【正文】
原文二 : Management Challenges for the 21st Century The most important, and indeed the truly unique, contribution of management in the 20th century was the fiftyfold increase in the productivity of the 39。manual worker39。 in manufacturing. The most important contribution management needs to make in the 21st century is similarly to increase the productivity of 39。knowledge work39。 and the 39。knowledge worker.39。 The most valuable assets of a 20thcentury pany were its production equipment. The most valuable asset of a 21stcentury institution, whether business or nonbusiness, will be its knowledge workers and their productivity. What We Know Abaout Known Workers Productivity Work on the productivity of the knowledge workers has barely begun. In the terms of actual work on knowledge worker productivity we 2021, roughly where we were in the year 1900, a century ago, in terms of the productivity of manual worker. But we already know infinitely more about the productivity of the knowledge workers than we did then about that of the manual worker. We even know a good many of the answers. But we also know the challenges to which we do not yet know the answers, and on which we need to go to work. Six major factors determine knowledge worker productivity. 1. Knowledge worker productivity demands that we ask the question: What is the task? 2. It demands that we impose the responsibility for their productivity on the individual knowledge workers themselves. Knowledge workers have to manage themselves. They have to have authonomy. 3. Continuing innovation has to be part of the work, the task and the responsibility of knowledge workers. 4. Knowledge work requires continuous learning on the part of the knowledge worker, but equally continuous teaching on the part of the knowledge worker. 5. Productivity of the knowledge worker is notat least not primarilya matter of the quantity of output. Quality is at least as important. 6. Finally, knowledge worker productivity requires that the knowledge worker is both seen and treated as an asset rather than a cost. It requires that knowledge workers want to work for the anization in preference to all other opportunities. Each of these requirementsexcept perhaps the last oneis almost the exact opposite of what is needed to increase the productivity of the manual worker. In maranual work quality also matters. But lack of quality is a restraint. There has to be a certain minimum quality standard. The achievement of Total Quality Management to manual work, is the ability to cut ( though not entirely to eliminate ) production that falls below this min