The Exploration Of Productivity Of The Knowledge Work

Scientific management stems from the aspiration for the productivity, and the classic research is build based on the ergonomics of the muscle. Now, the forms of labor have changed, which resulted in the changing of wealth creation mode, that is, from muscle (manual) to brain (mental). The productivity of mental work has become the forefront of contemporary research issue. However, the research in this field is still on the initial stage.Aimed at the unsolved problems and the blind spots in the field of knowledge work's productivity, this research is developed to improve the productivity of knowledge work. Based on the cognitive science research paradigm and the classical decomposition of scientific management, this research builds up the frame of exploration into the productivity of knowledge work, and this result can help to develop the foundation for the future research. Exploiting the electrophysiological technique, combined with the traditional research methods, this research explores the inner process of knowledge work in views of subject and object productivity, which including the following issues:First, this research builds up the analysis model of knowledge work's productivity. This work is based on the concept of knowledge work which points out the difference from manual work and artificial intelligence and the classical model of cognitive science. A new analysis model of knowledge work's productivity is put forward finally. Additionally, this research explores the mechanism of object productivity and subject productivity, clarifies the boundaries and scopes for the whole research.Second, based on questionnaires, using exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis, this research extracts the four factors which could influence the productivity of knowledge work. These factors are shown as complexity, uncertainty, ambiguity and incompleteness. In view of the universal and discrimination validity properties of knowledge work, this research provides the base for evaluation of the different knowledge work's productivity and builds up the new way and paradigm for analyzing it objectively and scientifically.Further works also includes exploring the mechanism of how the four factors affect the productivity and putting forward the time function in terms of cognitive paradigm, thus provides an operative time-base criterion for knowledge work, and further provides the basis for job analysis, compensation, and performance management.Third, this research explores the cognitive construction in-depth analysis, using the no damage detection techniques (electroencephalogram and eye movement technique). Additionally, this research explores the mechanism of cognitive construction. As the subject who owns and process the knowledge, the cognitive construction of the knowledge workers plays the core role in improving productivity. The research points out the limitation of application in practice, and puts forward the analysis way. Based on it, this research explores the mechanism of cognitive construction from working memory, long-term memory and metacognition.The theory and method based on the manual labor can not fit to the requirement of mental labor management. Objectivity and accuracy of variables is always one goal of management. This research applies the cognitive method, and uses the EEG and eye movement technique to analyze the inner dynamic process. In this way, the subjective variables could be causally mapped in electrophysiological activity. And the research provides the experimental paradigm for measuring subjective variables objectively.Applying the electroencephalogram, this research confirms the neural efficiency and the processing mode resulting in the productivity of the knowledge work. Based on the eye movement technique, this research analyzes how the cognitive implicit knowledge influences the process and builds up the activation model according to the different situations. To analyze the metacognition which supervises and controls the whole cognitive process, the multi-step, uncertain knowledge task gets experimented, and the relation between matacognition and productivity was analyzed. The result indicates the metacognition cannot exploit the advantage fully under the mental load or with uncertain and incomplete information. Exploring the inner process and mechanism of knowledge workers can provide the basic and underlying research prospective, the new orientation and basis for management, and finally optimize the construction of knowledge workers.Fourth, the mechanism of interface on productivity is analyzed, in terms of"bottom-up data driven"and"top-down conceptually driven". This research can avoid the paradigm only focusing on changing the physical element of interface to find out the optimal reaction of the subject. In view of"bottom-up data-driven"information process, the page layout eliminating the content effect is designed. Additionally, the first gaze point and the duration of gaze point were analyzed. Furthermore, the optimal physical zones for searching are provided. In view of top-down conceptually driven, the hypothesis of using the color-semantic associative mechanism of knowledge worker to improve the searching efficiency is put forward. The color-guide layout is designed to realize the improvement in efficiency. The research provides the basis for further optimization.