Download or read book Rise of the Knowledge Worker written by James Cortada and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2009-11-03 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A generation of magnificent scholars, from Peter Drucker to Jack Welch, have taught us that understanding business issues and the profound changes the world's economy is undergoing makes sense if set in historical context. Today the best managers in the world demand to know how things came to be as they are. This collection of essays is designed to give the reader an historical perspective on the fastest growing sector of the work force: knowledge workers. The articles tell you how knowledge workers evolved from manufacturing and agricultural jobs and then go on to give you some insight as to what the future roles of knowledge workers will be. The readings in this volume come from a variety of sources not normally looked at by managers and business executives. There are reports from historians, sociologists, academics, and economic experts. Each chapter begins with a brief introduction on the material, its significance, and something about the context in which it was written, including brief biographical comments on the author. The Rise of the Knowledge Worker is intended for business people, managers, leaders, government employees, and students.

Download or read book Rise of the Knowledge Worker written by James Cortada and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2009-11-03 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A generation of magnificent scholars, from Peter Drucker to Jack Welch, have taught us that understanding business issues and the profound changes the world's economy is undergoing makes sense if set in historical context. Today the best managers in the world demand to know how things came to be as they are. This collection of essays is designed to give the reader an historical perspective on the fastest growing sector of the work force: knowledge workers. The articles tell you how knowledge workers evolved from manufacturing and agricultural jobs and then go on to give you some insight as to what the future roles of knowledge workers will be. The readings in this volume come from a variety of sources not normally looked at by managers and business executives. There are reports from historians, sociologists, academics, and economic experts. Each chapter begins with a brief introduction on the material, its significance, and something about the context in which it was written, including brief biographical comments on the author. The Rise of the Knowledge Worker is intended for business people, managers, leaders, government employees, and students.

Download or read book Working Knowledge written by Catherine L. Fisk and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2009-11-01 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Skilled workers of the early nineteenth century enjoyed a degree of professional independence because workplace knowledge and technical skill were their "property," or at least their attribute. In most sectors of today's economy, however, it is a foundational and widely accepted truth that businesses retain legal ownership of employee-generated intellectual property. In Working Knowledge, Catherine Fisk chronicles the legal and social transformations that led to the transfer of ownership of employee innovation from labor to management. This deeply contested development was won at the expense of workers' entrepreneurial independence and ultimately, Fisk argues, economic democracy. By reviewing judicial decisions and legal scholarship on all aspects of employee-generated intellectual property and combing the archives of major nineteenth-century intellectual property-producing companies--including DuPont, Rand McNally, and the American Tobacco Company--Fisk makes a highly technical area of law accessible to general readers while also addressing scholarly deficiencies in the histories of labor, intellectual property, and the business of technology.

Download or read book Thinking for a Living written by Thomas H. Davenport and published by Harvard Business Press. This book was released on 2005-09-13 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Knowledge workers create the innovations and strategies that keep their firms competitive and the economy healthy. Yet, companies continue to manage this new breed of employee with techniques designed for the Industrial Age. As this critical sector of the workforce continues to increase in size and importance, that's a mistake that could cost companies their future. Thomas Davenport argues that knowledge workers are vastly different from other types of workers in their motivations, attitudes, and need for autonomy--and, so, they require different management techniques to improve their performance and productivity. Based on extensive research involving over 100 companies and more than 600 knowledge workers, Thinking for a Living provides rich insights into how knowledge workers think, how they accomplish tasks, and what motivates them to excel. Davenport identifies four major categories of knowledge workers and presents a unique framework for matching specific types of workers with the management strategies that yield the greatest performance. Written by the field's premier thought leader, Thinking for a Living reveals how to maximize the brain power that fuels organizational success. Thomas Davenport holds the President's Chair in Information Technology and Management at Babson College. He is director of research for Babson Executive Education; an Accenture Fellow; and author, co-author, or editor of nine books, including Working Knowledge: How Organizations Manage What They Know (HBS Press, 1997).

Download or read book Landmarks of Tomorrow written by Peter F. Drucker and published by Transaction Publishers. This book was released on 2011-12-31 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Landmarks of Tomorrow forecasts changes in three major areas of human life and experience. The first part of the book treats the philosophical shift from a Cartesian universe of mechanical cause to a new universe of pattern, purpose, and process. Drucker discusses the power to organize men of knowledge and high skill for joint effort and performance as a key component of this change. The second part of the book sketches four realities that challenge the people of the free world: an educated society, economic development, the decline of government, and the collapse of Eastern culture. The final section of the book is concerned with the spiritual reality of human existence. These are seen as basic elements in late twentieth-century society. In his new introduction, Peter Drucker revisits the main findings of Landmarks of Tomorrow and assesses their validity in relation to today’s concerns. It is a book that will be of interest to sociologists, economists, and political theorists.

