The New Knowledge Workers ppt

The New Knowledge Workers
NEW HORIZONS IN MANAGEMENT
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The New Knowledge Workers
Dariusz Jemielniak
The New Knowledge
Workers
Dariusz Jemielniak
Kozminski University, Poland
NEW HORIZONS IN MANAGEMENT
Edward Elgar
Cheltenham, UK • Northampton, MA, USA
© Dariusz Jemielniak 2012
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v
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
1 Outline of the research project 1
High- tech companies 1
The high- tech industry in Poland and the US 2
The research area 5
2 Work 11
The history of the meaning of work 11
The contemporary approach to work 13
3 Knowledge- intensive organizations 16
The meaning of the “knowledge- intensive company” 16
The IT revolution 20
4 Knowledge workers 24
Professional roles 25

White- collar workers 28
Professionals 29
Engineers 35
5 Research methods and the organizations studied 42
Paradigm 43
Research metaphors 46
Research methods 47
The research problem 49
Characteristics of the organizations under study 51
6 Modern bureaucracies 53
Introduction 53
Post- bureaucracy 53
Bureaucracy in the high- tech environment 58
7 High time in high- tech 66
Work time 66
Outsourcing and time poverty 66
8 Trust in knowledge work 88
Introduction 88
Distrust in high- tech 89
Trust as a network base 97
vi The new knowledge workers
Trust capital 101
9 Pleasure, motivation and identity in knowledge work 105
Boredom vs. fun 105
Job security 116
Knowledge exchange 120
Motivation and identity of knowledge workers 126
10 Summary 134
The era of ideology 134
Managing creative work: X = Y? 136

Conclusions 143
References 149
Index 179
vii
Acknowledgements
This book would not have been possible without encouragement and
help from many people and organizations. I am particularly grateful to
Patricia Craig, Neil Fligstein and Davydd J. Greenwood, who believed in
this project and invited me for research visits, allowing me to gather the
 eld material used in the study. A friendly environment magically created
by Bruce Petschek made writing the book up a pure pleasure. So did the
constant support from Joanna Jemielniak. Institutional help from Cornell
University (Department of Anthropology and Mario Einaudi Center),
Harvard University (Center for European Studies) and the University of
California, Berkeley (Institute for Research on Labor and Employment)
opened many doors that would otherwise have remained shut. Two sab-
batical leaves, generously given by Kozminski University, gave me a rare
luxury of focusing mainly on research. I am also grateful to Davydd J.
Greenwood, Jerzy Kociatkiewicz, Paweł Krzyworzeka, Dominika Latusek
and Anna Woźniak, for their remarks, comments and suggestions for revi-
sions of the early drafts of the book. Also, the presented study and publi-
cation were possible thanks to  nancing from a research grant in 2007–09
from the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education.
The results of the research were originally presented in Polish in a
monograph Praca oparta na wiedzy in 2008 (Warsaw: Wydawnictwa
Akademickie i Profesjonalne). The current book is a revised and updated
version of that publication.
1
1. Outline of the research project

HIGH- TECH COMPANIES
This book describes the organizational practices in the knowledge worker
workplace and focuses on employees in the high- tech industry, or, to be
exact, the IT industry (in some cases engineers developing the latest hard-
ware, but mostly programmers). Even though it uses the word “work”
more often than “labor”, in line with other publications on the subject
(this careful avoidance in the literature is most interesting and could be
a topic of a separate study in itself), it describes broadly the current pro-
letarianization of knowledge- intensive professions, using the example of
software engineers.
The programming industry, quite surprisingly, is rather di cult to
de ne. It encompasses both companies that o er sophisticated solutions
(i.e. complex IT systems to target speci c problems of organizations) and
also other companies developing ready- made software to be sold on the
mass market or quasi- mass market, usually without the possibility of
modi cations.
The degree of innovation in the programming market can also vary
widely. Some companies focus on technological breakthroughs and the
development of new solutions, but, there are also others that do repeti-
tive implementations of ready- made IT systems, using commonly known
tools, or o er simple IT services, specializing in cost- e ectiveness, sales
and marketing (particularly in the server- hosting market).
The typical division of the IT industry into hardware, software and
services is very often blurred – many manufacturers of the latest equip-
ment will also develop software and implement solutions; software pro-
ducers successfully enter the hardware and services market; and service
companies will o er software and hardware under their own brand
names.
This confusion is increased by the lack of a consistent, coherent and
precise business terminology. It can be di cult to  nd clear criteria to clas-

