Call for Papers

Organizational research on expertise has a long and rich history, dating back to scientific management and being conducted under different traditions and perspectives (Heimstädt et al., 2023), including research on professions and occupations (Abbott, 1988; Huising, 2014; Barley, 1996), knowledge work (Newell, 2015), and communities of practice (Orr, 1996). Scholarship has since illustrated many complexities characterizing expertise, including, for example, how knowledge/expert work is situated (Nicolini et al., 2017), negotiated (Levina & Vaast, 2005), embodied (Gherardi, 2009) or political (Carlile, 2004; Eyal, 2019).
 
For decades, the role of technologies in the expertise literature has been a interest, as new technologies give way to different forms of expertise and new roles (Barley, 1986, 1996; Pakarinen & Huising, 2023; Beane & Anthony, 2023). Emerging technologies, such as robotics, social media, generative AI, algorithms, platforms, or visualization tools, are increasingly present in contemporary organizing with diverse implications for expertise ranging from mistrust of experts (Eyal, 2019) to human augmentation and automation (Raisch & Krakowski, 2021). Recent scholarship documents the changing nature of workplace learning both for insiders (Beane, 2019; Anthony, 2021) and outsiders (Rostain & Huising, 2023; Kaynak, 2023), the reconfiguration of coordination and roles (Tyskbo & Sergeeva, 2022; Barrett et al., 2012), and the emergence of neo-experts or counter-experts enabled by social media (Iannucio & Anteby, 2023). Other lines of work have shown how new forms of expert practices emerge, such as hybrid knowing (van den Broek et al., 2023) or algorithmic brokering (Waardenburg et al., 2023), highlighting increased authority that is being associated with seemingly objective “intelligent” tools. Similarly, new forms of expertise emerge associated with new regulations, interest groups, pro-social demands, and technologies (Slayton & Clark-Ginsberg, 2018).
 
Collectively, these studies demonstrate that there are crucial shifts in the ways expert work is performed. Despite the obvious progress, we argue that research on technology needs to bring the same spirit of rich empirical engagement that characterized studies on expertise from its early days to critically interrogate the nexus of emerging technologies and expertise. We call for papers that share our passion for capturing a view “from the ground” and do not shy away from diving even deeper into how modern practitioners in the field are grappling with the questions of expertise in relation to technology at the center of their everyday practice.
 
In this sub-theme, we invite submissions that bring rich empirical accounts (based on any methodological approach) focusing on the various forms of expertise in technologically infused organizational settings. We call for contributions with rich empirical material on important real-world questions related to expertise and technology, particularly those that might not have been fully developed yet or found the “right” framing. Such studies may help us bolster, detail, advance, or think in new ways about expertise in relation to technology and consider changes in work practices, role configurations, and even technology and networks of expertise (Pryma, 2022; Barley, 2020; Bailey & Barley, 2020).

We ask that the 3000-word submission be structured approximately as follows:

• 500 words on introduction, literature review, and a research question;

• 1000 words on research setting, data collection, and data analysis; and

• 1500 words on presentation of findings.

 
This sub-theme aims to be developmental, taking advantage of the wide variety of knowledge and approaches from participants that can nurture work in progress. Possible questions include, but are not limited to:

• How do practitioners become skilled in new technological domains?

• How do human experts navigate using intelligent information technologies in their work?

• What forms of boundary work emerge in relation to technologies, such as algorithms?

• What new forms of expertise are emerging in the wake of emerging technologies like generative AI and cybersecurity risks?

• What role configurations are emerging due to new technologies in the workplace?

• How does generative AI combine with professional skills and expertise?

• How do experts across various fields respond to emerging changes triggered by a particular technological advancement?

• How do different forms of expertise (e.g., design, engineering, social science, management) come together in an organizational context around specific work challenges?

Through these questions, we pay attention to the importance of studying expertise and technology at the level of work (Barley & Kunda, 2001). Further, we wish to encourage engagement with earlier discussions of related concerns within the sociology of professions and studies of organizational knowing and learning, thus yielding attention to what a focus on expertise and technology may add to this enduring intellectual conversation (cf. Gorman & Sandefur, 2011).
 

