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Knowledge as Work:
Conflicts in the
Management of Knowledge
Workers
Harry Scarbrough
Published online: 25 Aug 2010.

To cite this article: Harry Scarbrough (1999) Knowledge as Work: Conflicts

in the Management of Knowledge Workers, Technology Analysis & Strategic
Management, 11:1, 5-16, DOI: 10.1080/095373299107546

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/095373299107546

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 Technology Analysis & Strategic Management, Vol. 11, No. 1, 1999 5

Knowledge as Work: Con icts in the Management of

Knowledge Workers
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HARRY SCARBROUGH

A BSTRACT Against the backdrop of increasing interest in knowledge management and intellectual
capital, this paper analyzes the emergence and management of knowledge worker groups. It suggests that
knowledge work is a useful way of characterizing some important changes in the nature of work across
a range of different occupational and professional groups. These changes have important implications for
management and organizational performance. The paper discusses these implications through a conict-
based analysis which highlights the inherent conict between ‘knowing’ as part of the work experience and
‘knowledge’ as an economic commodity. This conict is expressed at both institutional and organizational
levels. The management of knowledge workers therefore centres on the quasi-resolution of such conict. As
the illustrative example of the Microsoft Corporation indicates, competitive success depends very largely
on the precarious ability to reconcile this conict between the social production of knowledge and the
economic appropriation of proŽt.

Introduction
The dramatic rise in popularity of ideas such as ‘knowledge management’ and ‘intellec-
tual capital’ has brought knowledge work to the centre-stage of debates on economic
performance. 1 Increasingly, it seems, organizations are focussing their attentions on the
way knowledge is deployed at the workplace and, speciŽ cally, upon those groups who
acquire, process and apply such knowledge. A recent survey suggests that knowledge
management initiatives in many Ž rms are concentrated on groups of knowledge workers
making up no more than 20% of the workforce.2
Despite the undoubted macro-level evidence for the emphasis on the economic
importance of knowledge,3 the theories underpinning knowledge management tend to
neglect any discussion of the speciŽ c organizational and managerial mechanisms through
which knowledge is appropriated for economic ends. Reifying knowledge through terms
such as ‘core competencies’,4 or ‘intellectual capital’ is to abstract it from the dynamic
processes through which human learning and experience are transformed and valorized
as economic outputs. DeŽ nitions based on a hierarchy comprising data, information and
knowledge,5 similarly gloss over the distinctive socio-economic constitution of knowledge
in favour of a universalized, epistemological analysis.
This paper aims to correct this neglect by critically analyzing the emergence of
occupational groups who experience knowledge as the object of their work. This paper
seeks to analyze the managerial implications of these groups. It aims, Ž rstly, to identify
the distinctive character of the management process for knowledge workers and,