sify companies speci cally within the high- tech industry. According to the
Dictionary of Finance and Investment Terms, “high- tech stock” is simply
(Downes and Goodman, 2006)
2 The new knowledge workers
“Stock of companies involved in high- technology  elds (computers, inter-
net related businesses, semiconductors, biotechnology, robotics, electronics).
Successful high- tech stocks have above- average earnings growth and therefore
typically very volatile stock prices.”
In this sense, the industry is very broad in its scope. On other hand, the
AeA
1
de nition, compiled in 2002 for use in statistical analysis, covers
only three areas of the basic operation. In AeA’s own words (AeA, 2002),
it includes “high- tech manufacturing, communications services”, and soft-
ware and computer- related services. It does not include broad categories
if the high- tech portion does not represent a clear majority. Also, AeA’s
de nition does not include many “related” industries, such as biotechnol-
ogy, engineering services, and research and testing services.
Krzysztof Klincewicz (2006), in his analysis of the lack of precise typolo-
gies, points out that in the literature there are three distinctive approaches
to de ning the high- tech industry. It is based on:
● the analysis of the social potential, in which the major criterion is the
quantitative ratio of the employed engineers and scientists to the rest
of the employees;
● the  nancial indicators, in which the criterion is the ratio of the
R&D expenditure to the value of sales; and
● the assessment of the degree of technological and IT advancements
with respect to others within the industry.
Because this book focuses on the social issues related to critical man-
agement studies, the most important of these approaches is the  rst.

However, it should be noticed that the organizations studied, both Polish
and American, do meet all three criteria of a high- tech company.
2
All have
been involved in creative work as well, that is, the development of their
own software (and in one case their own hardware too) and implementa-
tions that are based mainly on their own ideas, though of course also using
ready- made tools and modules for that process.
THE HIGH- TECH INDUSTRY IN POLAND AND
THEUS
This book is the result of a qualitative research project lasting several
years but includes also some basic quantitative information relating to
high- tech industry in Poland and the US that should better present a
general picture of the studied industry. Such data constitute the back-
ground that in uences the employment situation and the human relations
Outline of the research project 3
and organizational practices within high- tech companies. Such quantita-
tive data are not however a key element in the study here presented, as it
focuses primarily on the social aspects of knowledge- intensive work. Most
of the  eld data are drawn from the years just before the  nancial crisis of
2008, since 2009–11 may not have been fully representative.
According to the IT market research agency DiS (Anam, 2008), 100
of the top Polish companies spent over US$2 billion on IT in 2007;  ve
years earlier (2002) that  gure was US$1.5 billion. The value of the IT
industry was estimated by DiS in 2007 to be nearly US$8 billion. Similarly,
according to analysts at PMR Ltd the value of the industry amounted to
US$8 billion in 2007 and was estimated to exceed US$7 billion in 2008
(PMR, 2008). In 2007, even though the currency crisis in the US blurred
the picture, growth was signi cant, reaching between 11 and 20 per cent
(Frydrychowicz, 2008). 2009 was the  rst year in the last 20 that the value of

the Polish IT market decreased by roughly 10 per cent (Maciejewski, 2010).
The shortage of IT specialists in Poland was estimated at about 10 000
in 2008, and according to the infopraca.pl website, 10 per cent of the total
job ads were for IT specialists (QPracy.pl, 2008), 30 per cent of them pro-
grammers (Figure 1.1). Both in Poland and worldwide, IT specialists are
among the best- paid of professionals, together with managers,  nanciers
and marketing specialists (ComputerWorld, 2008).
Database
8%
ERP
3%
Hardware
10%
Consulting
13%
Quality control
3%
Programming/
Analysis
30%
Project
Management
3%
Sales
8%
Telecommunications
22%
Source: QPracy.pl (2008).
Figure 1.1 Composition of IT industry job advertisements in Poland
4 The new knowledge workers

