Managing Knowledge Workers

Abstract

With the emergence of a powerful new breed of organization--the knowledge organization--comes a bold new challenge to the old ways of managing people. Workers with special cutting-edge knowledge and the ability to transform it into marketable goods and services can not be managed the old command-and-control way, nor even by some of the more enlightened ways developed since then. Only new ways, and old ways updated and adapted to special new situations, can work. Only in this way can innovation and productivity--the crucial ingredients for success in knowledge-based organizations--be harnessed. Indeed, it is the capacity to innovate, not the infusion of huge amounts of capital, that is the true predictor of success in these new companies. Just as the baby boomers working in traditional settings differ from those who went before, so do the later generations of X-ers and Y-ers differ from them. Their sociology and psychology are totally different, and Amar shows specifically how and why. The result is an in-depth presentation of whom these knowledge workers are and how to select, adapt, and develop new concepts, principles, strategies, and techniques to achieve the unique successes they are capable of delivering. Amar highlights the difference between these new, knowledge-based organizations and their traditional counterparts. He makes clear with examples, anecdotes, and other illustrative material that the driving force behind them is their ability to innovate. These organizations attract special types of people, and, as Amar points out, they have their own ways of seeing the world and doing things in it. They tend to decry and defy tradition. Amar explores the sociology and psychology of these startling new workers, and provides management with a full bag of tools to interact with them, including ways to redesign work itself as well as the entire organization, plus new ways to approach the commonplace functions of decision-making, leading, motivating, and controlling. He also provides special insights into the modification of behavior, and a means to assess when it can be useful and productive.

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