ABSTRACT
Doctors, lawyers, academics, accountants and scientists were among the first knowledge workers identified as a group around 1960 simultaneously but independently by two American economists, Peter Drucker and Fritz Machlup. Knowledge technologists are tipped by Drucker to become as dominant a force in the twenty-first century workplace as manual labourers were in the twentieth century. Knowledge-based industries are classified by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) as medium to high-tech manufacturing, financial services, business services, telecommunications, education and health services. The US management expert Thomas Davenport has commented that knowledge work currently has no twenty-first century equivalent of Frederick Taylor or Henry Ford to drive forward the management and design of the knowledge workplace. Some companies have introduced coaching and mentoring schemes to combat the mismatch between the promise of new technology and its delivery in knowledge-intensive jobs.
