Rasa Smaliukienė

Entrepreneurship Opportunities after Military Career: Practice in Central and Eastern versus Western Europe

This paper seeks to contribute to the discussion devoted to entrepreneurship of a specific profession group – early retired servicemen. The aim of the paper is to provide a composition of existing practices of entrepreneurship skills development of early retired servicemen in EU member countries and evaluate the differences between Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and Western Europe (WE) practice. The results indicate the lack of entrepreneurship development policies for early retired servicemen, while service in military often provides highly specific competencies that can be adapted as transferable expertise and knowledge for entrepreneurship.

Explicating the role of trust in knowledge sharing: a structural equation model test

Although the large body of literature suggests that trust is a prerequisite for knowledge sharing, the understanding of mediational pathways remains limited. The paper fills the gap by combining two separate streams in knowledge sharing, where the first reflects the paradigm of the organizational behaviour theory and highlights the impact of organizational culture and employees’ trust; where the second one discloses the impact of technology deployment in knowledge sharing. Building on the premises that interdependence between variables that affect knowledge sharing raises form organizational culture of trust and available technologies, we examine the structural origins of knowledge sharing. As a method structural equation modelling test was used to analyse the data. Hypothesised five-factor model was tested through two stages using AMOS software. The findings carry theoretical implications for the knowledge management body of knowledge since they extended the research on knowledge sharing by integrating organisational culture and technological solutions into one complex system. Form practical perspective, the relationship among four predictors – trust in leadership, trust in co-workers, trust in technologies for knowledge management, and fear of losing one’s value – provide a proof on how organizations knowledge sharing is composed and how it could be developed.