Changing Roles of Worker ( Evolution of Management) - Essay Example

Focus would be over an article by Lauren Keller Johnson entitled Are you getting the most from your knowledge worker? (2006). Moreover, the paper would revolve around the evolution of management roles particularly from a boss to a coach or player role. In order to explore the shift in roles, the paper would elaborate and describe the roles of the player/coach, how this role is achieved by a manager. Moreover, it would discuss over how the manager identifies knowledge workers without having proper means to identify, measure and quantify knowledge itself.

Changing Roles of Workers According to Austin (2006), a knowledge worker is someone who is not hired to do manual work as they are most productive when given the autonomy to work with their skills as they are the workers who are employed due to their deep knowledge over a subject, this quality of the knowledge worker makes them exclusive and diverse from traditional workers. A precise characterization of knowledge workers can be quoted by Davenport in his article “Knowledge work and the Future of management’ (2001) which states them as “the workers who contribute in disseminating knowledge such as product development engineers, or the workers whose work revolves around the application of knowledge, such as financial auditors” Furthermore, Austin claimed that with when dealing with knowledge workers, the management is more democratic as opposed to being autocratic and where bosses are more like knowledge managers rather than leaders.

This evolving role of bosses is recognized by Davenport as marking eight key trends of the player/coach role these trends include performing tasks themselves rather than only supervising it, replacing the organization of hierarchies by allowing the formation of communities, understanding the nature of the work and devising work design models instead of enforcing them, having a more open approach towards training while discouraging redundancy and demoralization, replacing manual skills by those that contribute in building knowledge, focusing upon invisible performance achievements rather than evaluating visible achievements, promoting a culture of knowledge versus one of ignorance, and finally, nurturing bureaucracy (Wagner, 2002) Often managers fail to recognize the abilities of the workers to become knowledge workers when in actuality, every worker is a knowledge worker as they would be able to, if given the opportunity, assume the roles of player/coach as it was envisaged by the eight trends mentioned earlier.

A worker being employed by an organization would be, with the passage of time, adding his or her knowledge into the corporate culture of the organization. The enhanced corporate culture would become a strong aspect for the business as it would help in improving the work practices by adding value to the knowledge base of the organization and helping it function better. The process would bring out the role of a coach/player from a knowledge manager who was initially a knowledge worker in the organization.

A vital measure of the efficacy of the knowledge manager is through the relationships that they inculcate and maintain (Serrat, 2008). The management of knowledge workers can only be accomplished by managers who do not only possess the skills of good leaders, but who are equally as competent being team players and followers. It involves progression of talent by influencing skills of knowledge work