The Competencies for Knowledge Management and the Process Orientation in the Post-Covid Economy. Generation Z Students Perspective

ABSTRACT

Taking into account the changes occurring in the aftermath of the Covid-19 crisis and taking the perspective of students from generation Z currently entering the labour market, the aim of this article is to assess the increase in the importance of competencies for knowledge management on the impact of process orientation. The empirical research was conducted using an online survey method at two leading universities in Poland in economic education, and complete data were collected from 711 generation Z students. They were analysed using the structural equation modelling method. The results show that the increase in the importance of competencies for knowledge management following the Covid-19 crisis will affect the change of the five of six process orientation components, i.e. defining business processes more clearly, allocating resources to a greater extent based on business processes, broader setting of specific performance targets for different business processes, measuring the outcome of different business processes more closely and more unambiguous designation of process owners. Only in the case of rewarding employees based on the implementation of business processes in which they are involved, students from generation Z do not see the impact of the increasing importance of competencies for knowledge management. © 2022, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.