Download or read book Talking about Machines written by Julian E. Orr and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2016-10-01 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a story of how work gets done. It is also a study of how field service technicians talk about their work and how that talk is instrumental in their success. In his innovative ethnography, Julian E. Orr studies the people who repair photocopiers and shares vignettes from their daily lives. He characterizes their work as a continuous highly skilled improvisation within a triangular relationship of technician, customer, and machine. The work technicians do encompasses elements not contained in the official definition of the job yet vital to its success. Orr's analysis of the way repair people talk about their work reveals that talk is, in fact, a crucial dimension of their practice. Diagnosis happens through a narrative process, the creation of a coherent description of the troubled machine. The descriptions become the basis for technicians' discourse about their experience, and the circulation of stories among the technicians is the principal means by which they stay informed of the developing subtleties of machine behavior. Orr demonstrates that technical knowledge is a socially distributed resource stored and diffused primarily through an oral culture.Based on participant observation with copier repair technicians in the field and strengthened by Orr's own years as a technician, this book explodes numerous myths about technicians and suggests how technical work differs from other kinds of employment.

Download or read book Knowledge Workers in the Information Society written by Pasi Pyöriä and published by University of Tampere. This book was released on 2005 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers a critical perspective on knowledge work, arguing that the rise of knowledge work is not only an economic or managerial issue, it reflects a major social and cultural transformation comparable to the Industrial Revolution. Sheds light on the everyday realities of knowledge work, with empirical evidence from Finland.

Download or read book Getting Things Done written by David Allen and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2015-03-17 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book Lifehack calls "The Bible of business and personal productivity." "A completely revised and updated edition of the blockbuster bestseller from 'the personal productivity guru'"—Fast Company Since it was first published almost fifteen years ago, David Allen’s Getting Things Done has become one of the most influential business books of its era, and the ultimate book on personal organization. “GTD” is now shorthand for an entire way of approaching professional and personal tasks, and has spawned an entire culture of websites, organizational tools, seminars, and offshoots. Allen has rewritten the book from start to finish, tweaking his classic text with important perspectives on the new workplace, and adding material that will make the book fresh and relevant for years to come. This new edition of Getting Things Done will be welcomed not only by its hundreds of thousands of existing fans but also by a whole new generation eager to adopt its proven principles.

Download or read book The Rise of the Working Class Shareholder written by David Webber and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2018-04-02 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Steven Burd, CEO of the supermarket chain Safeway, cut wages and benefits, starting a five-month strike by 59,000 unionized workers, he was confident he would win. But where traditional labor action failed, a novel approach was more successful. With the aid of the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, a $300 billion pension fund, workers led a shareholder revolt that unseated three of Burd’s boardroom allies. In The Rise of the Working-Class Shareholder: Labor's Last Best Weapon, David Webber uses cases such as Safeway’s to shine a light on labor’s most potent remaining weapon: its multitrillion-dollar pension funds. Outmaneuvered at the bargaining table and under constant assault in Washington, state houses, and the courts, worker organizations are beginning to exercise muscle through markets. Shareholder activism has been used to divest from anti-labor companies, gun makers, and tobacco; diversify corporate boards; support Occupy Wall Street; force global warming onto the corporate agenda; create jobs; and challenge outlandish CEO pay. Webber argues that workers have found in labor’s capital a potent strategy against their exploiters. He explains the tactic’s surmountable difficulties even as he cautions that corporate interests are already working to deny labor’s access to this powerful and underused tool. The Rise of the Working-Class Shareholder is a rare good-news story for American workers, an opportunity hiding in plain sight. Combining legal rigor with inspiring narratives of labor victory, Webber shows how workers can wield their own capital to reclaim their strength.

Download or read book Do More Great Work written by Michael Bungay Stanier and published by Workman Publishing. This book was released on 2010-02-22 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: You work hard. You put in the hours. Yet you feel like you are constantly treading water with "Good Work" that keeps you going but never quite moves you ahead. Or worse, you are mired in "Bad Work"—endless meetings and energy-draining bureaucratic traps. Do More Great Work gets to the heart of the problem: Even the best performers are spending less than a fraction of their time doing "Great Work"—the kind of innovative work that pushes us forward, stretches our creativity, and truly satisfies us. Michael Bungay Stanier, Canadian Coach of the Year in 2006, is a business consultant who’s found a way to move us away from bad work (and even good work), and toward more time spent doing great work. When you’re up to your eyeballs answering e-mail, returning phone calls, attending meetings and scrambling to get that project done, you can turn to this inspirational, motivating, and at times playful book for invaluable guidance. In fifteen exercises, Do More Great Work shows how you can finally do more of the work that engages and challenges you, that has a real impact, that plays to your strengths—and that matters. The exercises are "maps"—brilliantly simple visual tools that help you find, start and sustain Great Work, revealing how to: Find clues to your own Great Work—they’re all around you Locate the sweet spot between what you want to do and what your organization wants you to do Generate new ideas and possibilities quickly Best manage your overwhelming workload Double the likelihood that you’ll do what you want to do All it takes is ten minutes a day, a pencil and a willingness to change. Do More Great Work will not only help you identify what the Great Work of your life is, it will tell you how to do it.

