The effect of knowledge worker's turnover from knowledge-based firms: A system dynamics approach

In recent years, one of the main concerns of knowledge- based firms is turnover of their knowledge workers. The most important capital and competitive advantage of knowledge-based firms is their intellectual capital and the survival and success of these firms depends on their knowledge workers’ performance. Hence, studying this issue and adopting a policy package for keeping them is much vital to maintain a firm’s competitive advantages. Using an Iranian knowledge-based software manufacturer as a sample, we applied a system dynamics approach, to investigate the turnover of knowledge-workers in this firm. Then, the system behavior of proposed model was simulated in Vensim software environment. The model is composed of seven dynamic hypothesis, namely “career path”, “customers temptation”, “official vertical interaction”, “shock in working”, “perceived injustice”, “damage to brand” and “escape from accepting crisis”. After validating the model, some policies such as “job enrichment", “reorganizing to a conglomorate form of structure”, “adapting working conditions with market standards”, “change evaluation intervals”, “keeping far knowledge workers from customers” and “making long term partnership with knowledge workers” were suggested in order to control and prevent the knowledge workers’ turnover from this company.