Now back to some KM research …

I’ve recently been pondering the question of precisely what we mean by the terms “knowledge-work” and “knowledge-worker”. These terms are used fairly broadly by many people in many disciplines, and there seems to be an assumption that they are common-sense terms, and we all know what they refer to. But on further investigation, it isn’t clear that there is a consensus answer to the question “Who/what is a knowledge worker?”

The wikipedia, always a good place to start (despite Dave Snowden’s worries with it) says the following:

Knowledge worker, a term coined by Peter Drucker in 1959, is one who works primarily with information or one who develops and uses knowledge in the workplace.

Using google, and related search engines provided this definition:

A knowledge worker is anyone who works for a living at the tasks of developing or using knowledge. For example, a knowledge worker might be someone who works at any of the tasks of planning, acquiring, searching, analyzing, organizing, storing, programming, distributing, marketing, or otherwise contributing to the transformation and commerce of information and those (often the same people) who work at using the knowledge so produced. A term first used by Peter Drucker in his 1959 book, Landmarks of Tomorrow, the knowledge worker includes those in the information technology fields, such as programmers, systems analysts, technical writers, academic professionals, researchers, and so forth. The term is also frequently used to include people outside of information technology, such as lawyers, teachers, scientists of all kinds, and also students of all kinds.

Following up the reference to Drucker led to his book Management: Tasks, Responsibilities and Practices, (Harper & Row; New York, 1973), in which he said that a knowledge worker is someone …

“who puts to work what he has learned in systematic education, that is, concepts, ideas and theories, rather than the man who puts to work manual skill or muscle”

[referenced in Kidd 1994 (pdf)]

Following there ideas and quotes I recently read Drucker’s Landmarks of Tomorrow, and I must say I was both underwhelmed by the style and content of the work, and a little disturbed by his overt and uncritical Conservatism. I don’t have the time for a full commentary right now, so I guess I’ll come back in a later post with some reflections on that work.

Moving to some more contemporary approaches, in his recent book Tom Davenport defines a knowledge worker fairly generally as someone who “thinks for a living”.

Knowledge workers have high degrees of expertise, education, or experience, and the primary purpose of their jobs involves the creation, distribution, or application of knowledge.

James Cordata, in his article in his edited collection The Rise of the Knowledge Worker (1998), lists some interesting propositions regarding the nature of knowledge work:

• First, a class of knowledge work comes into existence when a body of related information must be collected, applied, and built on for subsequent actions.
• Second, knowledge work is often created by the introduction of some new knowledge handling technology.
• Third, knowledge workers increase in number in environments where complexity of work expands at the same time that either the volume of work or the size of the organization in which it is done grows.

Cordata’s points out both that knowledge workers have always been around, and that they are becoming increasingly numerous and significant:

“…quite simply, increasingly everyone is becoming a knowledge worker.”

Henry Linger & Juhani Iivari’s definition is probably the most precise of any I have encountered:

An initial characterisation of KW is work that:

• it is based on a body of knowledge,
• entails working on representations (data) of the objects of work
• stipulates typically a deep understanding of the objects of work, and
• the outputs of which entail knowledge as their essential ingredient.

From: Iivari, J. & Linger, H., (1999), “Knowledge work as collaborative work: A situated activity theory view”, Proceedings of the Hawaiian International Conference on Systems Science (HICSS’32)

There are some more interesting definitions and quotes here:

So what is a knowledge worker?

• A problem solver versus a production worker;
• A person who uses intellectual rather than manual skills to earn a living;
• An individual who requires a high level of autonomy;
• A manipulator of symbols; someone paid for quality of judgement rather than speed of work;
• A worker who uses unique processes;
• Someone who possesses un-codified knowledge which is difficult to duplicate;
• A worker who sources between his ears;
• Someone who uses knowledge and information to add to deeper knowledge and information.

[Western Management Consultants. Herding knowledge workers? 2002]

So where does that leave us? We have a list of general platitudes about what/who knowledge workers are, and a fairly vague idea of what knowledge work is. But does all of this help us answer substantive questions, and does it help with anything practical? Does it help us decide who are and who aren’t knowledge workers? Are we all knowledge workers in some way, as some commentators seem to imply? If that is the case, what is the point of the label knowledge-worker?

Check back soon for my take on these questions!

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 6th, 2005 at 4:19 pm and is filed under KM Research. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.