A parallel situation exists in the US: salaries in the new- technology
sector are higher by 87 per cent than the general company average
(TechAmerica’s Education Foundation, 2008). American new technol-
ogy industry employed 1.6 per cent more people in 2007 than in 2006
(TechAmerica’s Education Foundation, 2008), and the largest increase
took place in the programming sector, with 82 000 new employees. The
number of high- tech employees amounted to 5.9 million in total (with
no major change in 2008). These employment dynamics decreased in
2006 (Table 1.1), but still remained high. Unemployment in the high- tech
industry in the US was low and did not exceed 2 per cent in 2007. The
year 2009 brought a signi cant decline of 245 600 jobs, but the 4 per cent
decline was still lower than the 5 per cent in the private sector as a whole
(TechAmerica’s Education Foundation, 2010).
In 2008, in the software services industry in particular, there was an
increase of 86 200 posts. In 2009, after  ve consecutive years of growth,
there was a decline of 20 700 jobs. It should be noted, though, that the
fourth quarter of 2009 revealed a 10 100 in employment growth in this
industry, signaling a possible change from the downturn (TechAmerica’s
Education Foundation, 2010).
Before the crisis, venture capital investments in the industry in 2007 in
the US increased by 6 per cent and amounted to almost US$17 billion
(TechAmerica’s Education Foundation, 2008). High- tech companies’
investment in R&D, according to the same report, also rose by 6 per cent
over the previous year and amounted to US$74.9 billion in 2006.
The shortage of IT specialists in the US was one of the main reasons
behind the increase on the limit of H- 1B visas (for temporary, non-
immigrant workers) made by the American Congress in 1999–2003 –
195 000 at the peak (Goodsell, 2007). Though the limit has gone down
since 2004, it remains at 65 000 annually.
It is thus clear that in both Poland and the US, high- tech industry is large

and important, and that it operates under conditions of a constant need
for highly quali ed labor. The last circumstance produces a most interest-
ing situation: programmers in many companies, both in Poland and in
the US, have potentially, thanks to these conditions, a most favorable
Table 1.1 Numbers of new jobs in high- tech in the US
2005 2006 2007 2008 2009
87 400 139 000 91 400 77 000 −245 600
Source: TechAmerica’s Education Foundation (2008, 2010).
Outline of the research project 5
professional and organizational position – making their workplace a very
interesting subject for qualitative analysis, since they are among the few
who can challenge managerial domination.
THE RESEARCH AREA
The general research area of this book is the knowledge worker workplace
in high- tech companies; speci cally, it is a case study of Poland and the
US.
Through a qualitative analysis of conceptual terms used by the social
actors in the studied companies (as already mentioned, a precise descrip-
tion of the research methods is o ered separately in Chapter 5), this book
addresses a question: to what extent does work organization among
knowledge workers have a democratic character? Even though manage-
rial literature often points to, and even recommends, an egalitarian and
democratic approach to that group of employees (Amar, 2002; Horibe,
1999; Newell et al., 2002), other research  ndings attest that the reality
of work in high- tech companies, and in the high- tech workplace in par-
ticular, is quite di erent (Hochschild, 1997; Kunda, 1992; Perlow, 2003).
That contradiction is the rationale for this project which aims to describe
the workplace of knowledge workers in high- tech companies in detail and
demonstrate its practical conditions on the basis of research “grounded”
in  eld studies (Glaser and Strauss, 1967). This book approaches the task

not by the use of some preconceptualized theoretical model, but through
the study of these social phenomena, which are particularly important
in the eyes of the population studied. The project focuses on perceptions
of formalities and hierarchies, IT project schedules, the issue of trust in
the high- tech workplace, and selected aspects of HRM and employee
motivation.
The comparative analysis of the workplace in Polish and American
companies does make a lot of sense. The US is the birthplace of IT and
unquestionably a leader still in many high- tech areas, including program-
ming. American universities are at the top of computer science depart-
ments’ rankings, especially when measured by graduates’ salaries. Find
the majority of the computers worldwide are equipped with software (both
applications and whole operational systems) developed in the US.
Poles, on the other hand, frequently win prestigious international
programming competitions (including for example the TopCoder com-
petition, the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest, the
Google Code Jam, the Microsoft Imagine Cup and the like); and the
University of Warsaw has led the TopCoder.com
3
rank for several years,
6 The new knowledge workers
and as of now (June 2011) is outranked only by Tsingua University and
Tokyo University. Two other Polish universities have positions higher
than the highest- ranked American one (currently MIT, although Carnegie
Mellon for several years was higher). Polish programmers’ aptitude and
skills are unquestionable. For example, in the 2008 TopCoder edition, of
the 49 participants, eight were Poles (PAIiIZ, 2008). Entry to this contest
is restricted to beginners and the competition is one of the most prestigious
in the world; its results have indeed greatly in uenced Google’s decision
to open a research center in Poland (Bielewicz et al., 2006). There are

