Page 180 - The Drucker Lectures

The Knowledge Worker and the Knowledge Society [ 161

This is true whether the knowledge worker commands ad-
vanced knowledge, like the surgeon, or simple and fairly elemen-
tary knowledge like the junior accountant. In either case, it is the
knowledge investment that determines whether the employee is
productive—not the tools, machines, and capital the organiza-
tion furnishes.
The industrial worker needed the capitalist infinitely more
than the capitalist needed the industrial worker—the basis for
Marx’s assertion that there would always be a surplus of indus-
trial workers, an industrial reserve army that would make sure
wages could not possibly rise above the subsistence level (prob-
ably Marx’s most egregious error). In the knowledge society
the most probable assumption, and certainly the assumption on
which all organizations have to conduct their affairs, is that they
need the knowledge worker far more than the knowledge worker
needs them. It is the organization’s job to market its knowledge
jobs so as to obtain knowledge workers in adequate quantity and
superior quality. The relationship increasingly is one of inter-
dependence, with the knowledge worker having to learn what
the organization needs, but with the organization also having to
learn what the knowledge workers needs, requires, and expects.
Because its work is based on knowledge, the knowledge or-
ganization is altogether not one of superiors and subordinates.
The prototype is the symphony orchestra. The first violin may
be the most important instrument in the orchestra. But the first
violinist is not the superior of the harp player. He is a colleague.
The harp part is the harp player’s part, and not delegated to her
by either the conductor or the first violinist.
There was endless debate in the Middle Ages about the hier-
archy of knowledges, with philosophy claiming to be the queen
of knowledges. We long ago gave up that moot argument. There
is no higher knowledge and no lower knowledge. When the pa-
tient’s complaint is an ingrown toenail, the podiatrist’s knowledge