Knowledge Worker LO16123

Gray Southon (gsouthon@ozemail.com.au)
Sat, 6 Dec 1997 16:35:21 +1100 (EST)

Replying to LO16118 --

Richard,

Your implications concerning inferiority and superiority are yours.

To identify a difference does not imply any hierarchy, only difference.
Management theory has been pre-occupied with manual workers, and has been
quite inadequate for knowledge workers. We need to address this problem.

And you are right, we do depend very heavily on the people who "do"
things.

Gray

>"Knowledge Worker" "means" just what one choses it to mean--neither more
>nor less (to paraphrase Humpty Dumpty). I've always found it to be a
>condescending term by association. By this I mean it implies that those
>whom we have traditionally thought of as "workers" (i.e. people who
>actually make things) are someow inferior (i.e. have less access to
>"knowledge") than people who have jobs which don't require that they make
>things.

Gray Southon
Consultant in Health Management Research and Analysis
15 Parthenia St., Caringbah, NSW 2229, Australia
Ph/Fax +61 2 9524 7822, mobile +61 414 295 328
e-mail gsouthon@ozemail.com.au
Web Page: http://www.ozemail.com.au/~gsouthon/
Temporarily: Lecturer in Health Management
University of New England, Armidale, NSW.

-- 

Gray Southon <gsouthon@ozemail.com.au>

Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>