about 150 other research centers in Poland, apart from Google’s, and they
were established by for example Credit Suisse, General Electric, IBM,
Motorola, Intel and Siemens. The total investment value of these centers
was estimated at €5 billion in 2006 (Nowaczyk, 2008). Also, in 2010 pres-
tigious student internships at Microsoft in Redmont were dominated by
Poles – as much as one- third of all intern are from Polish computer science
departments.
4
Despite this phenomenon, Polish companies currently can hardly
be considered as leading any of the IT markets worldwide. Individual
players enjoy local successes, and some international recognition – the
development of such  rms as Comarch, Sygnity and ADB is impressive,
and the international expansion of Young Digital Planet or Gadu- Gadu
obviously gives hope for change. Some companies slowly grow into rec-
ognition, for example Techland in 2009 was ranked at number 58 in the
UK in the Develop 100 ranking of game producers, selling more games
than for example a former star of this industry, Blizzard Entertainment.
Also, Asseco (the biggest Polish IT company) is gradually going up the
European rankings: for example in 2008 it was ranked number  ve in the
“Top 100 European Software Vendors” (by Tru e Capital), with rev-
enues of €430 million and as of now (June 2011) holds eighth position in
the ranking, with 2009 revenues of 702 million euros.
Still, at present, there is an obvious disparity between the success of
individual programmers in Poland, and Polish IT companies en masse.
Also, no single o - the- shelf computer program originating in Poland has
become a blockbuster.
According to some authors, improvement is only a matter of time. On
18 October 2006 two representatives of venture capital funds in Poland
(Tomasz Czechowicz from MCI and Dariusz Wiatr from Hexagon
Capital) made a public bet on whether by the end of 2008 a glo-

bally successful high- tech company would be established in the country
(Domaszewicz, 2006). The chosen criteria were interesting: a presence
either among the three popular European brands or within the top three
European companies with respect to number of clients or market share.
Outline of the research project 7
Possibly because of the global crisis the positive scenario did not come
about. What makes matters worse for Polish companies in the long run,
though, is that there are relatively few IT solutions developed in the Polish
market that are also o ered internationally. The success of Polish high-
tech giants still relies mainly either on the sale of Western solutions with
only small modi cations, or else on copying these solutions and/or adjust-
ing them to local conditions.
Even the biggest success of a Polish IT  rm is only recent, i.e. the game
The Witcher, and it is not overwhelming. CD Projekt produced the game,
and within the  rst three months sold 600 000 copies. The game is dis-
tributed worldwide, and won awards in the industry magazines in 2007
(inter alia “Best PC RPG” by IGN, “PC RPG of the Year” by GameSpy,
“Editor’s Award” by PC Gamer, and others). Despite that success, in
absolute terms, the game still lags behind the worldwide bestsellers. The
Witcher II is in production, but even if it is more successful than the  rst
version it will not dramatically change the picture.
One should be aware that in the computer entertainment industry, the
market leaders are those  rms that can produce not one best- selling title
annually but a handful of them. In the year The Witcher premièred, CD
Projekt’s gross pro t amounted to US$3 million. Over a similar period,
the market leader Electronic Arts made a gross pro t of US$1.8 billion.
This is not to deny the success of CD Projekt of course, but at present it
is di cult to say it is competing with the market leader in the computer
games market. Moreover, other producers from both central and eastern
Europe can show similar, if not bigger, achievements, for example,

Croteam from Croatia (publisher of the Serious Sam game series). Still,
with the Witcher 2 première in 2011 and very favorable reviews, there is
a chance that CD Projekt will make sure Polish IT companies have had
niche successes – other examples being Ivo Software (a multipurpose
speech synthesis system) and Psiloc (cellphone software). There are also
others, more e ective in getting outsourcing orders – a good example
here is Rinf from Wrocław, the company established by a few former
BP programmers, who now get contracts from Nokia, Siemens, Asseco
or Comarch and have even opened a branch o ce in Silicon Valley.
Nevertheless, global success is still missing, for many reasons. The  rst of
these is the lack of a “business angel” type of  nancing, and the relatively
small saturation by venture capital funds, while the second is the aver-
sion of those entrepreneurs who have succeeded when investing their own
capital in other ventures. In comparison, the German European Founders
fund was established following the success of the Samwers brothers, who
developed Jamba! (a big player in the cellphone software application
development market) and have so far successfully invested in services as
8 The new knowledge workers
popular as, for example, LinkedIn.com, Facebook.com iLove.com, and
the Polish Naszaklasa.pl.
Behind the failure of Polish companies to achieve a big break globally
there lie also the disastrously poor support given by the government to the
use of IT in the economy, the weak development of internet access and its
high costs,
5
a small basic market and the poor command of English among
Poles, to mention just a few factors. Luck has also played an important
role.
On the other hand, the success of neighbors from our region is striking.
A team of programmers from Estonia was capable of developing Skype –

