As an addendum to this post, I would claim that anyone becomes a knowledge worker when they have to think. And people only think when they are prompted by the unexpected. So a knowledge worker is someone who faces the unexpected.
The reason more & more of us can be tagged as knowledge workers is not that work is becoming more virtual (though it is). Nor is it that more of us are "symbolic interactionists" (though we may be). It is because the world is getting more complex. More interconnected. And the unexpected is getting more and more common.
How do we educate people to deal with the unexpected?
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2 comments:
Nice blog - just discovered it :-)
As an aside my dislike for the term "knowledge worker" is growing as time goes on. It's very "us" and "them". We're all workers gosh darn it. People on the shop floor need to communicate, associate and find knowledge just as much as librarians, programmers and middle management. Removing barriers to these tasks help people in all positions.
Adrian - Welcome. And I would agree that pretty much all jobs have some knowledge component - most people face the unexpected at some point in the course of their work.
I don't like the "us" and "them" part at all either.
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