Knowledge worker fitness in the workspace: self-managing at the edge of chaos

ABSTRACT

Today’s knowledge work environment is one of frequent interruptions, unnecessary distractions, essential interactions and valuable fragments of solitary work. There is an urgent need to better understand how knowledge workers juggle their competing, intertwining activities to get work done. Drawing on complexity theory we conceptualise the workplace as a complex adaptive system where knowledge workers evolve across a mountainous “fitness landscape”, made up of peaks and valleys that represent various levels of “fitness” for productive work. Using a case study design and detailed observation of knowledge workers, we find that they often rely on stable, but sometimes sub-optimal workgroup routines and the search costs of exploring the landscape prevent them from finding and climbing more productive distant peaks. The fitness landscape metaphor is useful for understanding knowledge worker self-management behaviours and provides a new frame to study knowledge worker productivity.

KEYWORDS:

• Knowledge worker
• productivity
• complexity theory
• fitness landscape

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. See for example, “Cost of Interruptions: $588 Billion and Growing” at http://www.basexblog.com/2005/09/09/cost-of-interruptions-588-billion-and-growing/.

2. Based on the work of Kauffman (1993), Kauffman & Johnsen (1991), and McCarthy (2003).

3. Adapted from McCarthy and Tan (2000).

4. Adapted from McCarthy (2003).

5. https://targetjobs.co.uk/careers-advice/job-descriptions/454213-design-engineer-job-description.

6. Concurrent engineering is a work methodology that involves performing tasks concurrently using integrated product teams. It is also called simultaneous engineering.

7. Adapted from Almutairi et al. (2014).

8. Our analysis assumes that average daily activity is similar for each of the six observed design engineers. To verify this assumption we compared the time design engineers spent on each of the activity groups. While one designer had no meeting activity and spent more time in social and rest activities, overall, the six design engineers had similar work patterns.

9. Adapted from Watson-Manheim and Bélanger (2007).