the most popular program for oral conversations on the internet, bought
at the price of US$2.6 billion by eBay in 2005 then sold to Microsoft for
US$8.5 billion in 2011. A team of Russian programmers created one of
the most popular families of antivirus software used for broadly de ned
securities (Kaspersky); a Czech company produced AVG, one of  ve
most popular antivirus programs; a team of programmers from Moldova
originated The Bat!, a commercial email client alternative to Microsoft
Outlook. These are just a few of the many examples.
It is not the purpose of this book to analyze the reasons for the lack
of success of Polish o - the- shelf software producers, even if they are just
organizational ones. However, the phenomenon does make Polish high-
tech companies look like an interesting research subject. Consequently,
the analysis of the Polish software producers’ workplace, its organiza-
tional practices and the perceptions of the employees is potentially impor-
tant, especially in comparison with American companies. Study of both
the similarities and the di erences among knowledge- intensive organiza-
tions in both countries can play a part in furthering understanding of their
speci cs, and in producing a clear, precise analysis of the changes occur-
ring in the workplace of knowledge worker worldwide.
For the purpose of this e ort, the American portion of the research
relies mostly on East Cost organizations and is accompanied by a series of
interviews in di erent companies in similar locations, plus also a Silicon
Valley start- up.
6
Interestingly, the Silicon Valley start- up turned out to be
the most di cult to gain access to, and I was not able to conduct observa-
tions there – thus the material from this company is quite limited and relies
on only six interviews.
Still, Silicon Valley was not chosen as a main research area for this
study for other reasons also. Numerous publications prove that the

region is an exceptional social phenomenon (Saxenian, 1994), with a
very speci c work culture and management (English- Lueck, 2002) and
with a habitat not seen elsewhere so far, that favor is the development
of IT companies (Lee et al., 2000). Thanks to a cluster type of company
Outline of the research project 9
development in that region (quite important for knowledge- intensive
organizational development – see for example Nogalski and Grzybowski,
2007; Nogalski and Kowalczyk, 2008), and also to the active operations
of a few of the most prestigious technical universities in the world, by
collaborating closely with the largest latest- technology corporations an
exceptional organizational environment and workplace for knowledge
workers has been created (Bresnahan and Gambardella, 2004), with its
own speci c life cycle and development processes (Huggins and Izushi,
2007). Silicon Valley has also one of the highest concentrations of knowl-
edge workers in the US: out of every 1000 employees in the private sector
there, 286 work for high- tech companies (TechAmerica’s Education
Foundation, 2008).
Even though wide generalizations are not the purpose of this book, and
the six organizations studied are not claimed to be the most representative
of the whole industry, the uniqueness of Silicon Valley makes it especially
di cult to use in international comparisons.
The whole research project was carried out over  ve years (2004–08), in
two Polish
7
companies based in Warsaw (PLOneos and PLSantos) and in
three American companies (USVisualprog, USHuncor and USVird). The
visits to the US took place in 2004–05, while the author was a Fulbright
visiting scholar at Cornell University, Ithaca (NY), and in 2007–08, during
a semester visiting research stay at Harvard University and a semester vis-
iting research stay at the University of California, Berkeley.

The analysis is based on long- term, non- participant observations at
PLOneos (four months) and USVisualprog ( ve months), and on inter-
views conducted at those  rms. Research done in PLSantos, USHuncor
and USVird was of a supplemental nature and was based on interviews
with programmers and managers. In total 89 interviews were con-
ducted. Auxiliary quantitative research was done during the observations,
through a chronometric analysis of behavioral patterns at the workplace
in PLOneos and USVisualprog and through mini- surveys.
The main part of the analysis focuses on knowledge- intensive work-
places’ similarities to one another, irrespective of country, size or region.
Individualities and di erences are described less often and then are clearly
emphasized. Organizational actors are not perceived as “dopes of their
culture” and their nationality and national culture background is treated
more as a discursive resource they draw from than as a  xed given- identity
label (Barinaga, 2007).
Whenever in the text “both organizations” are mentioned, the refer-
ence is to PLOneos and USVisualprog. In turn, whenever the term “all
of the studied organizations” is used, the research  ndings apply to both
the research material gathered during observations and the interviews
10 The new knowledge workers
completed in all  ve companies. The organizations studied are described
in detail in Chapter 5, in the section. “The Research Problem”.
As the subject of this book is work in knowledge- intensive companies
and organizational relations at the knowledge workers’ workplace, it
is necessary to discuss that basic terminology. The next three chapters,
Chapters 2, 3, and 4, describe the work- related issues, the knowledge
companies, and the term “knowledge workers” in the context of the soci-
ology and management literature on employees. Chapter 5 describes the
research methods and the methodological assumptions for this project.
The Chapter 6 refers to the contemporary bureaucracy and starts the pres-

