Daniel Bell[xiii] and Peter Drucker[xiv] were among the first to suggest that the new postmodern form of capital is knowledge and that workers gain respect and even exert control in postmodern organizations because of their valued expertise and their command of information that is vital to the organization. As early as 1968, Drucker offered the following description of changes in the contemporary workforce:[xv]
“’Knowledge’ rather than ‘science’ [or technology] has become the foundation of the [post] modern economy. . . . To be sure, science and scientists have suddenly moved into the center of the political, military and economic stage. But so have practically all the other knowledge people. It is not just the chemists, the physicists, and the engineers who get fat on consulting assignments . . . Geographers, geologists, and mathematicians, economists and linguists, psychologists, anthropologists, and marketing men are all busy consulting with governments, with industry, with the foreign aid program and so on. Few areas of learning are not in demand by the organizations of our pluralist society.”
Ample evidence of this new form of capital is to be found in many contemporary organizations throughout the world. In fact, this increased valuing of information may be the most distinctive characteristic of our emerging era: “So what about the Digital Age is really new? Mainly, the rise of information—easily digitized, easily copied information—as a major economic product.”[xvi] Thirty years after he coined the term knowledge worker and spoke of information as a new form of capital, Peter Drucker is still touting its importance. Furthermore, he describes ways in which this new form of capital behaves differently from the previous forms:[xvii]
“[Information] differs radically from all other commodities in that it does not stand under the scarcity theorem. On the contrary, it stands under an abundance theorem. If I sell a thing—for example, a book—I no longer have the book. If I impart information, I still have it. And in fact, information becomes more valuable the more people have it.”
This quote suggests that Drucker is not just enamored with information, he also has identified at least one of the profound implications of this new form of capital for contemporary organizations. They simply can’t treat information like other forms of capital. It operates by its own rules and is not easily either quantified or assigned an economic value (as is a plot of land, a machine or a financial investment).
Like other forms of capital, however, information must be used if it is to be of value. A bright shiny machine with blinking lights is of no use if it never gets used. Organizations conduct inventories to determine what equipment they own and, in particular, what equipment might be sitting there unused. A smart executive will not purchase a new piece of equipment until she checks to see if her organization already owns this equipment and if she can make use of it. Information also must somehow be inventoried and used. Drucker fully recognizes this challenge when he notes that:[xviii]
“. . . for fifty years, Information Technology has centered on DATA—their collection, storage, transmission, presentation. It has focused on the “I” in “IT.” The new information revolutions focus on the “I.” They ask, “What is the MEANING of information and its PURPOSE?” And this is leading rapidly to redefining the tasks to be done with the help of information and, with it, to redefining the institutions that do these tasks.”
