The Research On The Mechanism Of Effect On Information Technology To Knowledge Work Productivity

Nowdays, human continuously accumulate the scientific knowledge and the knowledge is being used more and more in the work and production. The rapid development of science and technology and the explosive growth of knowledge begin to make a lot of work intellectual from the late 20th century. Such knowledge work has replaced the traditional physical work to become the most important mode of production in human society. Therefore, it is quite important to improve the productivity of knowledge work for individuals, enterprises and even countries. Besides, information technology (IT), as an important product of the Information Age, is widely applied in various fields. IT has greatly improved the productivity with profound influence. Therefore, the study on the mechanism between IT and the productivity of knowledge work is an important theoretical basis for how to use IT to improve the productivity of knowledge work. The study also provides a new perspective for the direction of information technology's development.Currently, there are some researches about the relationship between IT and the productivity of knowledge work. But most are qualitative and perceptual. How to determine the relationship between IT and the productivity of knowledge work quantitatively and express them in mathematical model are key points of this paper.In this paper, the main research and achievement are as follows. Firstly, the existing research of the knowledge work, productivity of knowledge work, IT as well as the relationship among them are introduced and summarized. The typical indicators and the enlightenments they provide are analysed. The indicators for quantitative empirical study are proposed with the purpose of this paper.Secondly, based on the existing theoretical research, the paper determines the indicators for the knowledge work, the productivity of knowledge work and IT. Given that IT has an influence on the productivity of knowledge work by knowledge work, the paper proposes a two-level conceptual model. Then a questionnaire is designed for the empirical study.Thirdly, with the conceptual model and the data collected by the questionnaire, a mathematical model for the mechanism between IT and the productivity of knowledge work is built by using structure equation modeling. LISREL8.70 is applied to assist the modeling. To ensure the scientificity and the rationality of the questionnaire, reliability and validity analysis are provided. According to the model, the interations among three dimesions (IT, Knowledge Work and Knowledge Work Productivity) are obtained. For instance, as an important characteristic, the research shows that automation could make the knowledge work more structured and repeatable, and improve the working efficiency greatly. However, it may go against the creativity and the work quality if the knowledge work is automated overly and improperly. All these conclusions make for a better strategy of IT deployment.Fourthly, a 'knowledge work structure tree' software developed by the reasarch gourp is applied in a medical education company to examine the proposed model. The case study can support and validate the model result from the perspective that IT can improve the productivity of knowledge work.