Cutting through the confusion of contemporary work

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to discuss the nature of contemporary work. There is much discussion surrounding the meaning of the term knowledge worker and the value these workers generate for the organisation. This paper agrees that the value to organisations of workers who possess knowledge is increasing but argues that the nature of the knowledge worker is unclear within current literature. It acknowledges that there is a high level of knowledge in contemporary work and that many workers can claim to be knowledgeable, however these workers while necessary to the firm do not provide it with competitive advantage.Design/methodology/approach – This paper argues that there are four tensions running through the literature on the nature of the knowledge worker and proposes that the elements that comprise knowledge work fall into three groups that are knowledge possession, knowledge activity and knowledge context. First, the nature of contemporary work and its relationship to traditional categorisati...