Understanding knowledge’s impact on older hospitality workers: The past, present, and future

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

This study delves into the experiences of older workers involved in the hospitality industry, investigating the significance of previous, current and future knowledge in equipping their hospitality careers. The conceptual notions of the knowledge-based view of the firm were appraised. Semi-structured open-ended interviews conducted among 56 older workers involved in both managerial and non-managerial positions highlighted the magnitude of 11 conceptual dimensions. Among these, the organisational, human resource, and self-development uplift dimensions help explain how previous knowledge has equipped participants and their firms. Similarly, the organisational momentum or career-enlightening dimensions elucidate current knowledge in fortifying earlier accumulated knowledge, while future required knowledge can be understood by the individual-organisational and generational-team bridging dimensions. The analysis also reveals alignments between the crafted dimensions and the knowledge-based model. A developed framework resulting from the compendium of dimensions, together with the identified alignments, underscores implications for hospitality employees, their firms, industry and policymakers. • Examines past, current, and future knowledge among older hospitality employees. • Gathers the viewpoints of experienced hospitality managers and non-managers. • Uses qualitative content analysis and data structure as analysis tools. • Uncovers 11 conceptual dimensions as the basis for a proposed framework. • Proposes theoretical and practical implications for practitioners and researchers.