H. Scarbrough is at the Leicester University Management Centre, Leicester LE1 7RH, UK.

0953-7325/99/010005-12 Ó 1999Carfax Publishing Ltd

 6 H. Scarbrough

secondly, to illuminate the way in which such a process may contribute to competitive
success.
The task of identifying the distinctive features of the management of knowledge
workers is made more complicated by the deŽ nitional problems which surround this
group. Many authors see the emergence of knowledge workers as a consequence of a
broader shift from an industrial to a post-industrial society.6 Ranged against this view,
however, are a number of more sceptical analyses which are more sensitive to the
ideological aspects of the term in the context of the continuingly exploitative nature of
the employment relationship.7
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While acknowledging that many existing accounts of knowledge workers are uncrit-
ical and based on a spurious futurology, this paper aims to rescue the concept of
knowledge work from some of its most enthusiastic champions. It does this by locating
knowledge work within relations of employment and control, where the social and
institutional conditions of the work process are shaped by endemic, multi-level con icts
and contradictions. This involves developing a more sociologically-grounded view of
knowledge work and linking this to a wider analysis of the emerging role of such work
in advanced industrial societies. The resulting account acknowledges the challenges
which knowledge workers pose for conventional managerial practices—re ected, for
example, in the adoption of team-working methods and  atter organization structures.
But it also goes further than the existing literature by identifying the inherent con icts
involved in managing this group. It argues that characteristic features of the social
formation of knowledge produce fundamental antagonisms with the economic institu-
tions of late-modern capitalism. In short, knowing as an active, lived experience is in a
constant state of tension with knowledge as a commodity within Ž rms and markets.8 In this
perspective, the emergence of knowledge work re ects the displacement of conict from
institutional to organizational and individual arenas. Thus, the development of knowl-
edge work has served to alleviate traditional antagonisms between the institutions of
science and the professions on one hand, and business organizations on the other. The
emergence of this group also tends to efface some of the con ict built into the
relationship between capital and labour. At the same time, however, this displacement
of con ict tends to put greater stress upon the active intervention of management.
Management becomes the focal agent in attempting to integrate two divergent sets of
social practices; on the one hand, the human actions involved in producing and applying
knowledge and on the other the exploitation of such actions for economic ends.
Management roles thus involve the constant ‘quasi-resolution of conict’,9 and managers’
ability to develop and sustain this fragile unity of practices becomes a major determinant
of competitive performance. The example of the Microsoft Corporation is cited as an
illustration of the experience of high-tech Ž rms who confront this problem in its most
acute form. The development of the management process at Microsoft is relatively
typical of such Ž rms in that it demonstrates the elusive but highly lucrative recipes
involved in managing the contradictions built into knowledge work.

DeŽ ning Knowledge Workers

The increasing use of the term ‘knowledge workers’ can be easily criticised for lack of
methodological and theoretical rigour. Knowledge workers are not a discrete occu-
pational group and most of the descriptions of such workers tend to lump together a
variety of occupations and roles. Davenport et al., for instance, refers to ‘activities such
as research and product development, advertising, education and professional services
like the law, accounting and consulting’.10 Such an amorphous description seems to
 Knowledge as Work 7

justify the view that the term is an ideological gloss on the genuine inequity and
exploitation of the employment relationship. However, accepting that knowledge workers
constitute a resource for managerial discourse does not preclude us unpacking the
concept to expose elements and issues which may be more revealing of the empirical
conditions of its development. In this perspective, the lack of occupational identity, far
from being indicative of the limitations of the concept, is arguably one of its most
important features. Lacking the demarcations and controls of conventional professional
groups, knowledge workers are deŽ ned primarily by the work that they do—work which
is relatively unstructured and organizationally contingent, and which thus re ects the
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changing demands of organizations more than occupationally-deŽ ned norms and prac-
tices.
Knowledge workers can thus be seen as the beneŽ ciary of widespread and convergent
patterns of change in the nature of work which cut across existing occupational
categories, changing existing roles and creating new ones. Barley and Orr term these
changes the ‘technicization of work’, meaning ‘the emergence of work which is compar-
atively complex, analytic and even abstract, because it makes use of tools that generate
symbolic representations of physical phenomena’.11 DeŽ ning knowledge workers in terms
of this dynamic of industrial change inevitably blurs conventional occupational
classiŽ cations—for instance, between professional groups and ‘technical workers’—but at
the same time underlines the distinction between this group and broader, class-based
categories such as the ‘service class’.12
Following this argument, I will suggest that the emergence of knowledge workers is
a product of four related developments; the relative decline of the professional model; the
increasing importance of knowledge work in the experience of a range of occupational
groups; the codiŽ cation and commodiŽ cation of knowledge through new ICTs; and the
emergence of new sectors of knowledge production within the economy. The overall
effect of these trends is to shift the institutional setting for knowledge work away from the
profession or discipline towards the organizationally-deŽ ned context of use.13 In short,
professionals work from knowledge, drawing on a distinctive occupationally-deŽ ned body
of expertise. On the other hand, knowledge workers work with knowledge; their own
knowledge certainly but also that of other knowledge workers as communicated through
information systems and artefacts, as well as the organizational and technical knowledge
encoded in programs, routines and managerial discourse. Whalley and Orr, for instance,
analyse such work in terms of the dual processes of ‘transformation’ and ‘maintenance’—
transforming the objects of their work into symbolic form, but also maintaining the
systems and tools which they employ.14
This shift in the appropriation and application of knowledge has a number of
important implications. First, knowledge workers are much less equipped to exercise
power by monopolizing specialist knowledge. Since they typically work within a liberal
market environment, any power that they exercise is more likely to derive from variations
in labour-market conditions than their own occupational formation.15 Second, they
experience a different productive relationship to the knowledge that they create and
apply. Knowledge work is less a matter of the application of predeŽ ned expertise and
more a joint product of human interactions with informational and intellectual assets
delivered through ICTs. As a result, knowledge workers are much more dependent on
employers to provide access to the means of knowledge production. Thirdly, this more
dependent relationship leads knowledge workers to develop a different, less normative set
of attitudes towards their knowledge-base. Knowledge is valued principally for the
interests that it serves rather than as an ‘internal good’ in its own right.16 This more
instrumental orientation to knowledge and the dominant role of market forces are
 8 H. Scarbrough

