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126 MANAGING KNOWLEDGE WORK AND INNOVATION

seen more positively – they were human resources not costs. It followed that the
recruitment, training and development of this group could actually be seen as an
investment for the firm because these knowledge workers had the potential to
be a productive resource.
While the HRM label has been widely adopted, actual policy and practice can
vary enormously from one organization to another. In some organizations, for
example, the HRM function has little more than an administrative role, handling
the paperwork associated with processes of recruitment and selection, appraisal
and reward. In others, it may play a more important role in helping to deliver
business strategy. There are relatively few boardrooms, however, where the HR
function has a strong voice in influencing the direction of business strategy.
This is not to say that top managers can only develop effective HRM policies
and practices where the HR function is powerful. Wherever businesses recognize
the value of their employees’ contribution – and this is often where the employ-
ees are knowledge workers – there is likely to be more attention to recruiting,
motivating and retaining employees as a vital part of the organization’s strategy.
This is certainly reflected in the experience of the knowledge-intensive firms
discussed in Chapter 2. Given this experience, the emphasis in this chapter is
not on the HR function itself but on the HRM policies and practices which
organizations can apply to knowledge workers as a an employee group in order
to nurture an effective environment for knowledge work.

>> CHALLENGES FOR HRM
As discussed in previous chapters, knowledge work can take many different
forms and can therefore pose a wide range of challenges for organizations. In
discussing HRM for knowledge workers then, we need to be wary of gener-
alizing too far about what knowledge workers want from employers, or how
employers treat them as a group. As highlighted by the Baron et al. framework
in Chapter 2, for instance, knowledge workers can develop many different kinds
of attachment to their organizations – everything from ‘love’ to ‘money’. This
being said, however, once we allow for this variation across organizations and
societies, existing research does suggest some recurring challenges arising from
managing knowledge workers.
One consequence of the knowledge worker’s expertise, for instance, is that such
workers tend to operate in tight labour markets where demand from employers
exceeds supply. As the discussion of ‘gold collar workers’ in Chapter 2 underlined,
this gives knowledge workers a degree of labour market power. In other words,
because they have more ability to pick and choose their employer, they enjoy
greater bargaining power than many other employees. Such power is important
in allowing knowledge workers to resist changes in work practices, as we saw
in the Uni case in Chapter 3. It also helps to explain the high level of expecta-
tions which knowledge workers are seen as bringing to their jobs. Enhanced by
their educational background, but – crucially – reinforced by their labour market

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