K-Economy and K-Worker for the Future

With regard to the Malaysia’s formal Prime Minster Tun Mahathir vision towards the year 2020 that Malaysia to be an industrialize nation, organizations in Malaysia need to have a pool of knowledge workers in order to ensure the vision is achieved. These knowledge workers will be the mover of the future Malaysia as the industrialized nation. Price (1997) indicated that the information age has changed the nature of work just as the industrial revolution changed early nineteenth-century work. In essence, the content of work and the means of producing products and services have changed. Hence, Malaysia will need thousands of numbers of knowledge workers by the year 2020. Any shortage of knowledge workers in manning the organization can substantially impair the overall performance of the organization.

Buhler (1997) asserts that today’s work force is drastically different from years ago, thus the differences have created tremendous challenges for the managers of today’s organizations. Furthermore, the current work force is more diverse and is not always geographically located together. In order to mitigate the shortage of the knowledge workers, organizations need to look into ways of attracting, motivating and retaining the workers to work with the organization.

Knowledge management is not merely about the latest technology but also managing knowledge within the company and treating it as the most valued asset for the success of the company (Davenport & Cronin, 2000; Grayson & O’Dell, 1998; Kermally, 2002). Looking from this perspective, knowledge workers have been considered to become an important asset by virtue of their possession of this knowledge (Darr, 2003; Drucker, 1988, 1999 and 2000; Newell et al.; Tymon & Stumpf, 2003). Therefore, human resource management is another aspect that would help knowledge management in terms of managing the workers as an invaluable asset for the company, by taking on a more strategic business partnership-like role (Greengard, 1998; Soliman & Spooner, 2000, Thite, 2004; Yahya & Goh, 2002).

It is widely proclaimed by governments, academics, consultants and industrialists that management of knowledge is essential to competing in the “new environment” (Tushmen and Nadler, 1986). Reich (1991) argues that firms are increasingly dependent on knowledge workers as they compete through their employees’ know-how. This implies that organisations must address the needs of knowledge workers in their efforts to retain their primary resource for achieving competitive advantage.

The understanding here is this: if we do not take care of the knowledge workers, will they leverage their knowledge for the success of the company or for themselves? Thus, we must start by managing these knowledge workers effectively with the hope that they will remain in the company and will contribute to its success and profits.

In Malaysia, the shift to the k-economy is part of a wider plan to achieve the objective of the nation’s Vision 2020. Vision 2020 is a 30-year plan to “push” Malaysia to achieve a level at par with industrial nations in terms of economic performance and technological capability (Mustapha & Abdullah, 2000). However, Malaysia currently lacks some of the critical elements to support the k-economy. Among them are the lack of adequate knowledge and skilled human resources (Govindan, 2000). In other words, Malaysian organizations need to prepare themselves towards the shortage of knowledge workers in the coming years. In order to mitigate the shortage of the knowledge workers, there is an urgent need for Malaysian organizations to know the most effective HR strategies and practices for attracting, motivating and retaining the workers to work with the organization.