From Taylorism as Product to Taylorism as Process: Knowledge-Intensive Firms in a Historical Perspective

One of the most commented-on shifts in developed economies over the past decade is the advent of the so-called knowledge economy. Increasingly, the performance of firms and entire nations is thought to stem from the ability to exploit knowledge that is intangible, esoteric and hard to standardize or replicate (Scarborough, 1999). Such change is also thought to have had marked implications for expert work, leading to the growing prominence of knowledge-intensive firms in areas such as management consulting, advertising, R&D and high tech industries (Reed, 1996; Fincham, 2005). However, while this shift is widely acknowledged, its consequences for the management of expert groups are far from clear. One strand in the literature, perhaps the dominant one, argues that the trajectory of change has been towards flexible, decentralized or entrepreneurial modes of organization (Starbuck, 1992; Alvesson, 1995). This mode, it is argued, bears many of the hallmarks of the collegial organization traditionally favoured by more established, ‘liberal’, professions. But against this, a growing body of research and opinion points to an alternative trend towards more bureaucratic and corporate forms of organizing, not dissimilar to what Hinings (2005) has described as a ‘managed professional business’ (Karreman and Alvesson, 2004; Alvesson and Thompson, 2005).