The knowledge worker

Knowledge workers are professionals whose job is the analysis, application, and creation of information in order to solve complex problems... or to generate ideas. Their specialised expertise, critical thinking, and ingenuity is their secret sauce; not their muscles nor their strength. They are driven by a need for autonomy, continuous learning, and informed decision-making (CERIC, 2025). 

Peter Drucker related a story which I find a sound example of what knowledge work is perceived as being (1959):

"In the wilds [...] the big car of an American tourist broke down and refused to start. No one could figure out what was the matter; even the factory representative who was flown in gave up. The tourist was ready to abandon the car and go home when someone remembered that an old blacksmith who lived beyond the mountains some fifty miles away had, in his youth, tinkered with engines. In his despair the tourist sent for him. Three days later the old man appeared on a mule. He took one look at the car and asked for a hammer. He gently tapped one spot on the engine twice, and said, “Start her up”; and the engine purred as smoothly as if it had just left the test stand."

“What do I owe you?” the grateful tourist asked.

“A hundred dollars.”

“What, a hundred dollars for two taps with the hammer?”

“Well, I can itemize it for you,” the old man said, "For two taps with hammer—ten cents; For having known where — 99 dollars and 90 cents" (Drucker, 1959, pp. 75-76).

In this case, the knowledge worker, or "professional specialist" (Drucker, 1959, p. 76) holds the arcane knowledge of "having known where" to apply that 10 cents worth of percussive maintenance.

In 1954, Peter Drucker talked about the "advancement of the arts" — the constant improvement of our ability to do by applying to it our increased knowledge — is one of the tasks of the business enterprise and a major factor in its survival and prosperity (Drucker, 1954, p. 56). He moves on to talk about the "leader [of] the team; [... who may have] authority [but] it is guidance rather than supervision or command [that conveys leadership]. It derives from knowledge rather than from rank (p. 138). It is emphasised that we must "learn by acquiring knowledge rather than simply by experience. [This] requires 'teaching' rather than 'training' programs — many of the typical programs of today make a [person] rigid, rather than flexible, teach tricks of the trade rather than understanding. And the need to train workers in the ability to unlearn and to learn will become greater as the skill and knowledge level of the worker increases" (1954, p. 268).

Then in 1957, he began considering how "to organize men of knowledge" (Drucker, 1959, p. xi). I wonder if this is the start of his ideas about knowledge work, per se? I get the impression that Drucker feels we can see the shadowy outline of a pattern long before we can know what the pattern IS, and that by working out what is missing, by "the systematic organization of our ignorance from which we then can develop the necessary new specific knowledge and tools" (p. 31). So we see something. We clock a pattern. We consider what we CANNOT see. That enables us to build a taxonomy of what we CAN see. 

Drucker goes on to suggest that "Organization[al] knowledge and professional knowledge are becoming the real 'factors of production'; [and that] 'land, labor and capital,' the three factors of production of traditional economics, are increasingly becoming merely limitations on the effectiveness of knowledge" (Drucker, 1959, p. 62). Where management's aim was previously that of "functional specialization", where management "tried to organize skill and knowledge work as if it were performed by" a single individual (p. 69), more current thinking is that we use "thousands of high-grade professionals of all kinds of knowledge [... who] work[...] together, organized [...] by the stage of the project" that they are involved with (p. 70). 

We bring in the right people, at the right time, to work their arcane knowledge. An old idea whose time has finally come.  

Sam

References:

CERIC. (2025). Glossary of Career Development. Canadian Education and Research in Career Counselling. https://ceric.ca/glossary-of-career-development/

Drucker, P. F. (1954). The Practice of Management. Harper & Row.

Drucker, P. F. (1959). Landmarks of Tomorrow (reprint of 1957). Harper & Row.