Call for Papers

With this sub-theme, we welcome contributions on the role that expertise and professional expert knowledge play in managing complex societal problems or grand challenges (Gehman et al., 2022; George et al., 2016). Scholars from various disciplines, including organization and management studies, have called for the coordinated action of diverse experts and organizations to advance a collective movement towards addressing complex societal challenges such as climate change, poverty, inequalities, sustainable development, pandemics, or global financial downturns (George et al., 2016). Professionals and expert groups play a pivotal role in both analysing grand challenges, and crafting interventions at the micro, meso, and macro levels.
 
Grand challenges by their nature are characterized by unmitigable uncertainty (Compagni et al., 2024), high complexity, and involve many actors with path-dependent, nonlinear, and deeply intertwined relations (Ferraro et al., 2015). Grand challenges also see the combination of diverging interests, needs, and goals of different societal groups (Jarzabkowski et al., 2019). Efforts to manage multi-stakeholder groups and diverse expert organizations often reveal governance obstacles leading to governance traps (Couture et al., 2023). New and creative ways of organising expert knowledge to promote trans- or interdisciplinarity (Maxwell & Benneworth, 2018) are needed to tackle grand challenges. Some scholars propose that models of collective social learning embedded in “communities of practice” (Maxwell & Benneworth, 2018) or other forms of community organizing (Ackermann et al., 2024; Heimstädt et al., 2024) have such potential.
 
While experts and professionals are the first to be expected to contribute to the amelioration, if not solution, of complex societal problems, the literature on professions (Abbott, 1988) and expertise (Anteby & Holm, 2021; Eyal, 2013), on stakeholder theory (e.g., Banks et al., 2016), organizational learning (Levitt & March, 1988) and in the institutional theory tradition (e.g., Currie & White, 2012; Reay & Hinings, 2009) suggests that joint and coordinated action across different experts or professions are far from being easy to achieve. Such efforts are often unsuccessful, become ridden with conflict or might result in the mere juxtaposition of different epistemic positions or interpretations of the issue at hand (Lefsrud & Meyer, 2012), to competency traps and ineffective interpretations and applications of own experiences and framings (Levitt & March, 1988).
 
As a consequence, the synergies of the collaborative effort of different experts cannot be achieved. The degree of specialization to which nowadays most expert and professional knowledge is subjected may further prevent experts from embracing other perspectives. So, are experts really the best suited to face complex societal problems? Is there a chance that experts might also be instrumental in perpetuating, precipitating or even worsening these problems? The unintended and unwanted effects of expertise and specialized knowledge as well as of the relational dynamics among experts and with other actors such as lay people (Eyal, 2013), managers and policy-makers (Heimstädt et al., 2024) in the context of grand challenges are still poorly understood.
 
This sub-theme aims to advance a conversation on the possible effects, both positive and unintended or unanticipated, of expertise and professional expert knowledge in facing grand challenges. For example, the way professions work within well-defined jurisdictions, in specialized segments can lead to heterogeneity and fragmentation (Noordegraaf, 2020), which together with bounded expertise among diverse professional groups can exacerbate challenges of mobilizing collective action in addressing grand challenges. The sub-theme aims to improve our theoretical understanding of expertise in the context of complex societal problems through dedicated research and cross-fertilization with a variety of literatures, theoretical perspectives, including organization studies, sociology, public administration, science and technology studies.
 
Possible questions include, but are not limited to:

• How can expertise and expert knowledge be deployed to advance the understanding and the elaboration of viable solutions to grand challenges? What opportunities for change emerge at the intersection of conflicting institutional fields and logics?

• What forms of organizing, what governance models or roles might be more conducive to do so?

• What are the relational dynamics around professional expertise and growing calls for inter-professional collaboration and intensifying professional expert engagement in preventing problems rather than simply treating them?

• How can experts organise in creative ways that allow for interdisciplinary approaches? What organizing models have been experimented so far and to what effect?

• How can experts and other stakeholders develop effective joint framings to guide their collective efforts in finding solutions for grand challenges?

• How should expertise and professional expert knowledge structured or developed in order to better address grand challenges? Which role do (inter-)organizational learning and the adaptation of routines play in this context?

• What role has lay expertise in facing grand challenges and how it interacts with professional or formal expertise?

