Abstract

Advances in information technology and other hightechnology sectors have increased the number of people involved in the activities of knowledge creation and diffusion. These people, known as knowledge workers, form a special class that includes professionals, consultants, technicians, scientists, intellectuals and managers (Bell 1976; Wuthnow and Shrum 1983; Quinn 1992; Ruhleder 1994). Even though the definitions of knowledge work are varied and inconclusive, knowledge work has the following characteristics: • it produces and reproduces information and knowledge (Machlup 1962; Stehr 1994); • unlike physical blue-collar work, knowledge work is cerebral (Davis, Collins et al. 1991; Davis and Nauman 1997), and involves the manipulation of abstractions and symbols that both represent the world and are objects in the world (Fuller 1992); • unlike service work, which is frequently scripted (Leidner 1993), knowledge work defies routinization and requires the use of creativity in order to produce idiosyncratic, esoteric knowledge (Drucker 1993; Ledford 1995; Sviokla 1996); and • it requires a formal education, i.e., abstract, technical and theoretical knowledge (Starbuck 1992; Frenkel, Korczynski et al. 1995).

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