Knowledge Worker Roles
Knowledge workers bring benefits to organizations in a variety of important ways. These include:
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These knowledge worker contributions are in contrast with activities that they would typically not be asked to perform, including:
- transaction processing
- routine tasks
- simple prioritization of work
There is a set of transitional tasks includes roles that are seemingly routine, but that require deep technology, product, or customer knowledge to fulfill the function. These include:
- providing technical or customer support
- handling unique customer issues
- addressing open-ended inquiries
Generally, if the knowledge can be retained, knowledge worker contributions will serve to expand the knowledge assets of a company. While it can be difficult to measure, this increases the overall value of its intellectual capital. In cases where the knowledge assets have commercial or monetary value, companies may create patents around their assets, at which point the material becomes restricted intellectual property. In these knowledge-intensive situations, knowledge workers play a direct, vital role in increasing the financial value of a company. They can do this by finding solutions on how they can find new ways to make profits this can also be related with market and research. Davenport, (2005) says that even if knowledge workers are not a majority of all workers, they do have the most influence on their economies. He adds that companies with a high volume of knowledge workers are the most successful and fastest growing in leading economies including the United States.
Reinhardt et al.'s (2011) review of current literature shows that the roles of knowledge workers across the workforce are incredibly diverse. In two empirical studies conducted by Reinhardt et al. (2011) they have "proposed a new way of classifying the roles of knowledge workers and the knowledge actions they perform during their daily work" (Reinhardt et al., 2011, p. 150). The typology of knowledge worker roles suggested by Reinhardt et al. are "controller, helper, learner, linker, networker, organizer, retriever, sharer, solver, and tracker" (2011, p. 160).
Typology of knowledge worker roles
| Role | Description | Typical knowledge actions (expected) | Existence of the role in literature |
|---|---|---|---|
| Controller | People who monitor the organizational performance based on raw information. | Analyze, dissemination, information organization, monitoring | (Moore and Rugullies, 2005) (Geisler, 2007) |
| Helper | People who transfer information to teach others, once they passed a problem. | Authoring, analyze, dissemination, feedback, information search, learning, networking | (Davenport and Prusak, 1998) |
| Learner | People use information and practices to improve personal skills and competence. | Acquisition, analyze, expert search, information search, learning, service search | |
| Linker | People who associate and mash up information from different sources to generate new information. | Analyze, dissemination, information search, information organization, networking | (Davenport and Prusak, 1998) (Nonaka and Takeushi, 1995) (Geisler, 2007) |
| Networker | People who create personal or project related connections with people involved in the same kind of work, to share information and support each other. | Analyze, dissemination, expert search, monitoring, networking, service search | (Davenport and Prusak, 1998) (Nonaka and Takeushi, 1995) (Geisler, 2007) |
| Organizer | People who are involved in personal or organizational planning of activities, e.g. to-do lists and scheduling. | Analyze, information organization, monitoring, networking | (Moore and Rugullies, 2005) |
| Retriever | People who search and collect information on a given topic. | Acquisition, analyze, expert search, information search, information organization, monitoring | (Snyder-Halpern et al., 2001) |
| Sharer | People who disseminate information in a community. | Authoring, co-authoring, dissemination, networking | (Davenport and Prusak, 1998) (Brown et al., 2002) (Geisler, 2007) |
| Solver | People who find or provide a way to deal with a problem. | Acquisition, analyze, dissemination, information search, learning, service search | (Davenport and Prusak, 1998) (Nonaka and Takeushi, 1995) (Moore and Rugullies, 2005) |
| Tracker | People who monitor and react on personal and organizational actions that may become problems. | Analyze, information search, monitoring, networking | (Moore and Rugullies, 2005) |
Note: From "Knowledge Worker Roles and Actions—Results of Two Empirical Studies," by W. Reinhardt, B. Schmidt, P. Sloep, and H. Drachsler, 2011, Knowledge and Process Management, 18.3, p. 160. Copyright by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Reprinted with permission.
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