Corporate culture: The latent potential

Peter Drucker, arguably one of the most important management thinkers, wrote in the Harvard Business Review some years ago that the only comparative competitive advantage that developed countries have today resides in their large contingent of knowledge workers. The productivity of knowledge and knowledge workers, which still receives too little attention and is alarmingly low, must be continuously and systematically increased.1 Successful corporate management, Drucker argued, will, to an increasing extent, require knowledge about processes and conditions inside and outside the company. However, a problem resides in the fact that, to a large extent, knowledge as a resource belongs to the knowledge workers themselves. Knowledge workers carry their knowledge with them in their heads and it can be taken with them to any place of employment. Making this knowledge bear fruit requires strong orientation toward employees. Only those companies who succeed in creating value for employees will be able to tie them in and exploit their potential.