research-article

Managing aging workforce: filling the gap between what we know and what is in the system

Authors:

Shuhua (Monica) Liu,

Raya FidelAuthors Info & Claims

ICEGOV '07: Proceedings of the 1st international conference on Theory and practice of electronic governance

Pages 121 - 128

https://doi.org/10.1145/1328057.1328084

Published: 10 December 2007 Publication History

Abstract

With the retirement of large groups of senior employees from public sectors in USA, valuable institutional and operational knowledge are also lost when these knowable individuals leave the organization. Although advanced information systems are implemented in public sectors to retain valuable knowledge in the organization, researchers repetitively found that gaps exist between what senior members know and what is available in the system for newcomers to use. How to retain knowledge held by senior employees in the organization becomes a huge challenge faced by public sector management.

This study argues that when using mobile information systems to facilitate fieldworkers' task performance, public sectors need to pay close attention to three factors that might influence knowledge retaining and information reuse: Knowledge tacitness, Criteria of information relevance when it is related to specific tasks, and roles played by active employees, based on observations and interviews with employees using mobile information devices here in a public sector in the Northwest of the US. Furthermore, the conflict between lower management's perception on use of mobile devices and local operation priority is cited as one of the leading reasons why many information systems fail to serve as the main information tank for organizational sustainability.

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Cited By

Santos E(2024)Shifting Demographics and Economic Performance: Unraveling the Influence of Population Aging on GDP Dynamics and Regional InequalitiesJournal of Economic Analysis10.58567/jea030100063:1Online publication date: 15-Mar-2024
https://doi.org/10.58567/jea03010006
Dalkir K(2012)Knowledge ManagementUnderstanding Information Retrieval Systems10.1201/b11499-11(111-123)Online publication date: 26-Jan-2012
https://doi.org/10.1201/b11499-11
Lee SShiva S(2009)A Novel Approach to Knowledge Sharing in Software Systems EngineeringProceedings of the 2009 Fourth IEEE International Conference on Global Software Engineering10.1109/ICGSE.2009.59(376-381)Online publication date: 13-Jul-2009
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/ICGSE.2009.59
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Managing aging workforce: filling the gap between what we know and what is in the system

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cover image ACM Other conferences

ICEGOV '07: Proceedings of the 1st international conference on Theory and practice of electronic governance

December 2007

471 pages

ISBN:9781595938220

DOI:10.1145/1328057

Editors:
Tomasz Janowski
United Nations University
,
Theresa A. Pardo
Center for Technology in Government

Copyright © 2007 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Publication History

Published: 10 December 2007

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ICEGOV '07

ICEGOV '07: International conference on theory and practice in electronic governance

December 10 - 13, 2007

Macao, China

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ICEGOV '07 Paper Acceptance Rate 33 of 130 submissions, 25%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 350 of 865 submissions, 40%

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Cited By

Santos E(2024)Shifting Demographics and Economic Performance: Unraveling the Influence of Population Aging on GDP Dynamics and Regional InequalitiesJournal of Economic Analysis10.58567/jea030100063:1Online publication date: 15-Mar-2024
https://doi.org/10.58567/jea03010006
Dalkir K(2012)Knowledge ManagementUnderstanding Information Retrieval Systems10.1201/b11499-11(111-123)Online publication date: 26-Jan-2012
https://doi.org/10.1201/b11499-11
Lee SShiva S(2009)A Novel Approach to Knowledge Sharing in Software Systems EngineeringProceedings of the 2009 Fourth IEEE International Conference on Global Software Engineering10.1109/ICGSE.2009.59(376-381)Online publication date: 13-Jul-2009
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/ICGSE.2009.59
Dalkir K(2009)Knowledge ManagementEncyclopedia of Library and Information Sciences, Third Edition10.1081/E-ELIS3-120043816(3129-3138)Online publication date: 7-Dec-2009
https://doi.org/10.1081/E-ELIS3-120043816
Pardo TJiang Y(2007)Electronic governance and organizational transformationProceedings of the 1st international conference on Theory and practice of electronic governance10.1145/1328057.1328081(99-107)Online publication date: 10-Dec-2007
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1328057.1328081

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