Responding to LO16123
Gray
Thanks for the thoughtful reply.
> Your implications concerning inferiority and superiority are
> yours.
I'm not sure what you mean here. I was only observing that many people
who use the term "knowledge worker" do it with a sense of condescension
towards "non-knowledge workers." You're comment has made me rethink that
observation, but after reflection on my reading and experience, I still
believe it is a valid one.
> To identify a difference does not imply any hierarchy, only
> difference.
Fully agreed. If my posting implied anything else, apologies all around.
> Management theory has been pre-occupied with manual
> workers, and has been quite inadequate for knowledge workers. We
> need to address this problem.
I think my whole point, inadequately articulated as it may have been, is
that there is no such thing as a "non-knowledge worker." I was trying to
say that even "manual" workers embody substantial intellectual capital and
leaders ignore the existence and power of that knowledge at their peril.
However, even if you believe the opposite (i.e. that there is a
qualitative difference between someone who maintains a lathe and someone
who authors a new pension procedure) I do not think, for what it's worth,
that "management" theory has been inadequate vis a vis "knoweldge
workers", but rather the opposite. Perhaps we have had different
teachers, or read differnet journals :).
> And you are right, we do depend very heavily on the people who
> "do" things.
We all only "do" things, don't we? Or am I missing something?
Cheers for now
Richard Goodale
Managing Partner
The Dornoch Partnership
"If the game of life were handicapped like golf, we'd all be hackers."
JP Parodi
--Richard Goodale <fc45@dial.pipex.com>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>