关键词: 年长员工知识寻求, 代际知识转移, 劳动力老龄化

Abstract:

As population aging intensifies and younger labor becomes increasingly scarce, how to fully develop and utilize the resources represented by older workers has become a pressing issue that organizations urgently need to address. Older workers’ knowledge seeking from younger coworkers, as an important means through which older workers achieve successful aging at work, has gradually attracted scholarly attention. However, the literature on older workers’ knowledge seeking from younger coworkers remains unclear, and systematic examination and deep explication of its antecedents and driving mechanisms are still relatively insufficient. To address these gaps, this study, based on a review of the concept and antecedents of older workers’ knowledge seeking from younger coworkers, proposes an integrative theoretical framework.

Firstly, based on a review of the existing literature, this study conceptualizes older workers’ knowledge seeking from younger coworkers. Older workers’ knowledge seeking from younger coworkers is a key link in intergenerational knowledge transfer, emphasizing generational differences and individual voluntariness. Accordingly, this study defines it as the behavior whereby older workers intentionally and proactively acquire younger colleagues’ professional knowledge, experience, insights, and opinions, and learn from those younger colleagues. In addition, this study analyzes similarities and differences between older workers’ knowledge seeking from younger coworkers and other related concepts across six dimensions, namely behavioral goals, behavioral direction, actor relationships, behavioral nature, types of knowledge, and outcome orientation, thereby further clarifying its unique research value.

Second, from the theoretical perspectives of motivation, relationships, cognition and identity, and resources, this study systematically identifies key antecedent variables influencing older workers’ knowledge seeking from younger coworkers, covering multi-level factors including individual characteristics, interpersonal interactions, and team and organizational contexts. On this basis, by integrating the theory of planned behavior with the aging-related characteristics of older workers’ knowledge seeking from younger coworkers, this study constructs a systematic driving model that reveals, across the three dimensions of seeking attitudes, subjective norms, and behavioral control, the formation and transformation mechanisms of older workers’ intentions to seek knowledge and their actual seeking behaviors.

Specifically, nonessentialist beliefs about aging, future time perspective, expected gains, and perceived usefulness function as components of seeking attitudes; age-inclusive human resource practices, mature-age human resource practices, age-inclusive leadership, and an age-diverse climate function as components of subjective norms; and late-career management self-efficacy, late-career developmental effort, intergenerational trust, and the quality of intergenerational interactions function as components of behavioral control. Together, these factors can strengthen older workers’ intentions to seek knowledge and thereby promote their knowledge seeking behaviors. Furthermore, older workers’ self-monitoring can weaken the transformation of knowledge seeking intentions into behavior, whereas a positive organizational learning climate can strengthen this transformation process.

Although this study systematically examines the antecedents and driving mechanisms of older workers’ knowledge seeking from younger coworkers, related research remains at an early stage. Future research can focus on the role of older workers as actors in intergenerational knowledge seeking behaviors and further deepen the following directions: first, continually enrich the driving factors and mechanisms by introducing new antecedents such as STAARA (smart technology, artificial intelligence, automation, robotics, and algorithms) technology and knowledge characteristics; second, construct governance frameworks that address both pre- and post-behavioral phases, including mechanisms that drive the emergence of behaviors and mechanisms that mitigate adverse effects; third, adopt more advanced research designs, such as the experience sampling method (ESM) and longitudinal approaches, to reveal dynamic processes; fourth, conduct localized studies to explore how Chinese contextual factors such as face concerns, traditionality, and collectivist culture affect older workers’ knowledge seeking from younger coworkers; fifth, broaden theoretical perspectives by integrating aging-context features and applying more fitting theories, such as selection, optimization, and compensation theory and socioemotional selectivity theory, to further deepen understanding of older workers’ knowledge-seeking behavior.

Key words: knowledge seeking of older workers, intergenerational knowledge transfer, workforce aging