engleski

Knowledge workers in Croatian companies

Knowledge workers are generators of company’s growth and development. Most knowledge workers have spent their lifetime as all other employees who have a job, receive a salary, and could be fired. However, unlike other workers, knowledge workers are the owners of the resource, which is their knowledge. Leaving the company, industrial workers leave machines and equipment, but when knowledge workers leave the company they take the most precious resource, the knowledge. So, the key investment of today's companies is not investing in facilities, equipment and devices, but in knowledge or knowledge workers, because without them, no matter how sophisticated and advanced technology company has, it will not be effective and efficient. Knowledge workers and company they work for are interdependent. It is extremely important that knowledge workers understand what the company in which they work expects from them. But the company must know the needs, requirements and expectations of knowledge workers as well. Specifically, the company provides knowledge workers with resources (Alverson, 2000). Only knowledge without organizational support and resources is worthless. On the other hand, company depends on knowledge workers, precisely on their ability to synthesize theoretical and empirical knowledge and to apply it to design adequate solutions. In this sense, company must meet the aspirations and expectations of knowledge workers. This should result in knowledge workers being dedicated to the achievement of company's objectives. In this context, it is extremely important to stress the role of management, whose primary objective is to make knowledge workers productive. Due to these considerations and the growing interest in understanding the importance of knowledge workers in contemporary companies and their contribution to society as a whole, this concept is slowly becoming the focus of interest among scientists and management. According to this, the empirical research of this paper deals with knowledge workers in Croatian companies with the aim to clarify their individual characteristics. The empirical research is conducted on the sample of 736 knowledge workers employed in 40 Croatian large and medium-sized companies. The research results suggest that the majority of knowledge workers are women ; knowledge workers are younger than other workers ; knowledge workers are workers with the shorter tenure compared to other workers ; knowledge workers mainly work on higher organizational levels (usually on managerial positions) ; knowledge workers employed on managerial position are mostly men. The cognition of these characteristics is an important factor in developing efficient human resources strategies and practices because human resource management should appropriately cover all dimensions which determine knowledge workers.

knowledge workers; company; individual characteristics

nije evidentirano