Knowledge Transfer Between Generations In a knowledge-based economy, knowledge management has taken on more importance than it has in the past. Skills and understanding of different ideas and processes have to be continually disseminated throughout organizations to for them to keep pace with organizational changes. The application of the knowledge, skills and attitudes that are learned from experiencing a situation on similar situations with effectiveness is also called transfer of learning (Leberman, McDonald, & Doyle, 2006). The transfer of knowledge must come from a range of different sources and flow through the organization in multiple channels as well as in different directions.

Organizations, as a whole, need to have a high level of knowledge, not just certain or senior people. This means that organizations must find ways to ensure effective, efficient transmission of knowledge throughout the organization. This paper looks at the subject of knowledge management to draw some conclusions about knowledge transfer between generations in the modern era. There are many different theoretical approaches and knowledge transfer frameworks that can applied that also can be categorized into four broad principles such as (Haskell, 2001):

The division of transfer of learning into various categories by the taxonomical approach

The focus driven approach of the development and contributions of different disciplines that is application domain driven

The faculties transfer models that involve the examination of the psychological functions to transfer and The revelation, comparison and contrasting of theoretical and empirical traditions that is driven by concept evaluation.

The process of knowledge transfer is beneficial in transferring the learned skills and knowledge to new situations throughout the organization which represents a continuous process in most modern organizations. Most employees are naturally open to learning new skills that can make their work...

These transfer also occur at different stages. For example, new employees will have to undergo some level of training and learning process to get them job ready, and experienced employees will have to also undergo continuous education; espcecially due to the rapid advancement of technology (Demirer & Sahin, 2013). There have also been many models proposed to help understand how knowledge transfers in organizations more specifically.
The near and far learning transfer theory deals with the process of application of the knowledge and skills acquired previously to new situations. The near transfer of skills and knowledge occurs when a learner or an employee uses a set of pre-acquired skills and knowledge to situations in the same way every time (Kneppers, Elshout-Mohr, van Boxtel, & van Hout-Wolters, 2007). This model is especially adept when learning transfer is applicable for repetitive tasks or tasks that require the similar procedures and has a high success rate regarding knowledge transfer. However, one disadvantage of this model is that this style of transfer does not allow skills and knowledge that are more complex in nature to be applied to changes in situations and scenarios (Cree & Macaulay, 2000).

Far transfer, by contrast, requires the adoption and adaption of guidelines for the transfer in changing situations. This style of knowledge transfer includes more complex types of knowledge. The advantage of this style of transfer of learning is that this allows the learner to adapt the skills to varying situations, yet the success rate is generally lower than that of near transfer process (Demirer & Sahin, 2013).

Ruch (2000) notes that institutional knowledge is a critical component of an organization as well as a significant source of sustainable competitive advantage. As such, Ruch (2000) argues that there needs to be knowledge transfer between generations, and that organizations need to focus on retaining younger employees…