Design of Knowledge Work: A Case Study

This is a case study of a public insurance company’s conversion of long-standing paper-based work processes to an electronic document management system, “E-File”, with imaging, data integration, and automated workflow. Simultaneously, significant redesign occurred in jobs and organization structure, business processes, and people development. The E-File experience is an imperfect but powerful illustration of the challenge and potential of designing social and technical elements of knowledge work concurrently and interactively. A “socio-technical” approach to organization design can mitigate potentially negative effects of information technology, while maximizing positive potentials to up-skill jobs, and yield an outcome, such as with “E-File”, where over 90% of the highly skilled employees surveyed in this white-collar organization regard the new system as a substantially positive change. Innovative job and organization structures have also maximized the business potential of the technology, in helping to develop a customer service culture. Many other human dimensions of information technology in relation to knowledge work are illuminated in this unique longitudinal study.