Week One Assignment
Strategic Management
MIS 44285
Instructor: Dr. Alan Smith
Date: February 7, 2013
Article Review and Critique: “Knowledge -Worker Productivity: The Biggest Challenge”
By Michael E. Porter (1999)
Synopsis
This article first introduces there are not specific knowledge workers before. The workers are all thought as manual workers. Peter F. Drucker pointed out two different types of workers in all types of business environments: the manual worker and the knowledge worker. He also explains the importance of the knowledge work Then Frederick Winslow Taylor first defined the manual-work productivity and first came up with the knowledge in the work. In his opinion, he told us the time that people worked equals to their productivity. Taylor believed that the manual work did not have any skills, what the worker should do is to repeat. The knowledge is the factor which makes the productivity grows. What’s more, he also pointed the importance of quality. Good quality is better than the quantity. There are six factors that determine the knowledge-worker productivity. First, the task is made by the knowledge-workers. Second, they made effects on the responsibility for their productivity on the individual knowledge workers themselves, they give jobs to themselves. Third, knowledge workers need to learn their technology and teach their knowledge as well. Forth, productivity of the knowledge worker is not a matter of the quantity of output. Quality is at least as important. Fifth, knowledge workers are traded as an “asset”. Their good performances give them opportunities. Last, knowledge workers should make innovation to create better products. Depending on the jobs, Drucker show us examples that knowledge workers became useless by doing non-knowledge based work. The company should hire knowledge workers to do the tasks that can lead them to the right way to increase the productivity. The economics is the area