Flow in Knowledge Work: High Performance Experience in the Design of National Security Technology

Knowledge work, which consists of goal-oriented activities that require high levels of competency to complete, comprises a large and increasing amount of work in modern organizations. Because knowledge work seldom has single correct results or methods for completion, externally specified, quantified measures of performance may not always be the most appropriate means for managing the performance of knowledge workers. Two competing models of flow, a type of subjective performance, are proposed and tested in a sample of work experiences from engineers, scientists, managers, and technicians who study and design national defense technologies at Sandia National Laboratories. Results support the definition and model that conceives of flow as the experience of merging situation awareness with the automatic application of activity-relevant knowledge and skills. Ways in which this definition and model of flow can be incorporated into theories of knowledge, performance, and social networks are explored.