The effect of management actions on knowledge transfer within the aerospace industry

In recent years, many aerospace companies have merged in response to drastic reductions in the number of available government contracts. As a result of these mergers, many of the senior engineers will be retiring or leaving their companies in the next 5 to 15 years and most will take their knowledge with them. While knowledge capture efforts are often initiated, they rarely meet expectations. The purpose of this research was to identify positive management actions that encourage engineers to share their knowledge and increase the success level of knowledge capture activities. The research was conducted using a cross-case analysis of the knowledge capture efforts associated with the movement of three engineering projects to new sites. Existing data indicating the level of effort exhibited by employees in completing each question on a knowledge capture instrument were categorized and an average score arrived at for each employee. The resultant data were then analyzed using three inferential statistical tests: an analysis of variance using a single factor (ANOVA), an Equivalent Means of Pairs test, and Chi-Square to test the relationships between the organizations and their scores. These data were then correlated to the specific managerial actions observed during the moves. The results show that positive specific management actions do play a major role in increasing the level of participation as well as the effort engineers put into knowledge capture activities. The social implications of this research are that organizations can alter management actions that will lead to the transfer of more advanced knowledge reducing training costs and providing a better opportunity to maintain customer satisfaction.