Abstract not found

This Working Paper is the first in a series of reports being prepared as part of a yearlong research project funded by the Fujitsu Research Institute and the sponsors of the Fisher Center for Management and Information Technology. Here we discuss the need for empirical research on the behaviors and performance of a category of worker known generically as "knowledge workers." We review past research on knowledge workers and other white-collar employees, focusing the on dearth of knowledge about what kinds of tasks these individuals and groups engage in to acquire, process, and communicate knowledge, how they spend their time, and what information technology tools they employ to carry out their work. We also review briefly the literature on white collar productivity. We propose taxonomies for assessing and describing knowledge work, and for the information technology tools that these workers use. Finally, we describe our plans for conducting interviews and observational studies of two distinctively different types of knowledge workers---claims adjusters in the insurance industry and product development engineers in the automobile industry. We anticipate finding very different patterns of work and technology use in these two groups, and will use these differences to develop and test our models of how individuals and groups acquire, process, and disseminate information, and what impact their behaviors and tools have on their performance and productivity. ' Copyright 1997 Fisher Center for Management and Information Technology. All rights reserved.

Managing a career in the information technology (IT) industry presents varying opportunities for IT workers. A major question for technical workers is whether or not to move to a managerial career in order to advance. This research study addresses the perception of IT career paths among IT personnel Poland. Poland was used because of its historical leadership in the struggle to gain freedom from the former Soviet Union and its accelerated march to a free-enterprise system since 1989. The findings of this research should have implications for managers of information technology (IT) workers in other countries liberated from the former Soviet Union.

T eaching A ssistant P rojectTeaching/Learning Proceedings of the 1998 & 1999