I say tomato, you say tamato: Putting critical realism to work in the knowledge worker recruitment process

A key idea today in popular thinking about both business and government concerns the importance of value added and the contribution of employees to this. Adding value in today’s knowledge economy requires inter alia employees being problem solvers, not only having the capacity to identify new market opportunities, nor yet having the necessary sophistication and brokering skills to convince even the most circumspect of those opportunities, but also being adaptable ‘symbolic analysts’ (Reich, 1991). ‘For the first time in history,’ argues Castells, ‘the human mind is the direct productive force, not just a decisive element of the production system’ (Castells, 1996:32). Given the key contribution of intellectual skill and knowledge in the economy, some envisage a developing war for talent in which ‘talent is the critical driver of corporate performance and…a company’s ability to attract, develop, and retain talent [is] a major competitive advantage’ (Michaels et al., 2001:2).