to trust temporary employees (M = 4.75, SD = 1.21) and respect the value of other temporary workers (M = 5.05, SD = 1.52). The results are shown in Table 7 and Table 8.
Therefore, the hypothesis 2 is accepted, the temporary employees tend to have less good relationship quality with other employees than regular employees.
Relationship Quality as a Mediator
Finally, whether the effect of employee status (regular versus temporary) on knowledge management is mediated by relationship quality was investigated.
The SPSS PROCESS bootstrapping macro for simple mediation was performed to show the effect of relationship quality on the relation between status of employee and knowledge transfer as well as knowledge retention. The mediator was trust, value and organization identification. The employee status was independent variable. And the knowledge retention and knowledge transfer was performed as dependent variable separately. There was no significant indirect effect of status of employees on knowledge transfer through trust, value or organization identification. However, there was a significant indirect effect of status of employees on knowledge retention through organization identification, β = -.83, Z = -3.88, p < 0.001.The bootstrapping intervals corroborated this finding as it did not include 0, bias-corrected and accelerated 95%CI [-1.30, -.42]. The results are shown in Figure 4 and Figure 5.
This means that status of employees does indirectly impact the knowledge retention through organization identification. The third hypothesis is therefore accepted.
DISCUSSION
The same research in a field study was done to generalize the results and tests the same hypothesis. In general, the hypotheses were supported by the results shown above.
The results of this study supported hypothesis that temporary employees are less likely to collect knowledge from other members and less likely to retain their knowledge in the organization compared to the regular employees. However, the difference on knowledge donation was not found in this study as well. The regular employees are more willing to trust only regular employees while temporary employees would trust other temporary employees. But the regular employees are more likely to respect the value of all the members within the organization while temporary employees are likely to respect the value of other temporary employees.
The regular employees are more commitment to the organization. Hence, we can say that compared to regular employees, the relationship quality of temporary employees with their co-workers and with the organization is less good. Moreover, the relationship quality does have mediation effect on the relation between employees status and knowledge management. The high level of organization identification can facilitate the knowledge retention within the organization.
Taken everything together, the hypotheses could be confirmed. In the sequel, the difference of the two study findings will be discussed and the theoretical implications of the results would be given, followed by the limitation of these two study and directions for future research. In the end, the practical implications will be highlighted.
GENERAL DISCUSSION
This research studied the associations between different status of employees (temporary versus regular employees) and their relationship quality on the effectiveness of knowledge management. The results of this research supported the prediction that compared to regular employees, temporary employees has less good relationship quality with other co-workers and less effective in knowledge management.
Summarizing the two studies, I found that temporary employment status negatively affects knowledge management in knowledge collection and retention; temporary employees has less good relationship quality with the organization but have better relationship with other co-workers in trust perspective; and the mediating effect of relationship quality of employees and organization was found on knowledge management.
Based on the social identity theory (Tajfel et al., 1971), the temporary employees might perceive themselves different from the members from the social group of regular employees. They may see the gap and result in negative attitudes, which could be obstacle of transfer and retention knowledge between to “social groups”. On top of this, the findings are in line with the research conducted by Booth, Francesconi and Frank (2002) that temporary job can increase the job insecurity that they are less commitment to the organization. And Blatt (2008) stated that temporary employees care about their relationships with peers and their social standing is ambiguous. That explained the reason why temporary employees tend to trust and respect all the co- workers in my research.
However, compare to Study 1, the findings from the Study 2 were slightly different in the results of relationship quality and median effect. In the filed study, the temporary employees were also found to build less good relationship quality with other
employees from value perspective that they tended to respect only temporary employees value. And the mediation effect of trust on the knowledge transfer was found in the Study 1.
The differences of the two findings can be explained by two reasons. First, the participants of two studies were totally different. The students can only understand the situation by reading the manipulation instructions. This may lead to misunderstand of the situation and not consistent to the real feeling. What’s more, parts of students are lack of working experience. So the results could be different in several points.
