The Research On Knowledge Work And Its Productivity On The Basis Of Complex-System Theories

In the past one-hundred years, the scientific management theory which proposed by F. W. Taylor dramatically improved the productivity of physical work and also significantly benefited the social economy.With the development of society and the arrival of knowledge economy, the knowledge contained in each links of the production practice increased gradually. Nowadays, the increased complexity and knowledgeability of most works caused the changes of their external morphology and intrinsic attributes. Moreover, the proportion of knowledge work within the community’s total workload rose rapidly, even beyond the physical work. The modern knowledge-based society has entered into an era in which knowledge work is the main production form and knowledge works are the object of management. The productivity of knowledge work is the determinants of competitive advantage form individual to the nation. Therefore, the importance of enhancing the productivity of knowledge work gradually appears, and researches of knowledge work and its productivity become the focus of many subjects. The improvement of knowledge work productivity will definitely lead to a revolution to the development of social economy in the 21st century.Although many experts and scholars put a lot of time in researching knowledge work and its productivity, researches on the nature of knowledge work and its productivity, the measurement of knowledge work, the model of knowledge work productivity is still very difficult and have not yet achieved significant results due to the complexity of knowledge work itself. Even the general definition of knowledge work has not formed. Just as T. H. Davenport pointed out, compared to the contributions of Taylor on the improving of physical work productivity, the research on knowledge work productivity was far from it.For the above issues, a study was conducted to analysis the nature of knowledge work and its productivity based on complex system theory in this dissertation. Besides this, models and relevant theory of knowledge work and its productivity was built to provide a new train of thought for theoretical research and practical guidance. Details included are as follows:1. Currently, there are many definitions of knowledge work which are not uniform. This reflects the versatility of knowledge work, but also shows that the nature of knowledge work has not been recognized. If only analyzes part the aspects of knowledge work and its productivity, this will make the research cannot see the wood for the trees. In order to have a fully, accurately and in-depth understanding about knowledge work, combined with the concept and relevant research of "production", "system" and "complexity" in management science, system science and complex science, this study defined knowledge work as a complex production system of human being. This definition posited knowledge work and provided the basis for our research.2. Obviously, understanding the intrinsic quality of knowledge work is the premise and foundation to grasp the regular pattern of knowledge work and enhance its productivity. In this study, from the view of "WSR" systematic methodology, the nature of knowledge work was boiled down to a complex production system having three sub-dimensions, that is, knowledge system as the input and the function is the output; cognitive system as the input and the intelligence is the output; sequence of steps as the input and the output is efficacy. Take the three dimensions as core of knowledge work, a qualitative framework model of knowledge work was constructed. This model not only can be used to analysis and explain various types of knowledge work, even the physical work, but also lay a good foundation for building the quantitative model of knowledge work as well as the model of knowledge work productivity.3. The qualitative framework model of knowledge work provides an analytical method for us to understand and explain knowledge work system, but it cannot help with the exact measurement and comparison on quantity, which is an important basis to judge the merits of knowledge work. For this reason, based on the qualitative model and applied the utility theory of economics, utility function of knowledge work was constructed whose existence and uniqueness also got proved. This bridges the mathematical methods and knowledge work measurement, also provides a foundation for the theoretical research and practical guidance of knowledge work productivity measurement.4. The utility function of knowledge work is a good tool to compare and evaluate knowledge work. Combined with the constraint condition of difficulty, they together form the objective function of knowledge work system. This study demonstrated the existence and uniqueness of the optimal effectiveness behavior under the constraints of difficulty, also the existence and uniqueness of the behavior pays minimum under the constraints of utility constrains within knowledge work system. According to the existence and uniqueness of optimal behavior in knowledge work, it can be showed that there exists a clear function relationship between input system (including the order degree of structure, cognition and sequence of steps) and output system (including the utility of function, intelligence, and efficacy) of the knowledge work system.5. The framework model of knowledge work clearly defines the inputs and outputs of knowledge work system. On this basis, this study constructs a qualitative framework model of knowledge work productivity consisted of spatial distribution efficiency of meta-knowledge, cognitive efficiency of human, and the time distribution efficiency of sequence of steps. This model illustrates that the nature of knowledge work productivity is the uniform of the three above efficiency, and also tells us the source of knowledge work productivity.However, measuring changes in knowledge work productivity is the basis for enhancing the productivity of knowledge work, it is necessary to measure it using appropriate techniques. As a result, this study introduces the distance function and applies this mathematical tool to analyze how to measure the changes of knowledge work productivity. Detailed steps are as follows:firstly, identified the differences between the efficiency of knowledge work and the productivity of knowledge work; secondly, analyzed the impacts of working methods, technological progress and other factors on the changes of knowledge work productivity; thirdly, measured changes of knowledge work productivity using the distance function method; finally, proposed the route to enhance the knowledge work productivity.6. After constructing the theoretical framework, this study took Cobb-Douglas production function as example, combined with the model of knowledge work and knowledge work productivity, to analyze the optimal behavior of knowledge work system, also further compared physical work with knowledge work. Through this comparison, the intrinsic differences between the research method of physical work and knowledge work were proposed.Innovations of this dissertation can be summarized as follows:1. This study combined the concept of "production" in economics and management, the concept of "system" in systems science, and the concept of "complexity" in complex science together, applied the systematic methodology of WSR to identify and decompose the three dimensions of knowledge work system. From the input-output elements and collaboration of the three dimensions, this study further constructed the qualitative framework model of knowledge work system.2. Based on the above framework model, this study constructed the utility function of knowledge work system using the utility theory in economics, and proved the existence and uniqueness of this utility function. Meanwhile, analyzed two kinds of optimal behavior and also proved its existence and uniqueness.3. Connected the framework model with the concept of "productivity" in economics and management, a framework model of knowledge work productivity was built. This model was significant for managing knowledge workers in organizations. It pointed out the direction of analyzing the knowledge work productivity, and provided a fresh theoretical perspective for relevant researches.4. On the basis of this knowledge work productivity model, together with the mathematical method of distance function, this study further analyzed the types, the source, the measurement and the enhance of knowledge work productivity and then proposed a new measured method.In summary, this dissertation can be considered as an attempt to explore the theory and practical laws of knowledge work system and its productivity.