Are There Differences in the way Middle Managers and Their Subordinates are Available for Each Other Based on the Middle Managers' Individual Characteristics?

The way knowledge is shared by organizational members plays an essential and central role in the success of organizations. It should not be forgotten that those who take part in the knowledge sharing process also benefit from it. Middle managers after playing a significant role in the vertical communication their organization influence the knowledge sharing process within their organization as well. Our paper makes an attempt to present those components of middle manager's individual characteristics that result in differences in their maturity of knowledge sharing. The method and results of revealing these differences are introduced in this paper. Since 2007 an empirical survey has been conducted during which 400 middle managers working at medium- and large-sized enterprises in Hungary have been investigated by a questionnaire. The answers of this survey have been analysed first using decision tree than using analysis of variance or post hoc test. Our paper presents one of the elements of middle managers' maturity of knowledge which is the availability among middle managers and their subordinates. According to our research availability is the time and willingness of a person to find the time to help other colleagues when they ask for help. The investigated individual characteristics are the middle managers' age, their working years and their functional area at their organizations. Findings of the research have indicated that difference has be found in the availability among the middle managers and their subordinates who work at medium and large sized enterprises in Hungary on the basis of at least one of the individual characteristics which are functional area and age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]