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1. Introduction
Knowledge retention has become an important and inevitable activity in organizations these days due to changing demographics and the graying of employees, and there is an inexorable threat to the organizations for knowledge loss when employees leave (Stevens, 2010; Levy, 2011; Jennex, 2014). Knowledge-based organizations use knowledge to generate revenue, and, for this purpose, knowledge workers possess, create and apply knowledge (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995) to generate income. Losing these workers means organizations lose the much-needed knowledge which is basis for their competitive advantage. The knowledge of these employees is of key importance, as it may lead to a decay of organizational memory when these employees leave, which in turn may reduce the firm’s ability to identify and use past knowledge for competitive advantage (De Massis et al., 2016). The success of the organization depends on the combined capabilities of key individuals to achieve the organizational goals (Petruzzelli and Savino, 2014). Moreover, these employees possess organizational knowledge, knowledge of governance and knowledge of networks and relationships developed over a period within the organization, and this knowledge is the key to enhance and then sustain firm’s performance (De Massis et al., 2016). Nerkar (2003) is also of the view that knowledge creation is an evolutionary process spread over time, and combining current knowledge with past knowledge evolved over time enhances the impact of new knowledge. Experienced employees who have been working in organizations for a long time can combine past knowledge and current knowledge to effectively manage the organizational goals. However, if they leave the organization, they will take away with them the knowledge accumulated over time. Researchers have identified retiring workers as key contributors to knowledge loss (Calo, 2008; Stevens, 2010; Ball and Gotsill, 2011), suggesting the application of comprehensive knowledge retention strategies to avoid this knowledge loss (Leibowitz, 2009). They are of the view that there has not been much work done regarding retention of employees’ knowledge (Levy, 2011; Durst et al., 2015) and organizations, even when knowing that they are going to lose valuable knowledge due to retirement of employees, do not have formal procedures to handle this pending knowledge loss (Leibowitz, 2009). This study focuses on this aspect of knowledge retention from retiring workers, normally termed baby...