The dynamics of societal and corporate ideas: The knowledge work design of the future

Abstract

This paper investigates what forms the knowledge work design in the future on a corporate level and a societal level. The future might be 2025, 2030, or 2035. The methodology is including in depth interviews with researchers working with these issues in the Swedish telecommunication company Telia and the Norwegian telecommunication company Telenor. These are both companies making their living of understanding the future of work both on a corporate level and a societal level. The main finding is that AI and robotics will be more advanced, but the management and organizational structure will be the same as today. The steps will be taken one by one toward a technology making new opportunities for collaboration and knowledge work. The real knowledge worker will be using more of his working time to significant business issues. The ideal business model is a framework where a professional knowledge worker is both learning and using his qualifications. The development of knowledge, skills, and attitudes will be the key to delivering excellent results. The future of knowledge work is giving people the opportunities to deliver excellent results and rewarded for these results as a part of their team more than as individuals. To make ordinary people produce extraordinary results in that project teams will be the future of knowledge work. There will be clusters of corporations globally, nationally, and local demanding individual and corporate collaboration. More people than ever will be better educated with a more common mindset making collaboration and teamwork easier. There will be more knowledge workers than anytime in 2030. According to Telia and Telenor, corporations and individuals will take environmental issues much more seriously, and large corporation together with the dominating economic over national powers will make the necessary starting steps to save the world. The saving of the earth represents a concentration of both corporate and national power. Neither The number of jobs will be increasing owing to both economic growth and more opportunities together with increasing health service and an educated workforce. There will be higher profits and higher sales per employee. This study concludes that there will be many small positive corporate and societal steps for each year towards 2030, improving the way of living and working together with environmental improvements. The reconstruction of the middle class is also emerging - neither a perfect nor imperfect world.