Examples of knowledge worker in the following topics:
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- It has created a situation in which workers who perform easily automated tasks are being forced to find work that is less automated.
- This poses problems for workers in industrial societies.
- The service sector consists of the "soft" parts of the economy—activities where people offer their knowledge and time to improve productivity, performance, potential, and sustainability.
- Typical examples of knowledge workers may include software engineers, architects, engineers, scientists and lawyers, because they "think for a living."
- Discuss the shift in the economy from mechanization to automation due to the Information Age and its impact on the modern industrial worker
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- These include analysis; synthesis; logic; rationality; empiricism; work ethic; efficiency and elimination of waste; standardization of best practices; disdain for tradition preserved merely for its own sake or merely to protect the social status of particular workers with particular skill sets; the transformation of craft production into mass production; and knowledge transfer between workers and from workers into tools, processes, and documentation.
- Taylor proposed a "neat, understandable world in the factory, an organization of men whose acts would be planned, coordinated, and controlled under continuous expert direction. " Factory production was to become a matter of efficient and scientific management—the planning and administration of workers and machines alike as components of one big machine.
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- The classical view of management tends to focus on the efficiency and productivity of workers rather than on workers' human needs.
- Under Taylorism the work effort of workers increased in intensity, but eventually workers became dissatisfied with the work environment and became angry, which affected their overall work ethic.
- Both were made possible by the deskilling of jobs, which arose because of the knowledge transfer that scientific management achieved, whereby knowledge was transferred to cheaper workers, as well as from workers into tools.
- The onus of enabling efficiency, therefore, shifts from workers to managers.
- Taylorism and classical management styles negatively affected the morale of workers, which created a negative relationship between workers and managers.
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- One way to increase worker productivity is to invest in better machinery, for example.
- A worker with a more productive tool in more productive.
- Since productivity is measured in dollars per worker, being able to generate more revenue from the same output is reflected in an increase in worker productivity.
- Human capital is defined as the stock of competencies, knowledge, social and personal attributes, including creativity, embodied in the ability to perform labor so as to produce economic value.
- Worker productivity in the long-run is related to real income.
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- Much like McGregor's theories, Ouchi's Theory Z makes certain assumptions about workers.
- Some of the assumptions about workers under this theory include:
- These types of workers have a very well developed sense of order, discipline, a moral obligation to work hard, and a sense of cohesion with their fellow workers.
- Ouchi explains that the employees must be very knowledgeable about the various issues of the company, as well as possess the competence to make those decisions.
- For this reason, Theory Z stresses the need for the workers to become generalists, rather than specialists, and to increase their knowledge of the company and its processes through job rotations and constant training.
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- No one combination of characteristics makes for the ideal job; rather, it is the purpose of job design to adjust the levels of each characteristic to attune the overall job with the worker performing it.
- This alignment is important because the worker brings psychological states to bear upon the job that affect job outcomes when combined with the core characteristics.
- The core characteristics affect three critical psychological states of the workers doing the job:
- Autonomy directly correlates to responsibility for outcomes, and knowledge of the actual results relates to feedback.
- Therefore, the goal should be to design the job in such a way that the core characteristics complement the psychological states of the worker and lead to positive outcomes.
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- These workers used machines to replicate in minutes or hours work that would require a skilled worker days to complete.
- In 1789, Samuel Slater, an apprentice in one of the largest textile factories in England, defied British laws against the emigration of skilled laborers and smuggled his knowledge of textile machinery to the United States.
- These workers were typically hired for contracts of one year.
- In the winter, workers often shivered in the cold.
- In such environments, workers’ health suffered.
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- The fact that the Defense Department contracted out for military interrogators and security officers in war zones did not become public knowledge until the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal broke in April 2004.
- Over 16 million full-time workers now administer federal policy, including 1.9 million federal civilian workers, 1.5 million uniformed military personnel, and 850,000 postal workers.
- State and local government workers are subject to federal mandates.
- With 16.2 million state and local government workers, the federal government does not need to hire approximately 4.05 million workers to carry out its policies.
- The fact that the Defense Department contracted out for military interrogators and security officers in war zones did not become public knowledge until the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal broke in April 2004.
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- This later theory, known as Cognitive Resource Theory (CRT), identifies the conditions under which leaders and group members will use their intellectual resources, skills, and knowledge effectively.
- For example, the taker is asked to rate the co-worker from Unfriendly (1) to Friendly (8), or Guarded (1) to Open (8).
- The LPC test is not actually about the co-worker; it is a profile of the test taker.
- Test subjects who are more oriented to human relations generally rate their least preferred co-workers higher, and the opposite is true for task-oriented test takers.
- The Least Preferred Co-worker (LPC) test reveals more about the test-taker than about the co-worker or the type of work the tester and co-worker did together.