Expert Authority in Crisis: Making Authority Real Through Struggle

Abstract

There is an emerging consensus both within the social scientific research community and more widely in the public domain that expert authority is “in trouble.” However, there is much greater disagreement over the scope and scale of this trouble and what it might mean for the nature, status, and significance of expert authority in the 21st century. This paper identifies and assesses three different narratives concerning the crisis in expert authority. These constitute the delegitimation narrative, the demystification narrative, and the decomposition narrative. They can be seen as responses to the breakdown in the implicit social contract between experts, publics, and states under the extreme and continuous pressures exerted on expert authority by disjunctive change. We evaluate these various interpretations of the crisis in expert authority, particularly in terms of what they suggest about the future potency and stability of the concept of expert authority. In this process of evaluation, we also highlight the emergence of reflexive expert authority and its implications for organizational governance as potential outcomes of this ongoing crisis in the legitimacy and status of expert workers. Consequently, the paper provides a general analytical framework for understanding the emergent narratives around expert authority in democracies and highlights how all three narratives point to serious problems in sustaining this authority in the face of destabilizing change. Furthermore, in developing the notion of reflexive expert authority, we contend that theorization of expert authority needs to privilege the deeper dynamics of trust and control at the core of its analytical focus within organization theory.

Expertise in Management Research: A Review and Agenda for Future Research

“…Often, this notion of expertise is described as an implicit social contract between expert actors, the public, and the state (O'Reagan & Killian, 2014; Reed & Reed, 2022). In this contract, the expert actors are granted great autonomy over their work by the state, under the precondition that they align their work with the public good, for instance by taking care of citizens' problems (e.g., legal problems, medical problems).…”

“…Research from the realist perspective has uncovered circumstances in which individual experts contribute to organizations performing poorly or even slipping into crisis (Almandoz & Tilcsik, 2016;Bröcheler et al, 2004;Joshi, 2014). To date, there has been very little research from this perspective that explicitly contributes to the broader debate about a crisis of expertise (Eyal, 2019;Reed & Reed, 2022). However, with its three sub-perspectives, the realist perspective is in a very good position to make such contributions in the future.…”

“…The author describes how, while these career coaches rarely attack more established professional groups directly, their techniques of coaching nevertheless implicitly "undermine and erode trust in other possible career experts" (1178). So far, research on the crisis of expertise has mainly assumed that established experts are losing influence because they themselves have broken the implicit social contract with the state and the public (O'Reagan & Killian, 2014;Reed & Reed, 2022), or, alternatively, because they have been directly displaced by competing expert groups (Abbott, 1988). However, research on peripheral and unlikely experts such as career coaches and finfluencers could show that there are more indirect and subtle explanations for why established experts are slipping into crisis.…”

“…Finally, expertise is central to crucial situations in organizations, as it plays a role, for example, in the evaluation of new ideas or when heterogeneous actors need to coordinate their work very quickly (Elsbach & Kramer, 2003;Wolbers, Boersma, & Groenewegen, 2018). Despite all these potential benefits to society and organizations, many observers claim that expertise is currently facing a significant and urgent crisis (Eyal, 2019;Nichols, 2017;Reed & Reed, 2022). In public debate, "post-truth", "alternative facts", or "science denialism" (Knight & Tsoukas, 2019;Meyer & Quattrone, 2021) are examples of phenomena that challenge the traditional role of expertise in society.…”

The framing of authority in the ACRL framework on information literacy: multidisciplinary perspectives on truth, authority, expertise and belief

“…The literature is replete with references to a decline in the recognition of expertise (e.g. Badke, 2015; Caudill, 2022, 2023; Chesta, 2022; Collins and Evans, 2007; Eyal, 2019, 2022; Farrow and Moe, 2019; Lynch, 2007; Nichols, 2019; Reed and Reed, 2022). An entire issue of Teaching in Higher Education addresses issues with “the post-truth error,” especially the diminishing value of expertise in higher education (Harrison and Luckett, 2019).…”