Same bed,but different dreams? Comparing retired and incumbent police officers’ perceptions of lost knowledge and transfer mechanisms

Police forces are undoubtedly knowledge workers in the public sector. However, policing knowledge is getting lost as the baby-boom generation is approaching retirement age and officers failed to capture and retain the retirees’ knowledge before they leave. Given the lack of empirical studies which examine the knowledge transfer between different generations of police officers, this study attempts to contribute a holistic perspective which involves both the retiree (the knowledge transferor) and the incumbent (the transferee) in a knowledge transfer. Through four rounds of Delphi survey, this study found that both groups recognized that knowledge is being lost as the retiree leaves. Yet, the panels demonstrated divergent perceptions about what kind of knowledge is being lost. The difference between the panels’ perceptions was significantly increased regarding the extent to which the knowledge is being lost. This study also found that people-based approaches were commonly preferred by both panels as the best methods. However, the difference between the groups occurred as the incumbent expressed a higher willingness to use IT-based approaches than did the retiree.