Contents: 1. Outline of the Research Project 2. Work 3. Knowledge-intensive Organizations 4. Knowledge Workers 5. Research Methods and the Organizations Studied 6. Modern Bureaucracies 7. High Time in High-tech 8. Trust in Knowledge Work 9. Pleasure, Motivation and Identity in Knowledge Work Summary References Index
Dariusz Jemielniak, Associate Professor of Management and Head, Center for Research on Organizations and Workplaces (CROW), Kozminski University, Poland
The knowledge worker is a welcome addition to the ethnographic
investigation of high-tech work. The author's thoughtful
comparative approach, contrasting the oft-studied American
knowledge workers with their less familiar Polish counterparts,
offers a refreshing take on the post industrial workplace and
demonstrates once again the profound changes that high-tech work
has made in the nature of work, the worker and the workplace, far
beyond Silicon Valley.
- Gideon Kunda, Tel Aviv University, Israel The body of research
addressing knowledge-intensive and creative work is massive and is
quickly growing, but Dariusz Jemielniak manages to bring some new
issues and perspectives to the table in his carefully designed
study of the Polish and American computer programming community,
making concepts such as time, trust, and motivation constitutive
elements of contemporary knowledge work. Being able to bring
together ethnographic research and organization theory and social
science more broadly, The New Knowledge Workers is a significant
contribution to the understanding of contemporary working life in
the so-called ''knowledge society''.
- Alexander Styhre, University of Gothenburg, Sweden Jemielniak's
book combines detailed comparative ethnographic observations with
organizational analysis to highlight how little we actually know
about the operations of knowledge-intensive organizations. Arguing
that ancient commonplaces about a ''greener'', more egalitarian,
post-Taylorist future rely on ignoring real-time observations of
real people in context, Jemielniak's portrait of the knowledge
society of the 21st century shows it to be more like the Fordist
society of the 20th century than the utopia so many futurists
choose to imagine. His book tells us it is time to begin observing
again if we wish to ''know'' rather than ''believe'' what the
future holds for us.
--- Davydd J. Greenwood, Cornell University, US
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