DARBUOTOJŲ ŽINIŲ POREIKIS ŠIUOLAIKINĖJE ORGANIZACIJOJE

Needs for the Kmployee knowledge in Modern Organizations

Abstract

The twenty-first century has been named as the era of changing paradigms based on knowledge and its constant renewal. The knowledge in the process of globalization is becoming an important factor for sustainable development (Dementjeva, 2011), helping the organization to take over the most valuable knowledge and for the individual to refresh both general and professional knowledge.

The European Union Communique (2009) states that the employee needs to broaden the knowledge and understanding, attaining new skills and competences. The Budapest-Vienna document (2010) focuses on the knowledge society, innovations and intellectual resources, thanks to which the intellectual value of the organization exceeds the value of material property (Handy,1990) and there is a need to conceptualize the potential of the individual knowledge which becomes the personal and organizational success, influences the efficiency of investments, economic development and even the power of the state (Morkvenas, 2010).

The problem of Lithuanian modern organizations is - the formation and assessment of the need for employee knowledge is rather passive and not oriented to the future prospects, that is, – non-business entities form the need for the knowledge, but educational institutions. Lithuanian employer investments in employees are low and the forecast for the need of professionals is relatively expensive and complicated (Martinaitis, 2010).

The education reform, implemented in the context of the rapidly changing social environment and globalization processes, that is, to the possibility of the entities to create and give a sense to reality. Modern society is characterized by the change of paradigms, where the knowledge is constantly refreshed and is temporary. Such changes in the structure of knowledge at the time of globalization initiate the distribution between a new social status and social influence (Kanapeckaitė, Gribniak, 2007).

Scientists use various terms to describe the employee‘s knowledge: individual competence (Galbraith, 1964), knowledge employees (Drucker, 1994), intellectual capital of employees (Stewart, Ruckdeschel, 1998; Bonti, 1998), employee capital (Mikulėnienė, Jucevičius, 2000), intangible assets (Lev, 2001), human capital (Webster, 2006; Leonienė, 2008), employee knowledge potential (Morkvėnas, 2010). The diversity of these concepts can be explained by the fact that the analyzed topics are developing for discovering new terms which are already used in other senses. Therefore, in the absence of the generalized concept of the knowledge, the concept the need for knowledge is used to solve this problem. The problem remains relevant to both the theoretical and practical point of view, but only in the recent years more attention has been paid to quantitative and qualitative knowledge assessment methodologies. However, the unanimous employee knowledge assessment model hasn‘t been created yet, although, it is emphasized.

The research object of the article is the need of knowledge.

The aim of the research is to assess the need for employee knowledge in the construction sector.

The research objectives are to analyze the factors forming the need for employee knowledge; to investigate the construction business sector employee approach to the need for the formation of knowledge.

Research study methods: Theoretical insights and their generalization; questionnaire; mathematical analysis of the survey data.