Page 178 - The Drucker Lectures

The Knowledge Worker and the Knowledge Society [ 159

But these earlier organizations were still seen as exceptions.
The first organization in the modern sense, the first that was
seen as being prototypical rather than exceptional, was surely
the modern business enterprise as it emerged after 1870, which
is the reason why, to this day, most people think of management
as being “business management.”
With the emergence of the knowledge society, society has
become a society of organizations. Most of us work in and for
an organization, and we are dependent for our effectiveness and
equally for our living on access to an organization, whether as
an organization’s employee or as a provider of services to an
organization—as a lawyer, for instance, or a freight forwarder.
More and more of these supporting services to organizations are,
themselves, organized as organizations. The first law firm was
organized in the United States a little over a century ago; until
then, lawyers practiced as individuals. In Europe there were no
law firms to speak of until after World War II. Today, the prac-
tice of law is increasingly done in larger and larger partnerships.
It is also true, especially in the United States, of the practice of
medicine. The knowledge society is a society of organizations
in which practically every single task is being performed in and
through an organization.
Most knowledge workers will spend most if not all of their
working life as employees. The meaning of the term is different
from what it has been traditionally, and not only in English but
in German, Spanish, or Japanese as well.
Individually, knowledge workers are dependent on the job.
They receive a wage or salary. They are being hired and can be
fired. Legally, each is an employee. But, collectively, they are the
only capitalists. Increasingly, through their pension funds and
through their other savings (such as through mutual funds in the
United States), the employees own the means of production. In
traditional economics—and by no means only in Marxist eco-