Download or read book Good Jobs Bad Jobs written by Arne L. Kalleberg and published by Russell Sage Foundation. This book was released on 2011-06-01 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The economic boom of the 1990s veiled a grim reality: in addition to the growing gap between rich and poor, the gap between good and bad quality jobs was also expanding. The postwar prosperity of the mid-twentieth century had enabled millions of American workers to join the middle class, but as author Arne L. Kalleberg shows, by the 1970s this upward movement had slowed, in part due to the steady disappearance of secure, well-paying industrial jobs. Ever since, precarious employment has been on the rise—paying low wages, offering few benefits, and with virtually no long-term security. Today, the polarization between workers with higher skill levels and those with low skills and low wages is more entrenched than ever. Good Jobs, Bad Jobs traces this trend to large-scale transformations in the American labor market and the changing demographics of low-wage workers. Kalleberg draws on nearly four decades of survey data, as well as his own research, to evaluate trends in U.S. job quality and suggest ways to improve American labor market practices and social policies. Good Jobs, Bad Jobs provides an insightful analysis of how and why precarious employment is gaining ground in the labor market and the role these developments have played in the decline of the middle class. Kalleberg shows that by the 1970s, government deregulation, global competition, and the rise of the service sector gained traction, while institutional protections for workers—such as unions and minimum-wage legislation—weakened. Together, these forces marked the end of postwar security for American workers. The composition of the labor force also changed significantly; the number of dual-earner families increased, as did the share of the workforce comprised of women, non-white, and immigrant workers. Of these groups, blacks, Latinos, and immigrants remain concentrated in the most precarious and low-quality jobs, with educational attainment being the leading indicator of who will earn the highest wages and experience the most job security and highest levels of autonomy and control over their jobs and schedules. Kalleberg demonstrates, however, that building a better safety net—increasing government responsibility for worker health care and retirement, as well as strengthening unions—can go a long way toward redressing the effects of today’s volatile labor market. There is every reason to expect that the growth of precarious jobs—which already make up a significant share of the American job market—will continue. Good Jobs, Bad Jobs deftly shows that the decline in U.S. job quality is not the result of fluctuations in the business cycle, but rather the result of economic restructuring and the disappearance of institutional protections for workers. Only government, employers and labor working together on long-term strategies—including an expanded safety net, strengthened legal protections, and better training opportunities—can help reverse this trend. A Volume in the American Sociological Association’s Rose Series in Sociology.

Download or read book The Knowledge Economy written by Roberto Mangabeira Unger and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2022-06-28 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Revolutionary account of the transformative potential of the knowledge economy Adam Smith and Karl Marx recognized that the best way to understand the economy is to study the most advanced practice of production. Today that practice is no longer conventional manufacturing: it is the radically innovative vanguard known as the knowledge economy. In every part of the production system it remains a fringe excluding the vast majority of workers and businesses. This book explores the hidden nature of the knowledge economy and its possible futures. The confinement of the knowledge economy to these insular vanguards has become a driver of economic stagnation and inequality throughout the world. Traditional mass production has stopped working as a shortcut to economic growth. But the alternative—a deepened and socially inclusive form of the knowledge economy—continues to lie beyond reach in even the richest countries. The shape of contemporary politics on both the left and the right reflects a failure to come to terms with this dilemma and to overcome it. Unger explains the knowledge economy in the truncated and confined form that it has today and proposes the way to a knowledge economy for the many: changes not just in economic institutions but also in education, culture, and politics. Just as Smith and Marx did in their time, he uses an understanding of the most advanced practice of production to rethink both economics and the economy as a whole.

