"Bribing the Knowledge Worker"

"The key is not electronics; it is cognitive science.  This means that the key to maintaining leadership in the economy and the technology that are about to emerge is likely to be the social position of knowledge professionals and social acceptance of their values.  For them to remain traditional "employees" and be treated as such would be tantamount to England's treating its technologists as tradesmen -- and likely to have similar consequences."

"Increasingly, performance in these new knowledge-based institutions will come to depend on running the institution so as to attract, hold, and motivate knowledge workers.  When this can no longer be done by satisfying workers' greed, as we are now trying to do, it will have to be done by satisfying their values, and by giving them social recognition and social power.  It will have to be done by turning them from subordinates into fellow executives, and from employees, however well paid, into partners."

I can now envision where HR conferees are advised to screen out those prospective employees, contractors and consultants who have read either Peter Drucker or Ayn Rand. Now I must really read  Bleak House (motivated by Drucker's mention of Dicken's "contempt for the upstart ironmaster") and Drucker gets to satisfy my once per decade acquisition of a management guru tome.

Kevin Davis
Chair
West Michigan Section IEEE