Learning from those who left
We all believe that when employees leave a company they take some knowledge with them. Tacit knowledge that finds no physical form and cannot be held by the company. However a research article titled, “Learning from Those Who Left: The Reverse Transfer of Knowledge through Mobility Ties” by Lori Rosenkopf and Rafael Corredoira proves otherwise.
They analzyed employee turnover at semiconductor companies in the United States and discovered that when an employee left it often resulted in deep, mutually beneficial knowledge relationships being formed between the company and place that the employee had joined. This is because social networks that transcend companies allow the employees left behind to gain access to the knowledge generated at their colleague’s new company.
Read CIO magazine’s take on it and find out more about Lori Rosenkopf’s research.
