| For the past decade, retirement projections for the federal civilian workforce have fluctuated drastically. Ultimately, unplanned staffing losses can compromise national security and the provision of public services (U. S. General Accounting Office, 2001; U. S. Government Accountability Office, 2014). In response to losing workplace knowledge due to the turnover associated with federal retirement, several federal initiatives have introduced the transfer of workplace knowledge as a solution for sustainable civic performance. This approach requires agency leaders to implement best practices and strategies associated with employee development, mentoring and coaching, and improved supervisory performance to ensure that knowledge sharing takes place across varying levels and relationships in the federal workplace. Workplace knowledge is best defined as the combination of historical perspective and operational know-how to support maximum organizational performance (Nonaka, 1994; Snider & Nissen, 2003; Stevenson, 2002). Contextually, federal workplace is synonymous with bureaucracy. In contemporary terms, bureaucracy is "characterized by highly routinized tasks, high levels of formalization and centralized authority" (Scott & Davis, 2007, p. 131). Weber's (1930) comparison of a bureaucracy to an 'iron cage' is both classical and paramount to this discussion. Within the iron cage, Weber posed that the further the organization perfects its operation, the more dehumanized the interaction among players (Farganis, 2011). As a result, social exchange theory will provide the theoretical underpinnings for examining the creation of a knowledge economy in the federal workplace. This secondary analysis of the 2014 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS) data (N = 392,752) uses logistic regression analysis to further explore to what extent knowledge acquisition, formal workplace culture, informal workplace culture, and mentoring-like relationships with supervisors predict knowledge sharing in the federal workplace. Findings show that the largest impact on knowledge sharing comes from mentoring-like relationships with supervisors followed by knowledge acquisition, informal workplace culture, and formal workplace culture respectively. Conclusions drawn from the findings suggest the possibility that choosing to share or not share knowledge may be reinforced by power and status when it comes to race, supervisor status, and paygrade in a bureaucratic workplace knowledge sharing economy. |
