Thinking for a Living: The Coming Age of Knowledge Work

Citation

Cooper, S. (2006), "Thinking for a Living: The Coming Age of Knowledge Work", Online Information Review, Vol. 30 No. 3, pp. 311-312. https://doi.org/10.1108/14684520610675834

“The knowledge age is still coming – and is not yet here, but we can see it developing and new ways of work emerging.”

Megill's fifth book, which aims to define knowledge management, has been 30 years in the making, as he worked in a diverse range of roles, including time spent in the Library of Congress and more recently with the US Air Force on its Digital Environment Project. The work is particularly written for four main types of professionals whose place it is to understand knowledge management, specifically librarians, records managers and archivists, engineers and information technology professionals, anthropologists and learning theorists and management theorists.

Megill tells us that librarians and other information services professionals “generally use the term knowledge management more or less synonymously with information management – the acquisition, storage, retrieval and use of information”. He goes on to explain the importance not just only of this, but also of a combination of changing technologies, ongoing learning and knowledge as information.

This volume is divided into three sections: Work Transforming, New Ways to Think about Work, The Work of Changing. Section 1 begins by looking at the ways in which professionals become workers, and workers become professionals, and the move from cooperation to collaboration, with examples from a number of different types of work environments, including education, retail/industry, manufacturing, military and medicine. Work cultures and the changing face of these are outlined.

Megill discusses the role of the community as it relates to the digital environment and also makes some distinctions between knowledge, information and data in Section 2. It is Megill's belief that, “If the knowledge age is to come to full flower, control will pass from the manager to the knowledge worker”. The necessity of transformational leadership and flexibility in order to bring about changes in the nature of knowledge work are explained clearly in Section 3. Megill shows us how we can “accept the call” in order to assist in bringing about cultural change.

Key points are highlighted throughout and along with figures, definitions, glossary, illustrations and an appendix relating to the US Air Force Project. These would prove most practical to those studying knowledge management. With many interesting quotes from philosophers such as Socrates and even Mark Twain, Megill has provided us with an excellent text or supplementary reading for students. A very readable book, complete with a detailed table of contents, I can see this work proving useful for the information professional or the student seeking to better understand knowledge management and the ways in which it relates to us in the twenty‐first century.