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

Abstract

Management scholars and practitioners have a longstanding interest in expertise and its benefits for individuals, organizations, and markets. However, today, experts and expertise also face a significant and broad crisis of credibility, authority, and trust in society. In order to better examine, understand, and realize the potential of expertise in and around organizations in this context, our field is overdue for a comprehensive review of recent work on the concept. With an integrative review of the past two decades of management research on expertise, we map out this fragmented field and outline three perspectives on the concept. A realist perspective sees expertise as a expertise, allowing future research to tease out the intricate relationships between expertise and one or more of these related concepts.

Enacting Transdisciplinary Values for a Postdigital World: The Challenge-Based Reflective Learning (CBRL) Framework

“…Recognizing that expertise can be developed across diverse domains, CBRL helps reevaluate what it means to gain expertise beyond the confines of disciplinary and professional norms. Expertise has predominantly been associated with being a specialist in a particular field, generating distinct professions (e.g., physicians, lawyers, and engineers) (Hardoš 2018;Heimstädt et al 2023). However, this notion does not recognize other kinds of expertise that may complement or expand beyond disciplinary or interdisciplinary framings.…”

How Do Stereotypical Representations Affect Judgments of New Product Success? An Empirical Investigation

“…A dependence on heuristics often reduces the capacity for rational and deliberative judgments. As a result, individuals frequently fall back on their expertise [14] and intuition to make sense of information [15]. One would expect more experienced individuals to make more accurate intuitive judgments due to their well-honed ability to effectively process limited information [16], [17], [18], [19].…”

Crowdworking: Nurturing Expert-Centric Absorptive Capacity

“…By providing organizations with versatility and quick access to an extensive pool of skilled (and often inexpensive) experts on a short-term basis, knowledge-intensive crowdworking can provide not only cost savings and on-demand scalability but also, a strategic competitive advantage and a potential source of innovation (Anya 2015). This added value is generated because knowledge-intensive crowdworking, unlike microtask crowdworking, allows organizations to bolster their internal capabilities with external experts and their complementary knowledge (Chiu et al 2014, Heimstädt et al 2023.…”