entation of the research  ndings. Chapters 7, 8 and 9 cover the topics of
trust in IT projects, and of the selectively chosen (as being important for
the interlocutors) elements of HRM and motivation in knowledge work.
Chapter 10, the last, summarizes the project through an interpretation of
ideological control and the position of observed management practices in
the classic dichotomy of the Theory X and Theory Y approaches.
NOTES
1. AeA, formerly known as the American Electronics Association, merged into TechAmerica
(www.itaa.org) in 2009. Even before this merger it was the largest American organization
in the electronics industry, with a membership of 2500 organizations, employing over
1.8m people in total. It was established in 1943, and its main activities are the develop-
ment of industry analysis, lobbying and the collective representation of its members.
2. A more detailed description of the companies studied, as well as a section on research
methods, are included in Chapter 5.
3. Available at: (accessed 16 May
2010).
4. As reported on />Microsoft_pochodzi_z_Polski.html (accessed 15 June 2010).
5. In the Global Information Technology 2010–2011 rankings of “Networked Readiness”,
compiled by the World Economic Forum in cooperation with INSEAD, Poland was
at 62, just below South Africa, and above Trinidad and Tobago. Among all European
countries, Poland outstripped only Greece, Romania, Bulgaria and Slovakia. The higher
positions in the rankings were occupied for example by Colombia, Vietnam and Oman –
hardly regarded, at least in Poland, as being signi cantly more developed countries. The
full ranking is available on the internet at: (accessed July 2010).
6. A more detailed description of the organizations analyzed is given in the Chapter 5.
7. The names of all the studied companies are  ctitious, as are the interlocutors’ crypton-
yms. Some details insigni cant for the analysis have been changed, to disallow compa-
nies’ identi cation, in line with the rules of the ethics of anthropology (Madison, 2005).
11
2. Work

THE HISTORY OF THE MEANING OF WORK
The precise classi cation of activities as “work” is relatively di cult.
In modern times, without discussion, the use of the term assumes paid
activity. Even though the literature attempts to increase the scope of that
concept (for example by bringing up the issue of housework or chores
done by children as being work as well, or by referring also to purely
voluntary activities), the lack of market and contractual assessments of
such activities results in a distortion of the meaning and in problems with
de ning the activity (Knights and Willmott, 1999). Hence, only when an
activity is valuated can it be unanimously classi ed as work, and that is the
meaning used here.
Social perception of work is very much dependent on culture. Historically,
in Western culture, work used to be seen often in negative terms. For the
ancient Greeks, work meant a curse, which should be avoided at all cost
by using slaves. Even though farmers were treated with respect, work for
money was perceived as unworthy of free men (and perceived as a speci c
form of slavery). Ancient philosophers like Plato, Socrates and Aristotle
believed that manual work had a disastrous e ect upon one’s spirit and
body and made one incapable of serious philosophical discussion, and
even more so of taking any public service post (Applebaum, 1995). Work
was also treated with suspicion in the Roman Republic even though free
citizens often held various paid jobs, and there was also a system of public
work for the poor (Temin, 2004).
The Hebrews, on the other hand, believed that work was nothing to be
ashamed of – they even described sacred activities as “the work of God”.
Many of the biblical Jewish leaders are described in scenes where they
do manual work. However, even for the Hebrews, work was an obvious
nuisance, though necessary for redemption (Knights and Willmott, 1999).
Early Christianity took the same stand, emphasizing additionally the
purifying e ect of work. The common practice in the monasteries was

