In the last few decades, few concepts have spoken to the imagination of economists like the ‘knowledge based economy’ or ‘knowledge economy’ within Western policy circles. There has been a consensus that Western economies have entered a phase in economic history called the ‘knowledge’ or ‘knowledge-based’ era. The brains of the workforce are thought to be the most important contributor to today’s wealth creation. Through technological progress, innovating activities, and knowledge creation, economic prosperity is accomplished. A knowledge-based economy relies primarily on the use of ideas rather than physical abilities, and on the application of technology rather than the transformation of raw materials or the exploitation of cheap labour. Knowledge is used, created, acquired, and transmitted throughout the whole economy, where it becomes a crucial element for the production of goods and services and economic development in general.
The concept of a knowledge society has a long history. From the 1960s onward, theorists have argued that the future of advanced capitalist countries is defined by the exploitation of knowledge and information. Scholars such as Peter Drucker, Daniel Bell, and Alvin Toffler argued that the knowledge-based revolution was to industrialisation what industrialisation was to the agricultural society. A large body of literature developed, emphasising the importance of knowledge and advanced formal education to fuel a knowledge-based economy.
Rather than employing manual workers, knowledge-based industries employ predominantly what have been called ‘knowledge workers.’ Within the academic literature this refers to workers who can successfully transform and work with knowledge. The so-called knowledge elites are those professionals who can capture, exploit, and control knowledge and therefore will increasingly be powerful and influential. There exists a strong assumption within the knowledge economy discourse that existing work is also becoming more complex and thus skilled. Higher Education is seen as the crucial developer of skills and knowledge to perform knowledge work.
There have been numerous critiques against the idea of the knowledge-based economy and its assumptions, in particular by sociologists. Some have argued that the knowledge economy does not grasp the actual extent of which workers use knowledge in the workplace. Others have stressed that knowledge has not been the exclusive realm of a special professional group. All jobs require knowledge and there is no clear threshold to identify the intensity of knowledge in an occupation we think of as a knowledge work one. Knowledge has penetrated throughout the economy.
A knowledge-based economy relies primarily on the use of ideas rather than physical abilities, and on the application of technology rather than the transformation of raw materials or the exploitation of cheap labour.
During a three-year study, I have investigated the work of lab-based scientists in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, software engineers, financial analysts and press officers. All four occupations are seen as examples of knowledge work ‘knowledge occupations’. The findings of the study support the scepticism about the knowledge economy discourse. The workers in the four occupations use a wide variety of knowledge and not just formal and abstract knowledge associated with formal learning. Most use ‘embodied knowledge’ which is practical and context-specific or ‘encoded knowledge’ such as rules and standards codified language and information distributed through members of an organization. Even within the work of scientists’ ‘thinking skills’ and drawing on abstract knowledge and deductive reasoning are not used for the majority of their day.
The study also found that the skills of graduate workers used at work are not dominated by, and can certainly not be equated with, ‘advanced’ thinking skills. Instead, the workers in the four graduate occupations use a wide range of skills, combining both hard and soft skills (working in tandem). Soft skills are often embedded in hard skills and knowledge. Hard skills and knowledge do not have a privileged status within the four occupations.
One of the perceived characteristics of knowledge workers is to work under conditions of relatively high autonomy and to, at the minimum, have the ability and opportunity to innovate products and processes. Although not in itself a skill, job control, the ability to decide how to do one’s work (and the pace at which to do it), influences how skills are exercised and how much scope exists for skill development. The case studies, which only examined workers’ subjective job control, indicate that most graduate workers generally perceive their own control to be high. Yet there does not seem to be anything specifically about their work that indicates the need or practice of high job control.
It is important to realise that the knowledge-based economy is not a neutral descriptive concept. It supports an ideological project that regards the development and application of so-called ‘human’ capital (the productive skills, individuals possess) as the answer to consistent productivity and prosperity problems, as well as issues of distributive justice. It is assumed that ongoing technological change has to be directly linked to a growing importance of technical skills and knowledge (developed through Higher Education). Yet in reality, the skills, knowledge, and abilities required to perform graduate roles are shaped by many other factors such as organisational and sector specific practices as well as job design and role interpretation.
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The much-used term “knowledge-based society”, probably intended to refer to a knowledge-based economy, is over used and shallow, and, like much discussion of technology, infers a recent development for something that has long been the reality. “Knowledge” work have existed since at least the middle ages, usually called professions (“professing” a body of knowledge). To the older professions–law, medicine, and preeminently the church– would be added those arising from the new nation-states and the industrial revolution–management, administration, finance, and others, all “knowledge-based.” All have always been characterized by high levels of autonomy, a chief trait of any profession. Technology certainly sparked many changes in the nature of work, but it’s an over-simplification to suggest the knowledge based jobs are something new, or that “society” is any more or less based on knowledge than it was a century or more ago.
I have bothered to read your article, Drucker was very shallow when it came to knowledge, the knowledge economy is a phase in human development, knowledge economy is a phase, and only a phase in human development, you get to understand this if you understand waves in economics, look up Nikolai Kondratiev. There have been many phases, pre-industrial, industrial revolution, steam age, oil age, electric age, and the such Drucker named this phase knowledge age.
As it studies a phase in human development, there will be another phase after this, it is extremely shallow when it comes to what knowledge actually is and the resource knowledge. Knowledge has been the main resource of humans since humans came into existence when ever that us. Knowledge economics looks purely at the resource knowledge, and what do we learn.
We learn everything is information, we learn every discipline studies information thus linking all disciplines. We learn the laws of information affecting everything, every relationship has a loss of freedom, be it in economics, physics, beasts, galaxies, those studying knowledge economy are too shallow to understand this, to shallow to understand that knowledge is just facts we know, and facts we know are part of a greater whole we do not know.
Knowledge economy is just about looking at industries in this and only this phase of human development. Knowledge economics deals with properties of knowledge, 10 000 years ago and 10 000 years into the future. Because knowledge economics deals with strictly the properties of knowledge, it deals strictly with the algorithm of information, understands the role of probability and thus limitations of choice in everything, limited candy bars in stores, there is a probability you will buy a certain brand. Particles have limited choices, electrons in the sun do not have the choice of being here too, zebra’s have limited choice for water. Knowledge economics understands that knowledge is just information that has been revealed to us
Here is knowledge economics, https://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?PaperID=81147
Of course they are trying to undermine knowledge economics, a black man must not be seen at any level to have original thought, that is when you understand as a black that Trump and his opponents are identical when it comes to blacks, hate, they want to choose the blacks allowed to be seen as thinking, but they will always pretend, sending teachers to Africa trying to turn young minds to look up to a whitemen as source of knowledge, but once a black man they hate see’s something, no way, white hatred just rises, nobody knows why, just hate. Okay google knowledge economics, it will send you to knowledge economy, that chance that they will read the truth from a black is too much for a racist system. Before you say a single word, go and google knowledge economy and understand hatred, please tell your colleagues to stop talking of humanity when they just want to be seen as light of humanity and everyone else as garbage unless chosen by them.