knowledge and skills of their employees. However, they have to create the envir-
onment for this knowledge to be developed and shared (Maister 1993 ). They also
have to ensure that peer learning processes, which are highly valued by knowledge
workers, are facilitated both through work organization and by recruiting talented
and respected co-workers.
The simultaneous developing and sharing of knowledge presents a management
challenge in itself because knowledge workers may hold on to their knowledge in
order to secure their next career opportunity, be that within or external to
the organization. Employers need to retain valuable knowledge that has been
developed in order to create further value from their investment. TheWrm needs
to appropriate value from knowledge developed (Blyer and CoV 2003), while
minimizing the risk of excessive appropriation by the knowledge workers them-
selves. It needs to guard against excessive remuneration demands and the leakage of
knowledge (in terms of innovation or clients) when employees leave theWrm.
This meansWrms need to erect ‘resource mobility barriers’ (Mueller 1996 ) while
satisfying the career needs of their knowledge workers by encouraging key employ-
ees to remain with the organization. When an organization is heavily reliant upon
its human capital, the risk associated with frequent career moves between organ-
izations is far greater and the inability to manage the leakage of knowledge across
boundaries can adversely aVectWrm viability (Swart and Kinnie 2004 ).
22.4 The Organizational Perspective:
Managing Knowledge Workers
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Organizations that facilitate knowledge production have a number of distinctive
characteristics which are critical to the performance of the business. They operate
in a ‘pressure cooker’ type of environment where product and labour markets are
often unstable and technology is changing quickly. They tend to develop complex
and innovative internal and external structures and forms (Frenkel et al. 1999 ;May
et al. 2002 ) in comparison to other more traditional, slow-growing, and relatively
bureaucratic organizations.
These organizational and environmental characteristics challenge traditional
ways of organizing based on hierarchy and specialization and pose a whole series
of questions about the people management practices most appropriate in these
contexts. Ghoshal and Bartlett ( 1995 : 96 ) suggest this may require a shift from what
they term the ‘strategy–structure–systems’ paradigm, where the managerial task is
largely concerned with allocating resources, assigning responsibilities, and then
controlling the outcomes, to one based more on ‘purpose–process–people.’ This is
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