the cycle of prayer–rest–work. The last was even treated as a variation of
prayer, through activities. That role also served for the Christian theo-
rists; for example, according to Saint Augustine, work was a necessary
12 The new knowledge workers
means for forging one’s character and a way to gain salvation (Benz,
1966). Yet work remained still just a type of morti cation, a light kind
of body torture helping to clarify the spirit. In line with that philosophy,
in the Middle Ages the professions possessing a creative character (i.e.,
that developed something new) were appreciated. A farmer, a bricklayer,
a tailor or a cobbler by nature of their activities followed God’s work,
whereas a merchant or a banker who did not create anything did not
deserve similar respect. Poverty was seen as a virtue as well (Le Go ,
1994).
The contemporary good perception of  nancial success in Western
culture only developed along with the Protestant movement. Luther
introduced the issue of “calling” into the work discourse and argued that
everyone should aim to do the tasks that they have been created to do. He
dismissed the idea of work as dignifying su ering, pointing to its creative
and positive aspect. Calvin, on the other hand, assumed that  nancial
success was the visible manifestation of the God’s blessing. He broke with
the Christian attachment to poverty. He perceived a merchant profession
as worthy of just as much respect as the manufacturing professions, or
even more. Individually accomplished success started to be linked to the
virtues of spirit – the character of the work itself lost its meaning, and
more importance was given to its economic e ect. Although attributing
a direct link between salvation and material success to Protestant ideol-
ogy would be an oversimpli cation, the Protestant “capitalist spirit” has
survived and resulted in the modern, positive picture of work (M. Weber,
2001), and its full integration into the capitalist system.
During the Enlightenment period, Thomas Hobbes in his acclaimed

Leviathan expressed the belief that everyone should work; in that way the
social contract was ful lled and citizens’ rights were justi ed (Hobbes,
2008). Voltaire expressed his opinions in the same spirit, stating that work
made life tolerable, and resembled a garden, in which everyone had their
own way of gardening (Voltaire, 2005).
The contemporary understanding of work arrived with the Industrial
Revolution. In fact, it was studies of the phenomenon that laid the
foundation of the new scienti c discipline known today as sociology:
all three of its “founding fathers”, namely Weber, Durkeim and Marx,
devoted an important part of their work to this issue. Weber analyzed,
inter alia, those loose dependencies between Protestant ethics and the
social perception of work mentioned earlier. On the other hand, con-
sideration for professional specialization and social fairness, i.e. organic
solidarity in contemporary societies, were all- important in Durkeim’s
publications (Merton, 1994). Thanks to the development of civiliza-
tion and dependencies between people, everybody could be  tted to an
Work 13
occupation and fairly paid proportionally to their aptitude – on condi-
tion, however, that they respected both the economic and the moral
order (Durkheim, 1999).
Similarly, work was a central subject of Marx’s writings. He noticed that
even though real work distribution and cooperation increases economic
e ectiveness in general, simultaneously it leads to the alienation of manual
workers from the goods they produce. Moreover, according to Marx, the
bourgeois system would lead inevitably to the exploitation of the manual
workers (Marx, 1992). Every capitalist had to aim to maximize the value
of output over the basic productivity of the employed they people (which
was equal to the cost of their employment). Separation of the means of
production from their ownership resulted in an excess exploitation of
workers, “surplus value”. The next step, according to Marx, should be

the attempt to eliminate the class system and any di erences between the
bourgeoisie and the working class employed by them. For Marx, work
was undisputedly and unequivocally a positive activity, and was the basic
di erentiator of humans from the animals.
THE CONTEMPORARY APPROACH TO WORK
The issue of work has been the subject of modern authors as well, like
Hannan Arendt (1958). She showed that work was a main type of human
activity. She was worried in particular about technological progress, at
least the part in which technology leads to objecti cation and deskilling of
manual workers, and hence to the disappearance of basic human qualities
in the pro t race.
One of the contemporary thinkers who took a stand on the issue of
work was Pope John Paul II. He devoted the separate encyclical Laborem
exercens (1981) to that issue, expressing his conviction, on behalf of the
whole Catholic Church, that “work is a basic dimension of humans being
on Earth”. He described technological progress unequivocally as positive,
pointing however to the possible dangers it implied for work (less jobs,
objecti cation of manual workers, etc.). He very clearly objected to the
treatment of human work as a dispensable good. The criticism of the
capitalist economic system in Laborem exercens is very similar to Marx’s
observations. John Paul II also advocated the solidarity of workers, who
should be the subject, not the object, of the work process. Though (given
the nature of the encyclical nature of the document) he does not attempt a
thorough sociological analysis of the reasons behind society’s objecti ca-
tion of workers, typical in terms of (as he describes it) “rigid capitalism”,
he is categorically against it. He noticed that proletarian rebellion was a
14 The new knowledge workers
completely justi ed “reaction against the system of injustice and harm that
cried to heaven for vengeance”.
Without exaggeration, it can be noted that the issue of human work

