22.7 Summary and Conclusions
.........................................................................................................................................................................................
This chapter has outlined the relevance and development of knowledge workers
in contemporary organizations. It followed a social constructionist approach in
developing a deWnition of knowledge workers, specifying that we need to (a)be
clear on what type of knowledge the worker brings to the knowledge conversion
process, (b) understand the nature of knowledge work, and (c) show awareness of
the knowledge production environment and the social and organizational capital
that it provides to the knowledge worker and theWrm.
Working from this deWnition, the characteristics of knowledge workers were
explored and juxtaposed with the characteristics of employing organizations and
their managerial practices. This juxtaposition enabled the identiWcation of three
‘concurrent themes’: theXuidity of the nature of knowledge work and the organ-
ization of knowledge work, the prevalence of market-based networks (personal,
professional, and organizational), and the focal point of knowledge-trading. Each
of these key themes inXuences the adoption of particular sets of HR practices.
Finally, each theme and subsequent set of HR practices represents a key tension
that needs to be tackled in the management of knowledge workers.
There are key messages for practice in the tensions associated with the themes of
Xuidity, networks, and knowledge-trading. They include the need to work on the
tensions that exist around value appropriation, including negotiation of intellec-
tual property rights and the ways in which business-to-business relationships are
managed.
Managerial practice also needs to engage with how knowledge workers go about
developing occupational, organizational, client, and team identities and how
particular managerial practices can help to lessen tensions that exist among these
identities. Among these, it is important for managers to recognize that knowledge
workers often have a particularly strong need for group identity. These competing
identities exist, are powerful, and inXuence the knowledge creation process. The
managerial agenda needs to be shaped with these realities in mind.
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