MANAGING KNOWLEDGE WORKERS

Chapter 15: Managing Knowledge Workers

What Is a Knowledge Worker?

Embodies experience, innovation, creativity, and transformation of experience into knowledge for leveraging products or services Transforms business and personal experience into knowledge through capturing, assessing, applying, sharing, and disseminating it within the organization to solve specific problems or to create value

Chapter 15: Managing Knowledge Workers

knowledge worker is someone who uses IT in conducting day-to-day business and one that has direct impact on the efficiency and productivity of the job and the work process (Awad 1996) Anyone who makes a living out of creating, manipulating, or disseminating knowledge is a knowledge worker (Bennett 2001)
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Chapter 15: Managing Knowledge Workers

Personality and Professional Attributes

Holds unique values Aligns personal and professional growth with corporate vision Adopts an attitude of collaboration and sharing Has innovative capacity and a creative mind Has a clear understanding of the business he is a part Willing to learn, unlearn, and adopt new ways that result in better ways of doing a job In command of self-control and self-learning Willing to grow with the company
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Chapter 15: Managing Knowledge Workers

Makeup of the Knowledge Worker

Transformatio n process IT Tools

Value s

KNOWLEDGE WORKER Organizationa l Culture Personal and corporate experience

Chapter 15: Managing Knowledge Workers

Core Competencies
Thinking skillshaving a vision how the product or the company can be better Continuous learningunlearning and relearning in tune with fast-changing conditions Innovative teams and teamworkvia collaboration, cooperation, and coordination Innovation and creativitydreaming new ways to advance the firm

Chapter 15: Managing Knowledge Workers

Core Competencies (contd)

Risk taking and potential successmaking joint decisions with calculated risk Decisive action takingbe willing to embrace professional discipline, patience, and determination Culture of responsibility toward knowledge loyalty and commitment to ones manager or leader

Chapter 15: Managing Knowledge Workers

Business Roles in the Learning Organization

Learning organizationan organization of people with ingrained commitment to improve their capacity, to create, and to produce what they want to produce Data and information are givens Since the 1960s, focus shifted from quantitative to qualitative performanceoriented value-added decision making

Chapter 15: Managing Knowledge Workers

From Data Processing to Self-LearningA Trend Non algorithmic (heuristic)

Non programmable

SMARTNESS

KNOWLEDGE

INFORMATION

Algorithmic

DATA

Programmable

From Data Processing to Self-Learning

Chapter 15: Managing Knowledge Workers

Work Management Tasks

Managing

knowledge workers Searching out, creating, sharing, and using knowledge regularly Maintaining work motivation among knowledge workers Ensuring readiness to work, especially during an emergency

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Chapter 15: Managing Knowledge Workers

Work Management Tasks (contd)

Allocating effort and switching control among tasks Sharing information and integrating work among knowledge workers Hiring or recruiting bright, knowledge-seeking individuals Managing collaboration, coordination, and concurrent activities among knowledge workers
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Chapter 15: Managing Knowledge Workers

Factors That Limit Knowledge Workers Productivity

Time

constraint Working smarter and harder and accomplishing little Knowledge workers doing work that the firm did not hire them to do Work schedule

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Chapter 15: Managing Knowledge Workers

Work Adjustment Model

Ensuring the right match between the vocational needs of knowledge workers and the requirements of their jobs Achieving and maintaining match with the work environment are basic motives of human work behavior When the individual achieves correspondence, he or she can continue with future opportunities with the firm
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Chapter 15: Managing Knowledge Workers

Work Adjustment Model

Correspondence (match) Satisfactoriness (satisfactory employee)

Abilities

Job requirements

Promote

Transfer Individua l

Fire Job Retain

Vocational needs

Reinforcers

Job Satisfaction (satisfied employee) option Quit Remain

TENURE

Correspondence (match)

NEW JOB

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Chapter 15: Managing Knowledge Workers

