| Book |
Selected Comment |
|
The Practice of
Management - 1954 |
"In the United States
. . . the class of employees that has been growing most rapidly in numbers and proportion
is that of skilled and trained people." |
|
Landmarks of Tomorrow
- 1959 |
"Productive work in
today's society and economy is work that applies vision, knowledge and concepts -- work
that is based on the mind rather than the hand." |
|
Managing for Results
- 1964 |
"Even the small
business today consists increasingly of people who apply knowledge rather than manual
skill and muscle to work." |
|
The Effective
Executive - 1966 |
"Every knowledge
worker in modern organization is an "executive" if, by virtue of his position or
knowledge, he is responsible for a contribution that materially affects the capacity of
the organization to perform and to obtain results." |
|
The Age of
Discontinuity - 1969 |
"Finally, these new
industries differ from the traditional 'modern' industry in that they will employ
predominantly knowledge workers rather than manual workers." |
|
Management - 1973 |
". . . the center of
gravity of the work force is shifting from the manual worker to the knowledge
worker." |
|
Managing in Turbulent
Times - 1980 |
". . . the center of
gravity among 'employees' has sharply shifted to the educated, employed, middle class,
that is, to people who see themselves as 'technical' and increasingly as
'professional'." |
|
Toward the Next
Economics and Other Essays - 1981 |
"To make knowledge
work fully productive requires many things [Frederick Winslow] Taylor did not concern
himself with. It requires objectives and goals. It requires priorities and
measurements. It requires systematic abandonment of the tasks that no longer produce
and of the services that are no longer needed. It also requires organization,
largely along the lines of the 'matrix organization' which Taylor reached for in his
'functional foremanship.' But making knowledge work productive also requires 'task
study' and 'task management.' It requires the analysis of the work itself. It
requires understanding of the steps needed, their sequence and their integration into an
organized process. It requires systematic provision of the information needed and of the
tool needed. All of these are concepts of 'scientific management.' It does not
require 'creativity.' It requires the hard, systematic, analytical and synthesizing
work which Taylor developed to deal with shoveling sand, lifting pig iron, running paper
machines, or laying brick." |
|
The Frontiers of
Management - 1986 |
"In all developed
countries, knowledge workers have already become the center of gravity of the labor force,
even in numbers." |
|
The New Realities - 1989 |
"The more
knowledge-based an institution becomes, the more it depends on the willingness of
individuals to take responsibility for contribution to the whole, for understanding the
objectives, the values, the performance of the whole, and for making themselves understood
by the other professionals, the other knowledge people in the organization." |
|
Managing for the
Future - 1992 |
"The productivity of
the newly dominant groups in the work force, knowledge workers and service workers, will
be the biggest and toughest challenge facing managers in the developed countries for
decades to come. And serious work on this daunting task has only begun." |
|
Post-Capitalist
Society - 1993 |
"Instead of
capitalists and proletarians, the classes of the post-capitalist society are knowledge
workers and service workers." |
|
Managing in A Time of
Great Change - 1995 |
"This society in
which knowledge workers dominate is in danger of a new 'class conflict'; the conflict
between the large minority of knowledge workers and the majority of people who will make
their living through traditional ways, either by manual work, whether skilled or
unskilled, or by services work, whether skilled or unskilled." |
|
Management Challenges
for the 21st Century - 1999 |
"The most valuable
assets of a 20th-century company were its production equipment.
The most valuable asset of a 21st-century institution, whether business or
nonbusiness,
will be its knowledge workers and their productivity." |
