A little knowledge is a dangerous thing: getting below the surface of the growth of ‘knowledge work’ in Australia

Peter Fleming, Bill Harley and Graham Sewell
Additional contact information
Peter Fleming: University of Cambridge, UK
Bill Harley: University of Melbourne, Australiabharley@unimelb.edu.au
Graham Sewell: University of Melbourne, Australia

Work, Employment & Society, 2004, vol. 18, issue 4, 725-747

Abstract: This article critically addresses the claim that there has been a striking growth in ‘knowledge work’ in advanced economies. Using the Australian Bureau of Statistics Labour Force Survey, we examine occupational change from 1986 to 2000 to evaluate the support for this claim. Researchers have usually relied on aggregate level data to justify the presence of a burgeoning knowledge-based workforce, but we contend that we must ‘get below the surface’ of the major occupational groups by disaggregating the data. This enables us to demonstrate that a substantial component of the apparent growth in knowledge work is accounted for by an increase in low-level information handling occupations rather than by a growth in knowledge work as it is commonly conceived. The article then develops an interpretive framework that makes sense of the data in a manner that avoids both over-estimating the prevalence of the ‘knowledge worker’ and underestimating the knowledge-related activities in jobs commonly considered to be low-skilled and bereft of important competencies.

Keywords: Australian occupational change; disaggregated data; knowledge work; labour; skills (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0950017004047951 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:woemps:v:18:y:2004:i:4:p:725-747

DOI: 10.1177/0950017004047951

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Work, Employment & Society from British Sociological Association
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().