Knowledge Worker

 Knowledge Worker

1.the change from traditional economy to knowledge-based economy.

    Traditional economy mainly depends on land, labor, and capital. People who own these three factors would be very likely to succeed. Traditional economy follows the law of diminishing returns which states that in all productive processes, adding more of one factor of production, while holding all others constant, will at some point yield lower incremental per-unit returns (Samuelson, Paul A.; Nordhaus, William D., 2001).

    But now, we are in the modern economy which is the knowledge-based economy. Knowledge has become the main source of economy and as guru Ikujiro Nonaka said. “In an economy where the only certainty is uncertainty, the one sure source of lasting competitive advantage is knowledge”. Knowledge-based economy follows the law of increasing returns which means the more you use knowledge, the more increment you will get.

    Why knowledge becomes the most important factor in the modern economy? In the past decades, globalization produces fierce competition of business. Companies must empower themselves to compete in the global market. The only way to do that is to be innovative, because the success and stability of modern companies predominantly depend on the continuity of innovation (Draskovic, V., et all., 2013). And innovation comes from knowledge.

    So, where the companies can get the knowledge they need? The answer is knowledge worker.

2.What is knowledge worker？

    According to Peter Drucker, “ a knowledge worker is anyone who works for a living at the tasks of developing and or using knowledge”. They have so many characteristics different from the traditional workers’. See following chart:

3.The rise of knowledge worker changes the nature of management.

    The characteristics of knowledge worker mean that the way of management must be changed. For example, to enable them to be creative and have more new ideas, you should give them more free time to learn and to find new things instead of having them sit in the office every day. To transform from classical organization to modern organization, 3 main areas have to be changed( details of the 3 areas are beyond this blog, but they will be presented in the future):

    1)Management structure

    2)Human resource management

    3)Technology

    Naturally, the roles of managers also need to change, see following comparison:    

    

  

4.The measurement of k worker productivity

    It is difficult to measure the productivity of knowledge workers since their can not be measured by quantity, but the past studies have given us some suggestion.

    The way university academic staff performance and productivity is measured is

frequently cited as a best practice model in discussions of knowledge worker productivity. Though universities develop different measurements, them have some common features: 

    a) They are based on manager/employee agreed outcome (not output) measures

    b) They are contextually valid – that is, they are informed by what a particular business unit needs in terms of outcomes related to the business goals

    c)They enjoy perceived fairness

    d) They provide a quantitative basis for evaluation and reward of knowledge work

    e) They are customized to provide incentives that individual workers value

    f) They apply multidimensional measurement to capture productivity

i.e. data is captured from a range of sources that simultaneously examine quantity and quality as well as tangible and intangible aspects in service provision. This approach also enables the combination of subjective and objective measures which may not by themselves provide information sufficient enough).

    g) The data captured is both objective and subjective

                                             (GSA, 2011)

    There is no fixed measurement of knowledge worker, the only thing companies can do is to set up their owns.

5.K worker and knowledge management

    Knowledge management(KM) is a recently booming subject. It is a process including capturing knowledge, organizing and storing knowledge, sharing knowledge and applying it. It can help company effectively use the knowledge of knowledge workers to innovate so as to increase the competitiveness. Hence it is very vital for companies in today’s world.. Many western and European companies have applied it, and most of them have yielded good results. I will not talk about it in this blog, but I will say something about it next time.