Davenport on Knowledge Workers

Labels: LISTEN, CONNECT, People, Social Networking, Best Practices, Communities of Practice

Written by Ben Cheek | Friday, 05 March 2010 16:43

According to Tom Davenport, at least 28% (36 million people) of the workforce are knowledge workers: Knowledge workers have high degrees of expertise, education or experience, and the primary purpose of their jobs involves the creation, distribution or application of knowledge.

Davenport offers this insight about how knowledge workers want to work:

They generally "don't like to be told what to do, . . . work best when working with other people in social networks, and are better led by example than by explicit management" (Thinking for a Living, How to Get Better Performance and Results from Knowledge Workers, 2005 Harvard Business School Press, p. 14).

Sure pegged me.