Rewarding Knowledge Workers: An Empirical Investigation of the Cognitive Effects of the Reward System on IT Planning Effectiveness

Abstract

In a business environment characterized by digitization, globalization, mobility, workgroups, immediacy, and disintermediation (Tapscott, 1996), organizations have become ever more reliant on delivering maximum value to their customers to keep competitive. Knowledge workers using computing and communication technologies produce intangible goods and services. They represent the primary leverage through which organizations maximize the value offered to their customers. Leveraging the intellectual assets of knowledge workers should be the primary focus of planning processes where customer service systems are designed along with accompanying IT solutions. Knowledge work will require new forms of management and, implicitly, a new strategy for human resource management (Collins, 1998). Consequently, human resource management is increasingly trying to reinvent itself around the emerging concepts of knowledge work and core competencies (Lawler, 2000).