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Defining knowledge worker
By Goh Swee
Seang
IT is a misnomer to use the term of knowledge era in the context of knowledge-based economy (k-economy).
Did the evolution of civilisation taken place without knowledge? Did the economy of the country evolved without the use of
knowledge? The known history has revealed that knowledge was systematically used for more than two thousand years.
In
the East, we have the great philosophers, like Mencius and Sun Tzu, introduced the use of knowledge in public governance,
the military, economic activity and family life. In the West, we have Plato, Socrates and Nicomachides, among others. (Claude
S. George (1972), The History of Management Thought, Prentice-Hall of India Private Limited, New Delhi.) Knowledge has been
the basis of economic development through the decades.
Without knowledge no work will get done. There will be no productivity.
If knowledge has always been there, how then can we come to the terms of knowledge worker development in the k-economy? What
is or who is the knowledge worker? Are we dealing with the semantics management again?
In the context of modern economy,
we have to deal with the terms like data, information and knowledge. The simple definitions of these words can help us to
understand the term knowledge and thereby, understand the role of the knowledge worker. In the simplest sense, data are known
as facts collected and made available in explicit forms. Information appears when we are able to put these facts in the context
of the (economic) situation. We will then define knowledge as the use of information to create value in the economic sense.
Knowledge
We
shall not go into the epistemological definition of knowledge, but rather to take the layman's view on what knowledge are
and the use of knowledge. We shall take the view that information and knowledge are interchangeable, and information becomes
knowledge when it is being used to achieve some productive purposes, adds or creates values.
Dorothy Leonard-Barton
divided knowledge into three classes - public or scientific knowledge, industry-specific knowledge, and firm-specific knowledge
(Leonard-Barton, Dorothy (1995), Wellsprings of Knowledge, Building and Sustaining the Sources of Innovation, Harvard Business
School Press, Boston, Massachusetts).
Public knowledge are communicated in professional journals, textbooks, public
databases, etc. Industry-specific knowledge is related to the specific industry and is diffused among experts, including suppliers
and consultants. Both public and industry-specific knowledge are available to all for a price. Firm-specific knowledge is
unique to a particular organisation. They are in both explicit and tacit forms.
Explicit knowledge is documented in
organisational memory while the tacit knowledge rests in the head of the employees. A knowledge worker is one who regularly
uses all these forms of knowledge, together with his own tacit knowledge to add or create value to the organisation.
Knowledge
work process
For a human resources (HR) manager to perform well and enhance the competitiveness of his organisation,
he has to keep abreast with the changing knowledge and current scientific findings of the HR profession. To do this, he has
to source information from business schools, publications and public databases. All these types of knowledge are codified
information that can be sourced easily.
The HR manager also needs more specific knowledge that is related to his type
of industry. He may want to know about the compensation requirements and have to buy compensation survey reports from HRM
research institutions. He may have to consult the fellow members of industry association to get specific information.
At
the firm level, he has to assess information from the organisation's databases and the explicit knowledge base to carry out
planning activities and make decisions on HR issues for the company. He has to get to the tacit knowledge of the other co-workers
in order to service the various functional demands.
These three types of knowledge will support his expertise, which
is in the form of his own tacit knowledge. This knowledge comes from his continuous learning and experience in his profession.
The outcome of this process is the value creation where value-added output is produce and value-added service rendered.
The
knowledge work process does not end with the value-adding output. The knowledge worker learns from every work experience and
continues to enrich his tacit knowledge. This enriching process is purposeful and systematic. The plan-do-check-action cycle
or the well-known Deming management cycle is a proactive reviewing and learning process.
Information and communications
technology (ICT) The advancement of ICT and the development of the Internet have enabled people to enhance their potential
in knowledge work. The Internet has expanded the public and industry-specific knowledge. The knowledge worker, through the
use of ICT and the Internet, has the information of the whole world at his fingertips.
ICT and the Internet have also
made information easy-to-access, user-friendly and up-to-date. These have to be the results of information system applications,
such as powerful information search engines, good databases and data housing, and data mining. The Internet allows the sharing
of information across functional, organisational, national and global boundaries. At the firm level, an adequate digital nervous
system will enhance employees potential in their knowledge work activities. The knowledge worker needs an ICT-enabled work
environment to perform adequately in the knowledge-based economy.
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