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44 MANAGING KNOWLEDGE WORK AND INNOVATION

more reminiscent of the fragmentation perspective rather than the integration
perspective.
Leaders of such firms therefore need to acknowledge and accept that dif-
ferentiation and fragmentation rather than integration might predominate, and
recognize that they are only in a position to loosely manage organizational cul-
ture, for example, by promoting perhaps just one specific value or belief that
knowledge workers will naturally wish to identify with. Research by Alvesson
and Robertson (2006) demonstrated that in several different types of consul-
tancy settings, leaders and management employed a variety of strategic and
symbolic mechanisms to construct an elite organizational identity with which
consultants readily identified; this served as an overarching way of integrating
knowledge workers within these firms. Consultancy firms appear to be particu-
larly appropriate settings for the construction of elite social identities because of
the type of people employed (often of high academic ability) and the nature of
much of the work that is conducted (ambiguous and intellectually demanding).
Consultants in these firms provide their expertise to other professionals – the
majority of their clients are highly skilled themselves – therefore a high level of
self-confidence is required. A construction of self and the organization as elite
and therefore clearly superior in vital respects can be important resources on
which to draw to promote and reinforce the required self-confidence. Moreover
an elite identity was found to be a significant mediator of consultancy work for
a variety of reasons. First, an elite identity was found to promote self-discipline
which sustained a desire to accomplish high standards of performance. Secondly,
perceiving these firms to only recruit ‘the very best’ served to attract applicants
and generate high retention rates. Finally, a shared belief that consultants them-
selves and the firm as a whole were ‘elite’ generated a strong image that gener-
ated high calibre clients.
Typically, organizational elites have been considered the privileged few
who control organizational resources and have considerable power and influ-
ence both organizationally and to some extent at a societal level (Hill, 1995;
Kabanoff and Holt, 1996). Thus in much of the extant literature the elite is
located at the apex of an organization. Alvesson and Robertson, however,
demonstrated that the notion of belonging to the elite can exist across whole
firms. By promoting an organizational ethos that is more or less generally
accepted and shared, rather than attempting to instil and reinforce a dominant
core value system, there is a greater likelihood that knowledge workers will
start to see the firm as a ‘good’ place to work. As far as is possible in such a
diverse, loosely structured environment, this approach is more likely to aid
retention and promote responsible autonomy within the firm. One example
of this is provided by Timothy Koogle, the founder of Yahoo!, a leading web
portal, who argues that his organization became successful largely because
he promoted the idea that employees should communicate freely with one
another and as far as possible engage in genuine consensual decisions making
(Greenberg and Baron, 2000). This ethos was considered to be essential in the

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