The Relationship between Knowledge Workers and Firm Performance

本研究透過行政院主計處民國八十年製造業抽樣調查資料庫，探討台灣地區大型企業與中小企業在不同產業（非金屬製品業、金屬製品業及電力電子業）下知識工作者與組織績效之關聯性，並針對知識工作者之性別與組織績效的關聯性進行探索性的研究。 本研究在知識工作者與組織績效的關聯性部分，根據文獻資料提出了二個假設，其分別為： 假設1：知識工作者占全體員工的比例與組織績效呈正相關。 假設2：在製造業，專門技術人員占全體員工的比例與組織績效呈正相關。 而資料驗證的結果得知： 1. 知識工作者與組織績效的關係，在金屬製品業的中小企業及非金屬製品業的大型企業皆呈顯著的負相關，而根據進一步的瞭解，此與組織的年齡及規模有關。 2. 在組織擁有較多知識的專門技術人員，其與組織績效的關係只有在電力電子業的大型企業中呈現顯著之正相關，此應與該產業的技術需求性及對研發的投入程度有關。 而在知識工作者的性別與組織績效的探索性研究上，其研究結果有部份呈現顯著，有部份則否，至於為何會有這樣之結果，在本研究中並未進行更深入的探討，相信後續學者在從事相關之研究時，應能有更深入的解說。The Two primary purposes of this study is: firstly discussing the relationship between the knowledge workers and the firm performance under different firm size and industries through the database that was constructed using sampling survey by the auditing department of Executive Yuan in 1991; secondly, conducting exploratory research to study correlation between the gender of knowledge workers and the firm performance. This study proposed two hypotheses regarding the correlation between knowledge workers and firm performance based on the existing literature: Ø Hypothesis one: Positive correlation exists between the proportion of knowledge workers and the firm performance. Ø Hypothesis two: Positive correlation exists between the proportion of technical experts and the firm performance in the manufacturing industry. The results of this research revealed that: 1. There is a negative correlation exists between the knowledge workers and the firm performance in small- and medium-scaled companies of the metal products industry. Further analysis showed that the above finding could be related to the age and the scale of the company. 2. An organization that has technical experts with more knowledge could achieve better performance. However, this positive correlation is mostly statistically significant only in the companies with larger scale in the electronic industry. The requirement of advance technology and the degree of investment in R&D could partly explain this finding. The exploratory study on the correlation between the gender of knowledge workers and the firm performance present partly significant results and some results were not. Further discussion is not included in the study to offer explanation for the above observation. Hopefully, other researchers could conduct more detailed study regarding this aspect in the future