The Knowledge Enhancement Process of Knowledge Workers

Knowledge workers are widely recognised as an integral and vital group within the 21st Century workplace. While they are well known by title as a collective their unique characteristics and ways of working are not well understood. Using Constructivist Grounded Theory this research sought to explore further the nature of knowledge workers and knowledge work itself. A deep exploration of the literature highlights the past and present ways knowledge workers and their work have been defined and the problematic and incomplete nature of some of these descriptions for the 21st century workplace. The interview findings further reveal that knowledge workers have a set of processes they employ to remain connected and informed both personally and professionally to their areas of expertise and knowledge more generally. They have learned to collect, curate, work with and share information to their best advantage. We have described this as knowledge workers knowledge enhancement process. A deeper understanding of this process has implications for organisations aiming to optimise the work of knowledge workers and for those teaching new knowledge workers for the future