An Investigation of Knowledge Transfer and Retention in a Government Procurement Office

<p>There is no measure for the loss of corporate memory. Organizations build a reservoir of knowledge in its employees and this knowledge becomes a critical ingredient in an organization's ability to carry out its mission. Knowledgeable people are extremely valuable and once they leave their organizationally-applied knowledge leaves with them. This study introduces specific knowledge attributes that significantly impact effective tacit and explicit knowledge transfer and retention. Under this construct the proposed investigation explores a government program office to see if replacing experienced government employees with outsourced personnel impacts corporate knowledge retention. The study concludes that a loss of corporate knowledge can occur within U.S. government procurement program offices when government personnel are replaced with contractors who do not transfer their knowledge. When the organization does not have a useful knowledge management system outsourced employees have a lack of trust in the system a lack of transferred knowledge can be expected. For this reason contractors use other means to store and transfer their knowledge in systems not available or accessible to the organization.</p><p>This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore you will see the original copyright references library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world) and other notations in the work.</p><p>This work is in the public domain in the United States of America and possibly other nations. Within the United States you may freely copy and distribute this work as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.</p><p>As a reproduction of a historical artifact this work may contain missing or blurred pages poor pictures errant marks etc. Scholars believe and we concur that this work is important enough to be preserved reproduced and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.</p><br>