symptomatic of the de-centred occupational formation of knowledge workers compared

to traditional professions.

The Rise of Knowledge Worker Groups

As noted earlier, the rise of knowledge worker groups owes much to the relative decline
of the professional model in general and to the erosion of the position of many
professional groupings in particular. Although professional groups themselves continue to
wield a signiŽ cant degree of power,17 there is little doubt about the decline of profession-
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alism as a paradigmatic model for organizing knowledge.18 This is partly the result of
State deregulation and privatization, with even established professional groups such as
doctors and lawyers experiencing greater exposure to market forces and incorporation
into organizational hierarchies. The same pressures apply with even greater effect to
groups which in the past have been labelled ‘organizational professionals’. R&D
scientists, IT workers and other technical functions have all been subjected to the
pressures of ‘marketization’ and outsourcing.19
A second major in uence on the development of knowledge work derives from ICTs.
As a recent OECD report20 notes:
ICTs (information and communication technologies) allow for increased codiŽ cation
of knowledge, that is its transformation into ‘information’ that can easily be
transmitted … through codiŽ cation knowledge takes on more and more the
properties of a commodity.
The impact of ICTs on the commodiŽ cation of knowledge occurs at three major levels.
First, tacit and embodied knowledge is encoded through IT into symbolic forms which
can be transmitted or incorporated in artefacts. Second, the encoding of knowledge
means that it can be manipulated more easily—it is no longer opaque but can be
objectively deployed and combined with other packaged forms of knowledge. Third, IT
has an impact on the range of organizational forms through which knowledge can be
managed. Advances in information and communications technologies have encouraged
the emergence of looser and more spatially distributed organizational forms. The
traditional ways of acquiring and controlling knowledge—in particular, the professional
model involving specialist functions within business hierarchies—are increasingly dis-
placed in favour of networking and market-style arrangements.21
One result of these shifting technological and structural positions is the privileging of
product and labour-market forces over professional norms and practices in the regulation
of knowledge work.22 Insofar as knowledge workers display some of the outward features
of the classic professional—for instance, retaining some autonomy and self-management
in their working practices—this is to do with their labour-market position and the nature
of the work they do rather than the institutional power of any profession.23 This is also
re ected culturally in the relationships between experts and users. Where professionals
deal with clients, knowledge workers have to satisfy the needs of internal and external
customers.24

The Challenge to Management

It is widely recognized that knowledge workers pose a challenge to conventional
management practice. However, the thinking about the nature of that challenge has
changed rapidly in recent years.25 Drucker,26 for example, who was the originator of the
term, tended to highlight the implications for management style, likening the knowledge-
 Knowledge as Work 9

based organization to an orchestra, and arguing that managers will need to abandon
traditional styles and act more like conductors. This was followed by Handy’s analysis27
where the focus is more on structure and the idea that Ž rms are moving towards the
‘shamrock’ organization, involving more decentralized forms of control. More recently,
the upsurge of interest in knowledge management28 suggests that the debate is moving
away from the personal attributes of knowledge workers to focus on the work that they
perform and the tools and systems that may facilitate learning within that work. The
development of Intranets and the spread of ‘groupware’ are symptomatic of this more
recent focus on information systems as powerful means of codifying and collectivising the
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knowledge-base of the Ž rm.

