Actors in the Knowledge Economy: A Typology

The purpose of this paper is to construct a typology of actors in the knowledge economy, based on the specificity of their activities. So far, almost all the researchers focused their interests on organizations and their management in the knowledge economy ignoring the actors who perform and make the progress of the new economy based primarily on intangible resources. The main criterion for this typology is the positioning of these actors with respect to knowledge, as an intangible resource of any economic activity. The whole spectrum of this typology is defined by the end actors who are the composers and the consumers. The composers create knowledge and transform personal knowledge into organizational knowledge, while the consumers are those who use it. In between, there are owners, administrators, and performers. As an extension, we may include in this typology the citizens as end possible knowledge users. Also, we perform an analysis of the characteristics of all these actors with respect to values, objectives, methods, and results. The contribution of the present paper results from the new perspective we offer in understanding the mechanisms and the dynamics of the knowledge economy.