• There are tendencies to blend professional and managerial logics. What can managers teach professionals and experts?

We invite theoretical and empirical papers using qualitative or quantitative research methods that address these and related topics.
 

References

• Abbott, A. (1988): The System of Professions: An Essay on the Division of Expert Labor. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

• Ackermann, F., Pyrko, I., & Hill, G. (2024): “Mobilizing landscapes of practice to address grand challenges.” Human Relations, 77 (5), 593–621.
• Anteby, M., & Holm, A.L. (2021): “Translating Expertise Across Work Contexts: US Puppeteers Move from Stage to Screen.” American Sociological Review, 86 (2), 310–340.
• Banks, G.C., Pollack, J.M., Bochantin, J.E., Kirkman, B.L., Whelpley, C.E., & O’Boyle, E.H. (2016): “Management’s Science–Practice Gap: A Grand Challenge for All Stakeholders.” Academy of Management Journal, 59 (6), 2205–2231.
• Compagni, A., Cappellaro, G., & Nigam, A. (2024): “Responding to Professional Knowledge Disruptions of Unmitigable Uncertainty: The Role of Emotions, Practices, and Moral Duty among COVID-19 Physicians.” Academy of Management Journal, 67 (3), 829–861.
• Couture, F., Jarzabkowski, P., & Lê, J.K. (2023): “Triggers, Traps, and Disconnect: How Governance Obstacles Hinder Progress on Grand Challenges.” Academy of Management Journal, 66 (6), 1651–1680.
• Currie, G., & White, L. (2012): ”Inter-Professional Barriers and Knowledge Brokering in an Organizational Context: the case of Healthcare.” Organization Studies, 33 (10), 1333–1361.
• Ferraro, F., Etzion, D., & Gehman, J. (2015): “Tackling Grand Challenges Pragmatically: Robust Action Revisited.” Organization Studies, 36 (3), 363–390.
• Eyal, G. (2013): “For a Sociology of Expertise: The Social Origins of the Autism Epidemic.” American Journal of Sociology, 118 (4), 863–907.
• Gehman, J., Etzion, D., & Ferraro, F. (2022): “Robust action: Advancing a distinctive approach to grand challenges.” In: Gümüsay, A.A., Marti, E., Trittin-Ulbrich, H., & Wickert, C. (eds.): Organizing for Societal Grand Challenges. Research in Sociology of Organizations, Vol. 79. Bingley, UK: Emerald Publishing, 259–278.
• George, G., Howard-Grenville, J., Joshi, A., & Tihanyi, L. (2016): “Understanding and tackling societal grand challenges through management research.” Academy of Management Journal, 59, 1880–1895.
• Heimstädt, M., Koljonen, T., & Elmholdt, K.T. (2023): “Expertise in Management Research: A Review and Agenda for Future Research.” Academy of Management Annals, 18 (1), 121–156.
• Jarzabkowski, P., Bednarek, R., Chalkias, K., & Cacciatori, E. (2019): “Exploring inter-organizational paradoxes: Methodological lessons from a study of a grand challenge.” Strategic Organization, 17 (1), 120–132.
• Lefsrud, L.M., & Meyer, R.E. (2012): “Science or Science fiction? Professionals’ Discursive Construction of Climate Change.” Organization Studies, 33 (11), 1477–1506.
• Levitt, B., & March, J.G. (1988): “Organizational Learning.” Annual Review of Sociology, 14 (1), 319–338.
• Maxwell, K., & Benneworth, P. (2018): “The Construction of New Scientific Norms for Solving Grand Challenges.” Palgrave Communications, 4 (1), 1–11.
• Noordegraaf, M. (2020): “Protective or Connective Professionalism? How Connected Professionals can (Still) Act as Autonomous and Authoritative Experts.” Journal of Professions and Organization, 7 (2), 205–223.
• Reay, T., & Hinings, C.R. (2009): “Managing the Rivalry of Competing Institutional Logics.” Organization Studies, 30 (6), 629–652.
• van der Byl, C., Slawinski, N., & Hahn, T. (2020): “Responsible Management of Sustainability Tensions: A Paradoxical Approach to Grand Challenges.” In: Laasch, O., Suddaby, R., Freeman, R.E., & Jamali, D. (eds.): Research Handbook of Responsible Management. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing Limited, 438–452.
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