Navigating Aging and Technology: A Person-Organization-Technology Model of Intergenerational Knowledge Seeking in the Digital Workplace

Enterprise social media (ESM) platforms can well support mature-age employees’ knowledge seeking from younger colleagues (called intergenerational knowledge seeking, IGKS) in digital workplaces. However, little is known about why and when mature-age employees use or do not use ESM to proactively conduct IGKS. Drawing on conservation of resource theory, we developed a person-organization-technology model to examine the dual mechanisms enabling or constraining mature-age employees’ IGKS in ESM. Study 1 (a field study with 141 age-diverse employee dyads) suggested that positive aging experience (i.e., personal growth) promoted IGKS in ESM via remaining opportunities. We replicated the first study’s findings in Study 2 (a three-wave survey with 262 mature-age employees) and found that negative aging experience (i.e., physical loss) hindered IGKS in ESM through the mediation of remaining opportunities. Moreover, Study 2 further found that perceived mature-age HR practices weakened the negative relationship between physical loss and remaining opportunities, while trust in functionality of ESM strengthened the positive relationship between remaining opportunities and mature-age employees’ IGKS in ESM. These findings contribute to understanding and promoting mature-age employees’ behaviors of using ESM to conduct IGKS in digital workplaces.