An Employee Typology: A Knowledge Management Perspective

This research-in-progress paper presents a 2x2 model of employee typology, which is based on the two dimensions of knowledge and knowledge sharing. There is a vast amount of literature that has acknowledged that the management of knowledge is an important strategic and tactical approach to improve organizational performance. Knowledge sharing between employees has also been recognized as a sound strategy to increase the value of the knowledge within a firm. The 2x2 presented in this paper proposes a typology of employees that contributes to the literature both from an academic as well as a practitioner perspective; it extends the literature on knowledge management, with particular focus on people while providing managers with guidance on how to classify their employees to facilitate employee management. The conceptualization of this model is the first step in our research on the importance of employee typology in KM. The next step is to develop measurement instruments to explore both dimensions in order to test the model