Journal Article Annotation, Annotated Bibliography Example

Starke, F.A. (2003).  Coping with the Sudden Loss of an Indispensable Employee: an exploratory case study. Journal of Applied Behavioral Science 39; 208.

DOI: 10.1177/0021886303255959

The article is dissemination of the findings in a real-time longitudinal survey and interview data dedicated to assessment of explicit and tacit knowledge flows in a small manufacturing business. The focus of the study describes the impact of indispensible employee (IE) and the control group of replacement employees (RE) who took over during sick leaves from the workplace. The hypothesis that explicit and tacit knowledge outflows to coworkers were greater amongst the IE population than the RE, with tacit knowledge inflows marginally greater for RE than IE proved correct. Explicit knowledge inflows were not significant to the outcome of the study. Somewhat surprising is the loss of the IE, had little impact on the firm’s productivity despite the assumption that that the formerly considered ‘indispensible’ factor in the equation.

The article commences with an anecdotal recuperation of common assumptions within organizational theories. A polestar for characterization of the IE, professional players are often denoted as virtual ‘needle in haystack’ from a recruitment perspective. The parameters of loss within the discussion on the topic, point to emotive rather than skill level however, which indicates that capitalization on sports figures in general is one based in celebrity and derivative revenues related to their status as trademarked commodities, rather than actual productivity in each instance.

The complexity of studying IE is drawn into focus here: how many times an employee makes themselves indispensible has much to do with psychological impressions, rather than real accountability. From the position of an accountant, this might not be true, but in the context of organizational teams, where horizontal activities are abundant, as in the manufacturing setting of a small business, delineation between employees may be difficult with exception of actual productivity accorded to line timing and distribution of goods.

Other environments where highly skilled thought processes are employed toward precision that might require alternative cultivation and creativity, introduction of explicit and tacit flows of knowledge might not render an accurate picture, as knowledge may be incorporated quite explicitly, but not always by way of colleague communications. The actual job ‘function’ may be discussed, but content forged through the productive process might not be available for, or benefit from ‘team collaboration’ as technical capacity in certain areas may not be syncopatic.

The study also cites related queries to the topic, and includes a survey conducted by KPMG Management Consulting (1988) which provides an alternative outcome to the one found by the researchers in the more recent findings. Here, a survey of European firms indicated a 13% loss of revenues when only one key employee was no longer present. Although European firms are highly dependent upon personal relationships, as well as highly trained talent, the remedy to the loss to the organization of an IE could possibly be found in certain environments in the U.S. where informational changes are rapid and new market or new service specializations are core to capacity building mechanisms. Conversely, the potential seen in new and especially recently graduating talent from universities pushes the envelope on what companies actually ‘lost’ as change organizations seek to evolve, rather than rely upon experience more and more.

The prevalence of knowledge sharing within the literature on organizational systems in contemporary scholarship is perhaps partly in direct response to the phenomenon of retiring employees reporting that their departure was meaningless to the newer recruits, and that their insights were relatively unimportant due to the transformations in the technological sphere and management practices.  The larger the organization, the more likely that retraction from knowledge sharing by retirees will take place. Multi-national corporations face unprecedented challenges in this area as change managers attempt to address employee integration into global organizations, and especially when an existing entity has been subject to acquisition or take-over.

Implementation to the study did not address inter-organizational networking, and targeted intra-organizational knowledge flows toward interpretation of the distinction between tacit knowledge inferred in the organizational process, and explicit knowledge only contained in the individual blueprint of an IE’s mind. At the beginning of the test, the assumption was that explicit knowledge was too considerable to mitigate by loss of individual contributors in the setting.

What the study revealed was the greatest impact to productivity is through the synthesis of both tacit and explicit knowledge, and that RE also contribute greatly to bidirectional flow of communications and information. The outcomes to the study parallel ‘learner-centered’ theories in Education where students are seen as repositories of knowledge prior to entering the classroom, rather than merely formed through the process of engagement. Ultimately, the educational praxis model works to exemplify continuation of dialectic processes in the classroom, as iterative knowledge is developed through sharing and problem solving.

The hypothesis to the study found only partial evidentiary outcome, as departure of an IE was introduced as the independent variable in the test, with the following Propositions to the assessment’s results:  Proposition 1: (a) More explicit knowledge outflow to coworkers from the IE than from the RE, and (b) more tacit knowledge outflow to coworkers from the IE than from the RE; Proposition 2: (a) More explicit knowledge outflow into the RE from coworkers, and (b) more tacit knowledge will flow into the RE from coworkers; Proposition 3: Organizational performance will suffer in response to the RE replacement of the IE. Analysis of the survey and interview data for dissemination was put into statistical narrative generated by coding responses to the instruments for comparative review of the correlations derived from the dyads.  While coding the qualitative research for statistical analysis is critical on large data sets, as density in discussion may exceed parameters of the investigation, post study queries into ‘why’ the respondents revealed certain tendencies, and how those inflow and outflows of knowledge affected the organization are highly subjective.

Conclusive to the study was the acknowledgement that data collection on knowledge sharing is in itself ‘sticky’ as a mode of deploying productivity, in that environmental influencers force organizations to transform systems of operational integration at the drop of a dime. What is of value in the article is the potential for replication of the model in other professional settings. Unlike precedent generations, of great import is the revelation that traditional ideas about IE might be reconfigured as workers tend to change companies more often within their industry. Hopping from role to role has become more the norm rather than the exception as capital flows attempt to attract skilled, affordable labor in an effort to compete in the global market.

Finally, the development of IT based operations systems that offer firms synthetic knowledge sharing networks has increased productivity by synthetic means, and data formerly the discretion of a few IE, are now readily available to RE. The presence of IT operations systems in the workplace has also created a conduit by which intranet portals are also connected to internet communications which has opened up a new spectrum of professional opportunities for learning and partnering with companies even from the outside.