Impact of Individual Relative Deprivation in Knowledge on Employees’ Behaviour and Performance: Past, Present, and Future Knowledge Stature

Knowledge is an experience and everything else available is just information (Albert Einstein,1901). Knowledge is created through epistemological process and amplified through ontological cognitive operation. It is information put into action (O’Dell and Grayson, 1998). Knowledge refers to the process that adds meaning to objects through the integration of other sources, that builds understanding and relations (Bates, 2005).
Knowledge is a blend of information, perspectives, experiences, context, interaction between individuals, in groups, and organsiations (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995). It is the ultimate resource that has become the core asset of organisations in the knowledge economy.
The prime and unavoidable aspect for perseverance and perpetuation of organisational competitive strength is to manage the employees’ knowledge. Organisations must focus not only on recycling the existing knowledge but focal on generating and managing new knowledge for its sustenance in the knowledge era. Evidence shows that employees’ knowledge produces greater value in assets through formalizing, capturing, leveraging, and gathering advancement in intellectual processes. Employees’ experiences can be used to create wealth in the organisation.
Organisations depend on individuals’ knowledge, and individuals rely on the aspects of knowledge management to escalate their knowledge. Knowledge management propels the initiatives to leverage knowledge that would contribute to the fulfillment of organisational strength. This spiral of learning assist organisations to succeed in the knowledge workers knowledge through the aspects of knowledge management, and the range of practice includes knowledge creation, storage, and sharing with its application. The aspects validate the culture of learning, unlearn to relearn, and accelerates the knowledge holding in employees.
The study brings forth employees’ knowledge as a blend of both subjective and objective state of mind and is closely related to subjective emotions associated with the notion of good, justice, and truth. They evaluate their natural endowment with a justice or injustice stance. As the fundamental psychological need formulates a thought to perceive the world as a just place, where employees believe they are entitled to avail, enhance, and deserve consistent growth to elevate their knowledge stature.
The research veiled the fact that employees use their past to sculpt their subjective realities in the present and prognosticate their future. To understand the above phenomenon, the study tried to encapsulate the notion in which employees compare their present knowledge stature with the past, to prognosticate the future knowledge holding. They compare themselves, as it does matter what they perceive about themselves in the knowledge hierarchy. The Phenomenological research adopted in the study deepened the understanding of the complex phenomena of individual relative deprivation (IRD), which has been primarily explained through social judgments that are shaped with absolute and subjective standards.
Several investigations have been carried out, and the result of the literature are remarkable on knowledge, knowledge management, and individual relative deprivation (IRD). Interestingly, none of the studies are released coalescing employees’ knowledge, associating the aspects of knowledge management and individual relative deprivation. Despite knowing the fact that knowledge is the highest degree of valuable resource of an organisation and organisations must ameliorate and not deprived employees in knowledge.
The study reconnaissance individual relative deprivation in knowledge with qualitative methodology, conducted 69 interviews with software engineers from the IT sector and explored IRD causes cognitive dissonance, frustration and upshots stress in employees. The analysis of the data was performed using NVivo 14 software, a computer-assisted qualitative data analysis tool (CAQDAS) assisted the investigation to arrive at a positive psychology of knowledge workers’ experience of IRD in knowledge.
Further, it extends its wings to investigate reactance in employees due to IRD in knowledge and why deprived employees fail to show any kind of reaction to being unjustly treated, even though they are being deprived of rights or resources.
Any sort of deprivation has an effect on employees; the study explored the impact of individual relative deprivation in knowledge on employees’ behaviour and performance.