Second, the value shared between regular employees and temporary are not same in the company I conducted the filed study. This indicates the same as the finding of Turner (1999) that the perceived difference leads to different behavior.
Theoretical Implications
The findings of my research can be used to understand the social identity and take sight into the previous research on knowledge management. First, social identity theory suggested that perceived status different have different intergroup behaviors (Turner et al., 1999). It is same as the different effect on knowledge management by different status of employees. Second, the results also reflect that relationship quality could be measured by trust, value and organization identification (van Wijk et al., 2008). However, the finding that good relationship quality can facilitate the knowledge management should be notice, as only trust and organization has effect on the knowledge management in my research. In addition, the type of employees especially the difference in status is new in the knowledge management research. This dimension has not been examined so far. So this could be an addition to the previous research.
Limitation and Future Research
There are several limitations regarding to the methodological approach in my study.
First, the data collected from the experiment and the data collected from the filed study were from different national background. Due to the limitation of my study, most of the student participants were Dutch student while the participants who did the survey were Chinese employees. They might have different cultural values and working experience because of the different national backgrounds. The results could
be not comparable. Therefore, the future research could focus only in one nation with larger samples.
Second, the measurement of the two studies was only using a survey. However, as mentioned above, tacit knowledge is hard to measure (Nonaka, 1994). Using a survey could not be sufficient. This limitation could be solved by using combination of methods in the future research, such as interviewing and observing.
Beyond and partly based on the limitations, my studies emphasized certain aspects for future research. The research on comparing temporary employees with regular employees in knowledge management is relatively sparse. The macroeconomic impact of temporary employment were often questioned by the researchers (Engellandt & Riphahn, 2005).Moreover, the pre-existing studies are lack of the effect of additional variables (van Wijk, Jansen & Lyles, 2008). The impact of demographic factors such as gender, age could be also involed in the future research.
It would be interesting to see wheher people with same gender are willing to transfer knowledge and keep the knowledge within the organization regardless of the different status of employees.
Practical Implications
In accordance with the findings, some practical implications can be suggested. It is important for an organization to take into consideration the gap between temporary and rugular employee. The temporary employees may be less effective in knowledge management especially in knowledge collection and knowledge retention. Therefore, managers should decrease the perceived difference between regular and temporary employees.
The organization can design activities to enhance the interaction between different employee statuses. Furthermore, the organization can build good working environment to the employees and provide adequate training for the temporary employees to improve their commitment to the organization.
At the same the mediation effect of trust on knowledge transfer and the mediation effect of organization identification on knowledge retention were significant in this study. Therefore, the organizations should focus on trust and organizational commitment when dealing with knowledge management within two statuses of
employees. To improve the trust from the regular employees to temporary employees, the organization can form same goals and inform the expertise of the temporary employees to the regular employees. As a result, the organization will have good performance in knowledge management and keep substituted advantage in the market.
CONCLUSION
The main contribution of the study was to investigate the temporary employees’ roles in effective organizational knowledge management. The negative effect of temporary employees on knowledge was found based on the research. It is interesting to find that temporary employees hope to build better relation with co-workers, while regular employees tend to have better relationship quality with the organization. In addition, the mediation effect of relationship quality was found as well. It is a new aspect of researching the organizational management concerning the temporary employees. I hope it could be a good perspective in the later research as well as in the organization management and may the findings could provide solutions to increase the organization competitive advantage.
TABLES OF STATISTICS Table 1
Component Matrix of Relationship Quality-Factor Analysis
Factor 1 Factor 2 Factor 3 Factor 4 Factor 5 I would trust more ___________.
-,175 ,746 ,131 ,115 -,018
I would rely more on _________.
-,006 ,793 ,092 ,133 -,090
I would have more confidence in the ability of
__________to perform tasks. -,014 ,215 ,085 ,783 ,021
I would discuss issues and problems more openly with
___________. -,219 ,592 ,298 ,200 -,063
I would consider ________ are/is more faithful.
