Knowledge Society Concept
Since a few decades has been verified a more accentuated tendency for transformation, and using the terms of Peter F. Drucker, of the traditional work in knowledge work. Several factors, from which stands out the globalization of economy worldwide, provided in great part by the technological advances at the treatment and information transfer level and at the level of transports and people and goods mobility, has come to contribute for a deep transformation inside the organizations. People gradually become its main asset; stopped being simple performers of tasks decided and ordered by the organizations top deciders, to now form an integral part in the decision taking. Moves thereby gradually of an era dominated by technology to an era dominated by knowledge. We assist therefore, to the advent of a new society based on organizations and whose bigger asset is knowledge. This reality has two fundamental implications that should be withheld, given its relevance and the way how they condition the organizations’ relations with the external surroundings and in its own interior, namely among its employees. This way, traditional productive factors, still widely used by economists, like the land, the work and the capital, come gradually to give place, in terms of economic significance, to the individuals’ knowledge. It’s obvious that the organizations and the economies in general cannot produce without the traditional productive factors, but it’s also certain that existing individuals with specialized knowledge, these factors can be easier obtained in the market. The implications of this new reality are of extreme significance for the organizations since now are the knowledge employees that possess and control the main productive factor – their own knowledge – which makes them much more independent and with much higher mobility level. This situation places a new challenge to the organizations and its responsible, namely to know how to create the necessary conditions to guarantee its employees’ loyalty and, this way, ensure its maintenance.
