Introduction to information systems T. Cornford, M. Shaikh is1 060 2013

3.2.1 Information work and information workers
Focusing on information’s importance to people in their working lives 
leads us to emphasise the growing number and importance of the jobs 
and roles that rely on an advanced ability to use information. People who 
do such jobs and have such roles are often referred to as knowledge 
workers (sometimes contrasted with ‘data workers’). 
Activity
Review the definition of knowledge work found in Laudon and Laudon (2013), Chapter 
11. Review the kinds of tasks that knowledge workers perform in organisations, and the 
skills they bring to bear.
For example, an architect, a fashion designer, a doctor or a civil engineer, 
are all jobs that demand that people who do them have very specific skills 
– their specific and distinctive knowledge. This will include an ability 
to access information and to use it to achieve some understanding of a 
situation and then make appropriate decisions, be it a diagnosis, a drawing 
or plan, a design or specification – be it of a summer dress or of a concrete 
beam.
All these knowledge workers, in today’s world, probably do some or even 
most of their work using computers and specialised software designed 
for their kinds of tasks. They will also usually work in teams and so 
information will be exchanged among their peers by technical means 
– sending an email, posting on a website, updating a blog or tweeting. 
Sometimes we talk about knowledge workers sharing their expertise 
through a ‘knowledge base’, which may be a specific type of database 
system focused on storing knowledge, insights or case experience. Thus a 
lawyer may access a knowledge base using an online database of laws and 
specific legal judgments; an engineer may search in a database of previous 
designs to find an example of a solution to a particular problem. In each 
case knowledge is being stored and then accessed.