in society has been the subject of study and consideration for centuries.
Starting with the nineteenth century and the Luddite movement (which
was so strong enough in 1811 and 1812 to have regular battles with the
British army), a discussion began regarding to what extent the social
nature of work has changed,  rst under the in uence of mechanization
and now with the development of IT (Jones, 2006). The scenarios advo-
cated range from the positive and utopian to the extremely pessimistic
(Gorz, 1985; Zubo , 1988).
Nevertheless, in modern times work for the majority is undisputedly the
most important type of activity throughout one’s lifetime. Jeremy Rifkin
in this context cites the observations of Thomas T. Cottle, observations of
a clinical psychologist and sociologist who has done wide- ranging research
on the unemployed (Rifkin, 1995, p. 195). Cottle observed that pathologi-
cal symptoms presented by the hardcore unemployed are similar to those
of dying patients. In their minds, productive work is so strongly linked
to life itself that when they are cut o from that employment they show
typical signs of dying. In this light, it is by no means surprising that almost
three- quarters of Americans state they would continue working even if
they had enough money to live on at their expected level for the rest of
their lives (Sweet and Meiksins, 2008).
Since the mid twentieth century work has started to be seen as a cer-
tainty, an element of human life that is important not only for its economic
reasons but also for more general ful llment. Without a doubt, the change
of gender roles that women successfully initiated, in part because many
men were called up to serve in the armed forces during World War II (from
which many did not return), resulted in a general belief that all people have
the right to their own professional ful llment (Charles and Grusky, 2004).
Thus, the number of social roles in which unemployment would be con-
sidered as justi ed and acceptable was distinctly limited. Also, with the
coming of the Industrial Revolution, housework and caring for the family

stopped being perceived as work; though in the previous agrarian culture
 eld work and housework blended, factory work clearly separated those
roles, in terms of both space and time (Sweet and Meiksins, 2008).
Even though the work phenomenon, as mentioned, has been a subject
of serious scienti c studies for a long time, there have been signi cant
changes in the social organization of work in recent years. Above all,
the IT revolution has led to a reshu ing of the hierarchies of individual
professions. Also, the increase in the signi cance of knowledge as the
basic source for competitive advantage has resulted both in the rise of
Work 15
the number of knowledge- intensive companies and in a more profound
increase in the professional status of knowledge workers. Both processes,
at least potentially, have in uenced changes in structure and the distribu-
tion of power within many organizations.
Owing to such changes, the primary analysis of contemporary profes-
sions and organizational practices that involve knowledge workers in
particular can be interesting and o er a modest, yet new, input into man-
agement science. This book is an attempt to do just this. It is the result of a
few years of research, done in both Poland and the US, and focuses mainly
on knowledge workers within the software industry. It is a response to
the call to “go back to the roots” (S.R. Barley and Kunda, 2001), and
an analysis of work as a separate phenomenon, through research which,
instead of generating more theoretical concepts that are simply detached
from the reality of the social actors, was conducted on real organizational
practices, on the perceptions of the members of the profession and on the
concepts that are important to them.
16
3. Knowledge- intensive organizations
THE MEANING OF “THE KNOWLEDGE- INTENSIVE
COMPANY”

The term “knowledge- intensive company” is not very precise. Its origins
can be traced to the tradition of economic terminology. There, the division
into capital- intensive and labor- intensive is the time- honored, undisput-
able way of organizational classi cation. In capital- intensive companies,
money plays a more important role than human work, while in labor-
intensive companies it is the other way around. Thus, the statement that
a company can be knowledge- intensive emphasizes the fact that in many
organizations a key resource, and the primary product, is knowledge
(Starbuck, 1992) – something distinctive both from capital and from the
people themselves. For example, in the case of Google, people play a very
important role in new product development, yet for the search engine
the important value comes from the developed algorithms and database
attributed to the process of knowledge accumulation.
Of course, we should understand that the terms “knowledge” and
“knowledge- intensive company” have an unequivocally positive sound
to them, which unfortunately tends to undermine their popular usage in
management theory. It is di cult to imagine an organization which com-
municates to its stakeholders that it is not based on knowledge or that its
main product is ignorance or stupidity (Jemielniak and Kociatkiewicz,
2009). The absurdity of such an idea shows that using slogans related
to knowledge and IT terminology can have a purely ideological charac-
ter (Styhre, 2003). Moreover, some companies, even if their operations
have knowledge aspects within them, try to emphasize those aspects
unequivocally by decreasing the weights of others. A good example is
the pharmaceutical industry, which for PR image reasons usually tries
to emphasize their R&D character and to reduce to a minimum the role
of marketing, sales and production, even though these obviously still
do account for similarly important positions in their budgets (Alvesson,
2004). Obviously, high- tech organizations are hybrids of di erent pur-
poses, values and ideas, knowledge creation being just one of many com-

peting (Ciesielska, 2010). Labeling organizations “knowledge- intensive