Understanding the motivational benefits of knowledge transfer for older and younger workers in age-diverse coworker dyads: An actor-partner interdependence model

The growing age diversity in organizations in most industrialized economies provides
opportunities to motivate both older and younger workers by enabling them to benefit from
each other through knowledge transfer. In this study, we integrate self-determination theory
with socio-emotional selectivity theory to argue that the alignment between workers’ age and
their roles in knowledge transfer can generate motivational benefits for them. More
specifically, we argue that receiving knowledge from coworkers (i.e., actor knowledge
receiving) is more closely aligned with younger workers’ goal priorities, while having
coworkers receive one’s knowledge (i.e., partner knowledge receiving) is more closely
aligned with older workers’ goal priorities. We expect that these motivational benefits
manifest in younger and older workers’ need fulfillment at work, which can shape their
subsequent intention to remain with the organization. We used an actor-partner
interdependence model to test our hypotheses with time-lagged data from a sample of 173
age-diverse coworker dyads, and found support for most of our hypotheses. The age-specific
motivational perspective that we adopt has implications for self-determination theory and
research on knowledge transfer and mentoring.