Despite their acknowledged differences in emphasis, these managerial prescriptions
all share certain questionable assumptions about the implications of knowledge work.
The Ž rst is the notion that knowledge is amenable to managerial control and direction.
This seems to give greater weight to managerial agency than it seems to deserve. The
second, is the assumption that knowledge is an essentially cognitive phenomenon—resid-
ing in either the heads of knowledge workers or in a more codiŽ ed form in the systems
and technologies that they operate. As a result knowledge is abstracted both from the
social context of its formation and from the active processes of knowing and sense-making
which are the subjective expression of the individual’s interactions with that context.
If we abandon such assumptions and relocate the emergence of knowledge workers
within the shifting conditions of work created by industrial and technological change, we
gain a very different picture of the management of knowledge workers. The keynote of
that alternative view is con ict, the modal nature of which can be summarised in terms
of the tensions between the social conditions that promote the formation of knowledge
and the economic conditions that allow the appropriation of its value. These tensions will
take many different forms, but one commonly observed symptom is the contrast between
the ‘organic’ settings of trust and autonomy which favour the production of knowledge
as against the rationalized and highly structured conditions which secure its appropria-
tion. 29
Contrary to the focus of much of the mainstream literature, it is important to
acknowledge that many of the sources of con ict are outside the control of management.
Indeed, one of the advantages of a con ict-based analysis is the way it highlights the
stratiŽ ed interaction between action in one context and constraints in another.30 Thus
con ict may be either stimulated or attenuated by changes in the institutional, organiza-
tional and individual contexts for knowledge work. This also highlights the interdepen-
dence between different levels of analysis, with the behaviour of individuals, say, being
situated in overarching organizational and institutional environments. One implication of
such interdependence is that con icts and tensions at one level are transmitted or
displaced to other levels through circuits of social action. Figure 1 outlines this pattern
of interaction between the institutional, organizational and individual con icts which
shape the management of knowledge workers.

Institutional Con ict

Con ict at the institutional level derives principally from the problematic relationship
between the economic institutions of Ž rms and markets and the knowledge-producing
institutions of science, education and the professions. These institutions are important to
this particular debate because they exert a powerful in uence on the way knowledge is
colonized by knowledge-based occupations within different societies.31
A particular feature of the institutional environment in Britain and North America
 10 H. Scarbrough
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Figure 1. Knowledge work: the quasi-resolution of con ict.

is the importance of the professional model as the preferred means of organizing

specialist knowledge. These professional groups tend to promote an ‘occupational
principle’ for the division of labour which cuts across the ‘administrative principle’ based
on hierarchical authority which is favoured by organizations.32
This con ict is aggravated in the UK context by the professional composition of
management itself. British management is generally held to be accountancy-dominated
with relatively little technical expertise to be found at the highest levels of management.33
This managerial bias re ects wider institutional factors, in this case the links between the
City and industry, and certainly tends to exacerbate tensions between top management
and technical professionals. By way of contrast, German Ž rms draw many of their top
managers from the ranks of technologists and engineers, thus spreading the culture of
‘Technik’ throughout the management structure.34

Organizational Con ict

The organizational con icts created by knowledge work have to do with the demands
that occupational specialization and external networking place on the Ž rm’s division of
labour—demands which are the organizational equivalents of the above-noted institu-
tional tensions. These demands are double-edged. On one hand, the specialization
required to foster communities of practice in certain Ž elds tends to create internal
boundaries and rigidities. The structural and cultural con icts caused by specialist R&D
and IT functions are signiŽ cant enough to produce extensive literatures in those Ž elds,
much of which is devoted to the problems of bridging the gap between the organization
and its specialists. These problems can be interpreted in terms of the recurring issues
outlined above—tensions between autonomy and control, for instance, or the problems
of maintaining organic social relationships in a hierarchical setting. Raelin emphasizes
 Knowledge as Work 11

