The Impacts of Technical Employees' Departure on Historic Buildings Organizations' Performance

Abstract

Historic buildings (HBs) regarded as a national heritage for the countries and should therefore be maintained. Most governments have established institutions to conserve HBs. The Management of Historical Cities Bureau (MHCB) is a governmental non-profit institution has established since 1986 in Tripoli-Libya. This institution suffers from departure of senior technical staff. The objectives of this paper are to explore the rate of technical employees' movement and its impacts on the performance of MHCB and the reasons that make them leave. Also, it shed light on knowledge management (KM) efforts for recovering intellectual capital in the MHCB. Multi-methods were used for collecting data: analysing organisational documents, interviews, and observations that included taking notes and pictures. The findings presented that a high rate of technical staff left the MHCB between 1990 and 2010. This situation impacted the performance of the MHCB in terms of repetition of mistakes in repairing HBs due to a knowledge gap in the MHCB. This also, caused non-continuity of knowledge transfer and damage to accumulated knowledge, in addition to the cost of the time and money for rehabilitating technical staff. The significant hidden threat to Libyan HBs is most of departing staff will not use their knowledge in the field of HBs conservation. The chance for departing technical staff to get a job in the same field in other organization is very few. Also, the leaving of technical staff is irreplaceable because this institution is unique in Tripoli. The opportunity of specialist transition from other organization to MHCB is very few. The main reasons why employees leave the institution are: administrative changes, disagreement between employees and their heads and limited motivations combined with unhealthy and dangerous workplaces in old buildings. Finally, the paper shed light on knowledge management (KM) efforts that can recover some intellectual capital in the MHCB.

Knowledge Management in Historic Buildings Conservation Organizations

“…Also, Taghizadeh et al [4] developed a KM model system for historic buildings restoration projects. Moreover, Tarhuni studied the effect of technical employees' turnover on historic buildings conservation organizations' performance [5].…”