Sub-Plenary 2-2

Expertise in Plural: Scientific, Lay, Contested, and Reorganized


Friday, July 10, 2026, 12:30-14:00 CEST
Online


Chairs/Organizers:
Valerio Iannucci, Boston University, US
Pedro Monteiro, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark

Panelists:
Daniel Beunza, Bayes Business School, UK
Elena Bruni, LUISS University, Italy
Oddný Helgadóttir, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark
Ruthanne Huising, ESSEC Business School Paris, France
Andrew Sturdy, University of Bristol, UK
 

Expertise–legitimized specialized knowledge–is a core concern of our time. We routinely turn to it to address some of our most pressing problems, such as (public) health, security, or climate change. It is also, obviously, at the root of contemporary organizations, as work increasingly relies on greater specialization. At the same time, we are witnessing a diffusion of a more plural and heterogeneous ecology of specialized knowledge that increasingly vies for legitimacy, both alongside and against established expertise.

This plurality encompasses forms of expertise that vary in both the degree of their formalization and their relationship to established scientific expertise. Along one dimension, this plurality ranges from loosely organized, experience-based understandings to more formalized alternative theories that rely on popular resonance as sources of legitimacy outside conventional peer review. These forms also vary in their orientation toward established expertise, from collaborative engagements, such as citizen science, to explicitly oppositional ones, such as science denial and conspiracy theories.

These dynamics point to a reconfiguration rather than a simple erosion of expertise. This is particularly salient for organizational scholarship, where expertise has long been constituted through a dense ecology of actors, including academics, consultants, managers, and intermediaries, across which concepts travel, are translated, and acquire practical force. Yet, while the topic of expertise has been studied across a variety of subdomains in organization studies, we are only beginning to understand how its growing plurality is organized and how this challenges our understanding of organization and organizing.
 
This panel brings together colleagues who have studied different forms of expertise in relation to professions, management practitioners, lay activists, science denialists, and heterodox economic theorists. It aligns with the overall work of Standing Working Group 8 (Expertise in and around Organizations). It will include a brief introduction by the chairs (5 minutes), short introductions by each panelist (5 minutes each), and a moderated panel discussion with ample opportunity for audience participation (60 minutes).
 

Biographies:

Valerio Iannuci is a PhD candidate at Boston University. In his research, he uses ethnographic methods to examine the democratization of expertise and its implications for professions and organizations. His current work focuses on shared decision-making between physicians and patients in cancer care.

Pedro Monteiro is an Associate Professor at Copenhagen Business School. His academic work explores how organizations develop, recognize, and integrate expertise as well as the functioning and dilemmas of bureaucratic organization. Pedro is currently working on the role of lay ideas in organizational theory within technical contexts.

Daniel Beunza is Professor of Social Studies of Finance at Bayes Business School (formerly Cass). His research explores how social relations and technology shape financial value. His ethnographic studies of Wall Street examined how organizational practices and economic models influenced decision making and financial markets. His current work explores citizen science in the aftermath of disasters.

Elena Bruni is an Assistant Professor at LUISS, Italy. Her research examines linguistic and multimodal processes that drive societal change, with recent work focusing on science denialism, vaccine hesitancy, and practices occurring in morally ambiguous contexts where expertise is challenged and contested.

Oddný Helgadóttir is an Associate Professor at Copenhagen Business School. Her research examines how economic ideas shape governance and public policy, with a focus on how lay expertise challenges established economic frameworks. By studying how economic knowledge gains authority and is contested, her work explains how these debates shape the choices available to policymakers and society.

Ruthanne Huising is a Professor of Management at ESSEC. Her research examines the role of experts and expertise in organizations and society. Ruthanne studies how the role of experts and understandings of what constitutes expertise are shaped by technological, social, and regulatory change. Her work focuses both on professions – the main way in which expertise was institutionalized in the 20th century – and other, often emerging forms through which expertise is generated and applied. 

Andrew Sturdy is a Professor of Management at the University of Bristol, United Kingdom. He has an interest in the use and governance of management consultancy and professions more widely.