the latter in focussing on the cultural implications of professionals pursuing norms and
standards that may con ict with the business goals of line managers.35
The inherent con ict between managers and professionals results basically from a
clash of cultures: the corporate culture, which captures the commitment of man-
agers, and the professional culture which socializes professionals.
On the other hand, knowledge work also involves a boundary con ict between the
openness required in searching and acquiring new forms of knowledge and the closure
implied in the appropriation of such knowledge for economic returns. Openness, for
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example, involves developing and sustaining external networks of technology suppliers,

peer communities and professional associations. These external networks and communi-
ties reinforce the occupational principle and underline the knowledge worker’s role as an
intermediary between business organizations and technology suppliers. Barley36 goes so
far as to argue that computer workers, for example:
operate largely independently of an organization’s hierarchy…. They function as
‘brokers’ who mediate between a Ž rm’s users and the larger technical community
that creates the hardware and software for a Ž rm’s computational infrastructure.
Again, a number of studies remark on the cultural and political divisions between
management and various knowledge–worker groups. Such divisions seem to re ect
contrasting institutional roles. Managers enjoy delegated hierarchical authority from the
owners of capital, whereas knowledge workers derive their power and values from
occupationally-based knowledge communities. The differentiated roles, career structures
and afŽ liations of the two groups inevitably create con icting orientations towards
organizational goals. This con ict is internalized but not resolved by the organization’s
division of labour.

Individual Con ict

Finally, at the individual level, there is the con ict between the individual and the wider
organization. Although some writers have interpreted this con ict in terms of the
psychological characteristics of knowledge workers,37 much of the con ict seems to arise
from the problem of creating and applying knowledge within the constraints posed by the
employment relationship. This relationship fosters both cooperation and con ict between
individual and employer; cooperation in the work process yet also potential con ict
between their respective goals and interests. As Hales puts it such ‘thinkwork’ involves
the ‘negotiation of a contradictory reality’38 between the competing demands of capital
accumulation and of professional knowledge. Such con ict is currently being experienced
in the problems associated with the implementation of knowledge management systems.
A frequent complaint from management is that employees resist sharing their knowledge
with the rest of the organization.39 This hoarding of knowledge becomes much more
explicable, however, if we relate it to the individualizing effect of the employment
relationship and the reward systems operating within Ž rms.
From the individual’s view, the employment relationship offers both beneŽ ts and
risks. Mutual beneŽ ts include the individual’s incentive to ‘invest in the equity of their
own skills’40 and their employer’s gain from the skill level thus achieved. At the same
time, the employer’s ability to hire and Ž re employees and the individual’s mobility
between organizations underlines the ever-present potential for con ict. Even some of
the more upbeat assessments of knowledge work acknowledge this con ict. Handy’s41
argument about the need for knowledge workers to pursue ‘portfolio careers’, for
 12 H. Scarbrough

example, is not only a piece of career advice but also a judgement on the decreasing
levels of job security offered by employers. Handy’s advice suggests, though not in so
many words, that Ž rms are seeking to externalize many of the con icts created by
knowledge work, passing them on to the workforce and to the wider society. Many of the
problems created by accelerating industrial change, including the problems of redundant
skills and technological unemployment, can be partially absorbed by weakening the ties
between employer and employee. The con ict between long-run skills development and
short-term efŽ ciency is handed over to employees. Knowledge workers are given
responsibility for their own skills development and are hired for narrowly deŽ ned projects
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rather than broadly deŽ ned jobs. The organization is able to hire expertise on the basis
of immediate need and the individual carries more of the risks of skills development. The
result is much greater levels of individual con ict (re ected in psychological stress levels)
as knowledge workers have to balance the demands of work and family, and the
pressures of the short-term job against the longer term career.
The contradictory pressures of the employment relationship might suggest a predom-
inantly instrumental set of attitudes on the part of knowledge workers. However, this
would be to understate the importance of so called ‘identity work’42 in these settings, and
the extent to which individuals may subscribe to a sense of themselves which has been
carefully engineered by their employing organization.43

