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24 MANAGING KNOWLEDGE WORK AND INNOVATION

Knowledge Management was, at least initially, on identifying, extracting and
capturing the, often tacit, ‘knowledge assets’ of the firm so that they could be
both fully exploited and fully protected as a source of competitive advantage.
For example, Dow Chemical, which earns a high income through technology
licensing, replaced a data archive described as ‘a disorganized mess of intellectual
capital’ with a widely accessible database to keep track of their many patents.
The use and limitations of Knowledge Management systems, introduced to exploit
the company’s intellectual or knowledge assets, are explored in detail in Chapter 7.
From this historical overview we can see that in some respects ‘Knowledge Man-
agement’ is actually pretty similar to Scientific Management, in so far as both aim
to capture the knowledge that resided in ‘the heads and the hands’ of the workers.
However, the task of extracting and capturing the knowledge of work processes
‘held’ in the heads of workers has become far more complex as traditional forms of
work have gradually been replaced by what we now refer to as knowledge work.

>> WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE WORK?
If we look back at the definition of knowledge above we can see that all work,
even Schmidt’s pig iron handling, requires the application and use of some
knowledge. You could argue, then, that all work is knowledge work. However,
as we shall see in Chapter 2, using the term in such a broad-brush way is not very
helpful when thinking about managing knowledge work.
The term ‘knowledge work’, as used here, refers more particularly to orga-
nizational activities and occupations that are ‘characterized by an emphasis on
theoretical knowledge, creativity and use of analytical and social skills’ (Frenkel
et al., 1995, p. 773). ‘Knowledge work’ in these terms encompasses both what
is traditionally referred to as professional work (e.g. accountancy, scientific
and legal work) and more contemporary types of work (e.g. consultancy, soft-
ware development, advertising and public relations). In these kinds of work,
knowledge acts as the main input into the work, the major way of achieving
the work and the major output. This kind of work, and the organizations that
focus on it, are explored in more depth in Chapter 2. Suffice to say here, it is
with this kind of work that we are most concerned in our book.
The term ‘knowledge worker’ encompasses, then, both professionals and
those with other discipline-based knowledge or more esoteric expertise and
skills – for example advertising, media, consultancy – whose major work tasks
involve the creation of new knowledge or the application of existing knowl-
edge in new ways. Knowledge workers typically have high levels of education
and specialist skills combined with the ability to apply these skills in prac-
tice to identify and solve problems. What is significant about these types of
knowledge workers is that, unlike the kinds of shop floor workers Taylor was
dealing with, or the call centre workers discussed above, knowledge work-
ers are the organization’s primary means of production. If we take the view,
also, that specialist knowledge is deeply embedded in practice (the episte-
mology of practice view), this means that knowledge work does not lend

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