The future of human creative knowledge work within the digital economy

Abstract

Current and near future organizational strategies are placing great emphasis on machines, robots and AI. Automation to reduce menial or repetitive jobs, digitization of work to render remaining workers more efficient and AI to provide more reliable and productive top-end professional work are all inter-related initiatives enacted by current dominant imaginaries of efficiency and maximization. We argue that there is an Ellulian phenomenon of efficient techniques spreading within technical logics that go beyond neo-liberal frontiers – namely, algorithmic approaches which attempt to capture and reduce all manners of human knowledge and meaning across the efficient explication, formalization and manipulation of signs. Such purely ‘efficient’ and analytical approaches fail to recognize the unique and inimitable characteristics of human creativity and its associated tacit knowledge.Inspirations from more holistic interpretations of Jungian symbolism allow us to provide a starting point towards comprehending the complex, ambiguous, constantly emerging and essentially hard-to-define aspects of human creativity and tacit knowledge. This, along with the argument that there exists a relationship between the democratization of knowledge and democratic decisional processes, provides the basis to present an alternative imaginary of efficiency as proposed by Feenberg (1999). Such an imaginary, allows for the democratic participation of humans in the decisional process and development of technology; and also recognizes and enacts humans as full legitimate partners with technology in their mutual shaping capacities – thus, leading to human-centric organizations.