Discussion
This con ict-based analysis helps to explain both the persistence and the variety of
problems surrounding the management of knowledge workers. Persistence because many
of these problems re ect the displacement of deep-seated institutional tensions to the
level of the individual Ž rm—thus deŽ ning the managerial task as ‘the containment of
contradictions’.44 But variety also because the extent to which such tensions surface
within the individual Ž rm is contingent on a number of factors. One of these is the exact
composition of the knowledge worker group—the extent to which their formation is
occupationally or organizationally-deŽ ned, for example. The second has more to do with
Ž rm strategy. The more that strategy depends on externally generated sources of
technology and innovation, the more that the management of knowledge workers will
re ect the wider con ict between occupational and administrative principles of control.
Thus, the management of knowledge workers is also implicated in the strategic dilemma
posed by the competing pressures for innovation and efŽ ciency within Ž rms—a dilemma
currently exempliŽ ed by debates around the outsourcing of information systems.45
Like the causes, the precise symptoms of the quasi-resolution of con ict depend very
largely on the organizational context. The common thread linking such symptoms,
however, is the attempt to reconcile the sources and uses of knowledge with the dictates
of hierarchical control and the pressures of commodiŽ cation. Thus, some writers have
highlighted the tensions involved in the management of R&D activities. Kreiner and
Schultz,46 for instance, describe managerial attitudes towards the sharing of information
in external networks as ‘paradoxical’; ofŽ cially exhorting ‘strict conŽ dentiality’ on
scientists, yet unofŽ cially turning a blind eye to informal collaboration. Others expose the
contradictory pressures faced by knowledge workers occupying managerial positions.
These so-called ‘player-managers’ simultaneously experience the competing pressures of,
on one hand, business goals and, on the other, the norms and expectations of a particular
knowledge community.47
Although the intrinsic tensions surrounding knowledge work can only be patched
over and never fully resolved, the relative ability of Ž rms to prevent outright con ict or,
 Knowledge as Work 13

better, to contain such con ict and channel it into economically productive forms seems
likely to involve inimitable, hence competitively advantageous, managerial practices.
The ability to combine technical autonomy with managerial control, for instance, or
to develop open cultures yet retain a tight grasp of intellectual property, would be
examples of competitive advantage achieved through the quasi-resolution of con icting
practices.

Con ict Resolution and Performance: The Microsoft Case

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In this section, I will explore these linkages between the quasi-resolution of con ict in
knowledge work and competitive performance, with reference to the Microsoft Corpor-
ation as a model of the successful high-tech organization. Recent accounts of Microsoft
have tended to analyse its success in terms of the impact of managerial strategy and
systems on the development of new products and the pursuit of new markets. Cusumano
and Selby for example, focus on the management of product development at Microsoft
and in particular a distinctive managerial approach which they term, ‘synch and
stabilize’: ‘The essence is simple: continually synchronise what people are doing as
individuals and as members of different teams, and periodically stabilize the product in
increments.’ 48
The problem with this kind of analysis is that it fails to explain how such ‘simple’
practices can secure competitive success when they can be so readily described and
(presumably) imitated. An alternative analysis which overcomes this problem is to relate
success to the ‘core competencies’ of the organization. These are deŽ ned as the product
of cumulative Ž rm-speciŽ c learning and are therefore held to be unique and largely
inimitable. But while this analysis addresses the imitability issue, it fails to provide
adequate answers as to the way in which such competencies are acquired, why certain
Ž rms acquire these competencies and others do not, and how they enable the uniquely
effective exploitation of resources for competitive ends. Prahalad and Hamel,49 for
instance, implicitly show the limitations of this approach when they identify ‘miniaturiza-
tion’ as a core competence at Sony. This not only fails to illuminate anything distinctive
in Sony’s pattern of resource exploitation, but also, more broadly, fails to address the
relative success of Japanese Ž rms in developing core competencies.50 It thus neglects the
positive in uence of the wider Japanese societal context on Ž rm performance.
In contrast, viewing competitive success in terms of the quasi-resolution of con ict
not only underscores the way in which the managerial practices of certain Ž rms represent
unique and imitable responses, but also relates their intensiŽ ed exploitation of resources
to the wider institutional and cultural environment within which the Ž rm is positioned.
In short, this approach highlights those paradoxical practices51 which allow the effective
blending of the human, physical and organizational capital involved in knowledge work.
Put simply, all workers are exploited but knowledge workers are exploited in distinctive
ways. Business success emanates from a Ž rm’s ability to overcome ingrained institutional
and cultural barriers to achieving the most effective combination of human and physical
resources.52
This analysis could be applied to many high-tech Ž rms in the US, and some elements
of it—for example, the implications of the institutional context for R&D management—
are identiŽ ed in existing studies.53 However, even in this high performing group, the
example of Microsoft stands out as an organization which has attained a high level of
success in wedding technical expertise to the demands of the marketplace. Relating
Microsoft’s evolution to our analysis highlights, Ž rstly, the Ž rm’s conscious attempt to
overcome some of the institutional con icts associated with knowledge work. Both the
 14 H. Scarbrough

