CONDITIONS AND PRINCIPLES FOr Knowledgecontinuity Ensuring in organiZations

Knowledge workers are those who bear corporate know-how. On their leaving the corporate knowledge leaves too, and as a result the organization significantly loses. Therefore, it is very important to get known as soon as possible which employee and which kind of knowledge are going to leave. The organization management must ensure knowledge continuity by knowledge sharing, i.e. knowledge transfer to the leaving employee’s successor. If knowledge is not shared (e.g. person-to-person), it gets lost when its incumbent leaves the organization and its re-creation may be hard. Because the power of any organization consists in its knowledge, the organization should not lose employees bearing critical knowledge. The article focuses on the issue of knowledge continuity ensuring the organization a competitive advantage. For this purpose, it is necessary to fulfil the requirements and conditions identified and tested by means of quantitative and qualitative surveys carried out among middle and top managers from various organizations in the Czech Republic. One of the conclusions of the article is that knowledge continuity ensuring may be considered a strategic approach to human resources management through which an organization ensures its employees’ future (by increasing their qualification) and simultaneously enhances its competitiveness