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Top1. Introduction
Tourism is a service-oriented industry which requires substantial customized efforts by their employees to sustain (Mowforth & Munt, 2015). Employees need to serve the customers with updated and convincing solutions. In the last decade, the customer preferences have seen a shift from face to face interaction to online transactions. With this change, the role of technology in the tourism sector has increased and so is the research in this area (Dhar, 2015). This change called for employees to learn and grow their technical know-how (Srivastava & Dhar, 2016). However, the problem in the process of technological knowledge is higher attrition rate (Srivastava, 2018). Therefore, to fill up the demand, employers recruit part-time knowledge workers. The employers need to train the newcomers with required skills and knowledge every time someone joins the organization. As workers come and go, the industry is not able to retain knowledge workers for long terms, who can assist and guide others and form the knowledgeable composition of their workforce (Srivastava & Dhar, 2016). Such movement will ultimately affect the overall service quality and market image of the industry.
Knowledge workers are the people who consist of specialized knowledge in their area, though work as part-timers or temporary workers (Adams & Oleksak, 2010). They are the non-repetitive and results-oriented person, who merge the traditional knowledge of connecting rational, analytical problem solving with science and necessary expertise, with subjectivity including the capability to resolve complex concerns. It is them who know and not their organization. They frame the intellectual capital for the organization, which acts as a strategic intangible asset for the organization (Hussi, 2004) to derive better customers and improve the productivity at large (Adams & Oleksak, 2010). In this digital age, knowledge workers need high information technology mechanism at a workplace. However, such employees tend to leave the organization in the absence of technological awareness, thus, leaving the organization handicapped.
Knowledge sharing (KS) is a part of a knowledge-centered activity. It refers to those activities in which knowledge is transferred from one person to another or one group to another within an organizational premise (Chowdhury, 2005). Studies assume that when knowledge workers are higher in number, knowledge sharing behaviour also exists (Collins & Smith, 2006). Though this proposition has been proved to be wrong (Ritala et al., 2015; Mesmer-Magnus & DeChurch, 2009; Vachon & Klassen, 2008). Similarly, another assumption was propounded, that mere existence of technology would encourage knowledge sharing. Executives and managers assume that employee will share knowledge through technology, once they know how to use technology. Although, this proposition was again rejected as people do not share knowledge easily, even though they have the high-level technology (Collins & Smith, 2006; Vachon & Klassen, 2008).