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Knowledge enterprise


Knowledge enterprise, also named as knowledge company or knowledge-intensive company, or enterprise. According to D. Jemielniak, origin, and scope of this term is unclear. How this can be understood depends on how much company depends on knowledge, that in such a configuration, should be a critical asset of organization. There is no agreement on how knowledge-intensive (to what extent) companies should be to be named like so. However, there are some hints to distinguish knowledge companies, since in economies, there are two groups of companies, of which one is labor-intensive, and another knowledge intensive.

According to Jemielniak, knowledge enterprises have emerged due to changes in the global economy, which throughout decades has been giving greater priorities to services. The emergence of knowledge companies is also called as a symptom of the third industrial revolution where boundaries between owners of production resources, and workers. On the example of IBM it can be seen that such a change have influenced the structure of income of companies. In 1924, IBM’s profits were generated by leasing of manufacturing equipment in 96%, while punched cards were responsible for 4% of the profit. In 1970’s, 80% of profit came from equipment divisions, 15% from software division and 5% from services. In 1990’s services contributed to 30% of IBM’s profits, later in 2007 it was already 45% that the company had earned from rendering services, and 20% from software. This example only reflects the overall change, that is manifested by the reversed proportion between tangible and intangible assets of companies. This evolution has forced a shift in the access to these resources from manual to non-manual (knowledge) workers. Also decision making power is handed in top-down, from owners, and top managers to mid-managers and specialists. These developments accompany the emergence and growing importance of knowledge enterprises.

Knowledge enterprises, according to Lowendahl, can be divided into:

and example companies are: management consultancy companies. In another approach knowledge companies are divided into professional service companies, and research and development companies.

Knowledge enterprises, due to their high-tech profile, chiefly have to base on IT technologies, including hardware and software to conduct managerial processes, and to organize working environments for all the staff, from executive to top management. This is why software development is crucial for existence and evolution of such companies. Software applications are developed for many areas within such organizations, since without them it is difficult to control, and coordinate work that is dedicated to innovation, and problem solving.


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