physical and cultural architecture of the company’s Seattle HQ were carefully engineered
to replicate selected features of the classical university model; notably the campus-style
physical environment, the encouragement of atypical working hours and the blurring of
distinctions between work life and home life. It is probably fair to say also that Microsoft
beneŽ ted from the institutional environment of the US. Not only is the IT industry in
the US favoured by high levels of defence spending, but IT workers in that country seem
to display fewer professional inhibitions about allying their work to business objectives—
the market is widely accepted as a legitimate régime for knowledge creation.
Again, at an organizational level, Microsoft has developed a distinctive culture and
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structure which avoids the usual clash of values and practices between management and
knowledge workers.54 This involves ensuring that management practice is based even-
handedly on knowledge of technology and knowledge of the business. To quote
Cusumano and Selby’s rather gushing prose, the Microsoft company possesses a ‘CEO
with a deep understanding of both the technology and the business’55 and ‘managers who
both create the product and make the technical decisions’.56 The company ensures that
managers retain their technical expertise by continuing to work part time as developers.
Similarly, bureaucratic over-control is avoided through process design and cultural
features. For example, Microsoft has put in place a development process that ‘allows
large teams to work like small teams’.57 The prevailing culture is also seen to play an
important role. Shared values and high levels of employee commitment allow manage-
ment to accept a high degree of employee autonomy and yet still achieve the necessary
degree of control over product development.
Finally, individual con icts are also addressed in the Microsoft organization. First,
through an intensive process of self-selection which ensures a good Ž t between the
individual and the organization. Second, Microsoft reduce the con ict between individ-
ual self-interest and organizational goals by integrating individual expertise within a
collective framework. Thus the organization ensures that knowledge of product develop-
ment details is possessed by more than one person, thereby avoiding the creation of
‘prima donnas’. Product development is controlled by program managers rather than
individual ‘superprogrammers’ for the same reason. At the same time, high performing
employees are rewarded with stock options which give them a tangible stake in the
company’s future performance.

Conclusions
This con ict-based analysis of knowledge took as its starting point the broad societal
trends that have stimulated the codiŽ cation and commodiŽ cation of knowledge. These
trends have encouraged new forms of work organization in which ‘knowledge’ is
increasingly viewed as a joint product of the individual and the organization rather than
the property of individual experts or wider professional groupings. At the same time,
from an organizational viewpoint they have created a new set of tasks and problems
centred on the management of knowledge workers. I have attempted to show that the
managerial problems posed by this group are not simply the result of psychological
differences or even cultural divisions, but that they re ect the displacement and
quasi-resolution of a deep-seated con ict between knowledge and knowing. This con ict
is embodied in tensions between occupational and administrative principles, professional
vs. managerial norms and long-run innovation vs. short-term efŽ ciency.
In short, this con ict-based account suggests that we need to be wary about supposed
‘best practice’ in the management of knowledge workers. Such models, including
‘knowledge management’ as the most recent example, tend to assume that knowledge
 Knowledge as Work 15

workers represent a biddable resource, and that their knowledge can be readily
transmitted through information systems. The key to understanding the management
process here is to view it not as a technical process of knowledge codiŽ cation, but rather
as a constant drive towards the quasi-resolution of con ict. Success derives not so much
from the process of transforming tacit knowledge into explicit forms, but from the ability
to sustain this process through the contradictions of its own social and institutional
conditions.
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