-,070 ,480 -,080 ,352 ,167
I would feel more valued during the interaction
with______________. -,066 ,178 ,718 ,266 -,113
I would feel that ___________ value(s) my input more.
-,061 ,051 ,786 ,056 ,125
I would feel more respected during the interaction
with_____________. -,087 ,238 ,664 -,103 -,256
I would feel more completely accepted by
___________. -,247 ,656 ,339 -,371 ,047
I would feel that __________respect(s) my efforts
more. -,213 ,151 ,614 -,254 ,237
I would feel that _________ perceive(s) me more as a
full team member. -,300 ,577 ,286 -,357 ,115
When someone criticizes Company A, it feels like a
personal insult. ,752 -,129 -,099 ,124 ,076
I am very interested in what others think about
Company A. ,546 -,142 -,086 ,085 ,098
When I talk about Company A, I usually say “we”
rather than “they”. ,645 -,211 ,021 ,104 ,317
Company A’s successes are my successes.
,835 -,031 -,129 -,055 ,001
When someone praises company A, it feels like a
personal compliment. ,800 -,064 -,031 ,006 -,034
I act like Company A person to a great extent.
,802 -,118 -,114 -,140 ,122
If a story in the media criticized Company A, I would
feel embarrassed. ,680 -,127 -,014 ,059 -,403
I don’t act like a typical Company A person.
,504 -,103 -,156 -,181 ,229
I have a number of qualities typical of Company A
employees. ,274 ,019 ,019 ,037 ,767
Table 2
Component Matrix of Knowledge Management-Factor Analysis
Factor 1 Factor 2 Factor 3 Factor 4 Factor 5 I would allow ______more to observe me, in order to
let them better understand and learn from my work. ,109 -,144 ,129 ,727 -,364 I would collaborate more with _______, in order to let
them better understand and learn from my work. ,016 -,094 ,076 ,759 ,063 I would more willingly share my new ideas with
_________. -,105 ,262 ,280 ,512 ,322
I would more willingly share my personal rules of thumb and insights into our common task with
_________. -,134 ,306 -,098 ,471 ,445
I would more willingly share the latest rumors going around the team with ________, if I thought them to be
important. -,111 ,788 -,131 -,007 ,071
I would be more willing to learn from personal work
experiences of _______. ,034 -,117 ,539 -,048 ,546
I would be more willing to pass on my personal work
experience to ______ of my team. ,103 ,249 ,088 ,654 ,073
I think ______ of my team are/is aware of my
knowledge and expertise more. -,120 ,744 ,019 ,109 -,051
I think _______ of my team know in detail what I
know and what I am capable of. -,056 ,880 -,014 ,041 ,044
I think ________ of my team have an accurate view of
what I know. -,100 ,822 ,026 ,068 ,063
I would prefer to ask _______ of my team about
certain knowledge, when I need it ,000 ,276 ,613 ,278 -,128
I would like to be informed more of what _________
know. ,077 -,398 ,563 ,031 ,251
I would prefer to ask ______ about their abilities when
I need to learn something. ,040 -,075 ,798 ,136 ,073
I would prefer to ask __ to teach me how to do
something, when he is good at it. ,003 -,036 ,770 ,026 -,069
I would feel very bad leaving Company A. ,638 -,257 ,033 -,069 ,103 If I were completely free to choose, I would very likely
to continue working for Company A. ,855 -,003 -,009 ,033 -,158
I would be very willing to work in Company A in the
future. ,867 ,079 -,001 -,024 -,300
It is very likely to me to spend my future career in
Company A. ,809 ,006 ,004 -,027 -,221
I feel closer to ______ at my workplace. -,156 ,730 -,046 ,017 -,126 I get along well with my supervisors of Company A. ,665 -,217 ,059 ,039 ,249
I feel good about my job. ,741 -,239 ,110 ,095 ,173
Education and training in my job improve my career
perspectives ,540 -,145 -,072 ,149 ,351