Profile Of Vocational Needs and Reinforces Of Knowledge Workers

Achievement or a drive to accomplish worthwhile, complex tasks and a feeling of accomplishment Use of their abilities on matters related to problem-solving and solutions Authority exercised in terms of telling peers and others what to do The freedom to tryout their own ideas and create a new way of doing things
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Chapter 15: Managing Knowledge Workers

Recognition

by both department officials and peers for work done

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Chapter 15: Managing Knowledge Workers

Traditional Tellers vocational needs:

Handling

a stable set of predetermined, relatively mechanistic tasks such as withdrawals and deposits Independence on the job, in terms of doing their work alone rather than with coworkers; minimum socialization

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Chapter 15: Managing Knowledge Workers

Smart Leadership Requirements

Assessing core competency of the firm Response to the firms internal shortcomings Vivid knowledge of the external market and the tricky nature of the competition in the marketplace Online response to the companys external environment Measuring the return on time
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Chapter 15: Managing Knowledge Workers

Technology and the Knowledge Worker

IT contributes to knowledge capture, information distribution, and information interpretation Ultimate goal of technology is to serve organizational memory and create a working environment that provides these conditions Knowledge worker expect to have technical know-how to access, update, and disseminate information from databases and knowledge bases
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Chapter 15: Managing Knowledge Workers

Knowledge Workers Skills

Technical skills and abilities Professional experience Soft traits such as a sense of cultural, political, and personal aspects of knowledge in the business Personal attributes Communication skills Educational background and college degree

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Chapter 15: Managing Knowledge Workers

Ergonomics
Ergonomics

involves comfort, fatigue, safety, understanding, ease of use, and any other areas that affect welfare, satisfaction, and performance of knowledge workers working with usermachine sustems.

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Chapter 15: Managing Knowledge Workers

Role of Ergonomics
Environmental

issues Hardware issues Knowledge worker-system interface that emphasizes:

Minimum

worker effort and memory Best use of human patterns Prompt problem notification Maximum task support

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Chapter 15: Managing Knowledge Workers

Role of the CKO

Maximize returns on investment in knowledgepeople, processes, and technology Share best practices and reinforce goods of knowledge sharing among employees Promote company innovations and commercialization of new ideas Minimize brain drain or knowledge loss at all levels of the business

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Chapter 15: Managing Knowledge Workers

Role of the CKO (contd)

Agent

of change Investigator Linking pin Listener Politician

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Chapter 15: Managing Knowledge Workers

CKOs Technical Skills

Broad knowledge of business practice and ability to translate technical information at employee level Making effective use of technical and nontechnical elements in KM design Knowledge of information technology, information systems, and how information is transformed into knowledge

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Chapter 15: Managing Knowledge Workers

Key CKO Attributes

Teaching

and selling : This includes educating the user on technology; selling and promoting change through demos; seminars; and specialized behavioral training. Communicatingspeaking the language of the user, mediate, and working with management at all levels Understandinge.g., identifying problem areas and determining their

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Chapter 15: Managing Knowledge Workers

Factors Change Leaders Consider

Focus

less on problems and more on successes and opportunities Adopt an attitude that views challenges as opportunities Work on creating tomorrows business instead of hammering on yesterdays problems
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Chapter 15: Managing Knowledge Workers

The Soft Side Always Wins

Encourage every team member to create new knowledge in the interest of the project Help knowledge workers do their jobs Allow knowledge workers to participate in major company decisions, which can pay off in intrinsic and extrinsic benefits for the company and employees alike Encourage knowledge workers and employees to learn as they earn a living on a regular basis
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Chapter 15: Managing Knowledge Workers

Incentives and Motivation

Link incentives to a team approach, where team performance will determine size and nature of the incentive Use awards for teams as well as individuals for unique contributions Flextime allows the team to decide on when to work, when to quit, and so forth Monetary rewards, bonuses, and special prizes can be a hit with the winning team Publicize success throughout the firm
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