Download or read book Work s Intimacy written by Melissa Gregg and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-04-23 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a long-overdue account of online technology and its impact on the work and lifestyles of professional employees. It moves between the offices and homes of workers in the knew "knowledge" economy to provide intimate insight into the personal, family, and wider social tensions emerging in today’s rapidly changing work environment. Drawing on her extensive research, Gregg shows that new media technologies encourage and exacerbate an older tendency among salaried professionals to put work at the heart of daily concerns, often at the expense of other sources of intimacy and fulfillment. New media technologies from mobile phones to laptops and tablet computers, have been marketed as devices that give us the freedom to work where we want, when we want, but little attention has been paid to the consequences of this shift, which has seen work move out of the office and into cafés, trains, living rooms, dining rooms, and bedrooms. This professional "presence bleed" leads to work concerns impinging on the personal lives of employees in new and unforseen ways. This groundbreaking book explores how aspiring and established professionals each try to cope with the unprecedented intimacy of technologically-mediated work, and how its seductions seem poised to triumph over the few remaining relationships that may stand in its way.

Download or read book Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations A Story of Economic Discovery written by David Warsh and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2007-05-17 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "What The Double Helix did for biology, David Warsh's Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations does for economics." —Boston Globe A stimulating and inviting tour of modern economics centered on the story of one of its most important breakthroughs. In 1980, the twenty-four-year-old graduate student Paul Romer tackled one of the oldest puzzles in economics. Eight years later he solved it. This book tells the story of what has come to be called the new growth theory: the paradox identified by Adam Smith more than two hundred years earlier, its disappearance and occasional resurfacing in the nineteenth century, the development of new technical tools in the twentieth century, and finally the student who could see further than his teachers. Fascinating in its own right, new growth theory helps to explain dominant first-mover firms like IBM or Microsoft, underscores the value of intellectual property, and provides essential advice to those concerned with the expansion of the economy. Like James Gleick's Chaos or Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe, this revealing book takes us to the frontlines of scientific research; not since Robert Heilbroner's classic work The Worldly Philosophers have we had as attractive a glimpse of the essential science of economics.

Download or read book The Rise of the Robots written by Martin Ford and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-09-03 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Intelligent algorithms are already well on their way to making white collar jobs obsolete: travel agents, data-analysts, and paralegals are currently in the firing line. In the near future, doctors, taxi-drivers and ironically even computer programmers are poised to be replaced by ‘robots’. Without a radical reassessment of our economic and political structures, we risk the very implosion of the capitalist economy itself. In The Rise of the Robots, technology expert Martin Ford systematically outlines the achievements of artificial intelligence and uses a wealth of economic data to illustrate the terrifying societal implications. From health and education to finance and technology, his warning is stark – all jobs that are on some level routine are likely to eventually be automated, resulting in the death of traditional careers and a hollowed-out middle class. The robots are coming and we have to decide – now – whether the future will bring prosperity or catastrophe.

Download or read book The Rise of the Therapeutic Society written by Katie Wright and published by New Acdemia+ORM. This book was released on 2015-02-25 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An examination of the Western world’s contemporary fascination with psychological life, and the historical developments that fostered it. In this book, sociologist Katie Wright traces the ascendancy of therapeutic culture, from nineteenth-century concerns about nervousness, to the growth of psychology, the diffusion of an analytic attitude, and the spread of therapy and counseling, using Australia as a focal point. Wright’s analysis, which draws on social theory, cultural history, and interviews with therapists and people in therapy, calls into question the pessimism that pervades many accounts of the therapeutic turn and provides an alternative assessment of its ramifications for social, political, and personal life in the globalized West. Special Commendation, TASA Raewyn Connell Prize

Download or read book Rise of the Robots written by Martin Ford and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2015-05-05 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New York Times-bestselling guide to how automation is changing the economy, undermining work, and reshaping our lives Winner of Best Business Book of the Year awards from the Financial Times and from Forbes "Lucid, comprehensive, and unafraid . . . ;an indispensable contribution to a long-running argument." -- Los Angeles Times What are the jobs of the future? How many will there be? And who will have them? As technology continues to accelerate and machines begin taking care of themselves, fewer people will be necessary. Artificial intelligence is already well on its way to making "good jobs" obsolete: many paralegals, journalists, office workers, and even computer programmers are poised to be replaced by robots and smart software. As progress continues, blue and white collar jobs alike will evaporate, squeezing working -- and middle-class families ever further. At the same time, households are under assault from exploding costs, especially from the two major industries-education and health care-that, so far, have not been transformed by information technology. The result could well be massive unemployment and inequality as well as the implosion of the consumer economy itself. The past solutions to technological disruption, especially more training and education, aren't going to work. We must decide, now, whether the future will see broad-based prosperity or catastrophic levels of inequality and economic insecurity. Rise of the Robots is essential reading to understand what accelerating technology means for our economic prospects-not to mention those of our children-as well as for society as a whole.