Selected Aspects of Management at the Workplace in Conditions of Uncertainty

Uncertainty in the environment of contemporary organizations equally concerns whole companies and individual employees at their workplaces. How to manage work to cope with uncertainty at the basic organizational level? To address this broad question, a framework is required with which to analyze and identify sources of uncertainty at the individual workplace. Therefore, the aim of this study is to propose a model of the workplace, which could provide a framework for a systematic review of sources of uncertainty in contemporary work, with special attention to knowledge work.

Literature review provides four theoretical foundations of the model in: the concept of knowledge management, features of knowledge work, G.Nadler’s general model of the system of work, and current schemes of job analysis and description.

The proposed model is composed of three cross-sections through the workplace. In the cross-section of knowledge utilization, the organization sets goals and tasks for the employee, receives the results of his/her work, and provides resources and the work environment. In the cross-section of the knowledge structure, the employee provides a set of competences (with its structure and attributes) that is his/her input into the work process. The cross-section of knowledge processes proposes to analyze the flow of knowledge through the processes of receiving, reading, creating, communicating and consolidating knowledge. Such a comprehensive model provides an effective framework for static and dynamic analysis of sources of uncertainty in the contemporary knowledge-based workplace.