References

• Abbott, A. (1988): The System of Professions. An Essay on the Division of Expert Labor. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Anthony, C. (2021): “When knowledge work and analytical technologies collide: The practices and consequences of black boxing algorithmic technologies.” Administrative Science Quarterly, 66 (4), 1173–1212.
• Barrett, M., Oborn, E., Orlikowski, W.J., & Yates, J. (2012): “Reconfiguring boundary relations: Robotic innovations in pharmacy work.” Organization Science, 23 (5), 1448–1466.
• Bailey, D.E., & Barley, S.R. (2020): “Beyond design and use: How scholars should study intelligent technologies.” Information and Organization, 30 (2); https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infoandorg.2019.100286.
• Barley, S.R. (1986): “Technology as an Occasion for Structuring: Evidence from Observations of CT Scanners and the Social Order of Radiology Departments.” Administrative Science Quarterly, 31 (1), 78–108.
• Barley, S.R. (1996): “Technicians in the Workplace: Ethnographic Evidence for Bringing Work into Organizational Studies.” Administrative Science Quarterly, 41 (3), 404–441.
• Barley, S.R. (2020): Work and Technological Change. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Barley, S.R., & Kunda, G. (2001): “Bringing work back in.” Organization Science, 12 (1), 76–95.
• Beane, M., & Anthony, C. (2023): “Inverted Apprenticeship: How Senior Occupational Members Develop Practical Expertise and Preserve Their Position When New Technologies Arrive.” Organization Science, 35 (2), 405–431.
• Carlile, P.R. (2004): “Transferring, Translating, and Transforming: An Integrative Framework for Managing Knowledge across Boundaries.” Organization Science, 15 (5), 555–568.
• Eyal, G. (2019): The Crisis of Expertise. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
• Gherardi, S. (2009): “Practice? It’s a matter of taste!” Management Learning, 40 (5), 535–550.
• Gorman, E.H., & Sandefur, R.L. (2011): “‘Golden age,’ quiescence,and revival: how the sociology of professions became the study of knowledge-based work.” Work and Occupations, 38 (3), 275–302.
• 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).
• Huising, R. (2014): “The Erosion of Expert Control Through Censure Episodes.” Organization Science, 25 (6), 1633–1661.
• Kaynak, E. (2023): “Leveraging Learning Collectives: How Novice Outsiders Break into an Occupation.” Organization Science, 35 (3), 948–973.
• Levina, N., & Vaast, E. (2005): “The Emergence of Boundary Spanning Competence in Practice: Implications for Implementation and Use of Information Systems.” MIS Quarterly, 29 (2), 335–363.
• Newell, S. (2015): “Managing knowledge and managing knowledge work: what we know and what the future holds.” Journal of Information Technology, 30 (1), 1–17.
• Nicolini, D., Mørk, B.E., Masovic, J., & Hanseth, O. (2017): Expertise as Trans-Situated. The Case of TAVI.” In: J. Sandberg, L. Rouleau, A. Langley & H. Tsoukas (eds): Skillful Performance. Enacting Capabilities, Knowledge, Competence, and Expertise in Organizations. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 27–49.
• Orr, J.E. (1996): Talking about Machines. An Ethnography of a Modern Job. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
• Pakarinen, P., & Huising, R. (2023): “Relational Expertise: What Machines Can’t Know. Journal of Management Studies, first published online on March 2, 2023; http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/joms.12915.
• Pryma, J. (2022): “Technologies of expertise: opioids and pain management’s credibility crisis.” American Sociological Review, 87 (1), 17–49.
• Raisch, S., & Krakowski, S. (2021): “Artificial intelligence and management: The automation–augmentation paradox.” Academy of Management Review, 46 (1), 192–210.
• Rostain, M., & Huising, R. (2023): “Vicarious Coding: Breaching Computational Opacity in the Digital Era.” Academy of Management Journal, 67 (2).
• Slayton, R., & Clark‐Ginsberg, A. (2018): “Beyond regulatory capture: Coproducing expertise for critical infrastructure protection.” Regulation & Governance, 12 (1), 115–130.
• Tyskbo, D., & Sergeeva, A. (2022): “Brains exposed: How new imaging technology reconfigures expertise coordination in neurosurgery.” Social Science & Medicine, 292, 114618.
• Van den Broek, E., Sergeeva, A., & Huysman, M. (2021): “When the Machine Meets the Expert: An Ethnography of Developing AI for Hiring.” MIS Quarterly, 45 (3), 1557–1580.
• Waardenburg, L., Huysman, M., & Sergeeva, A. (2022): “In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man Is King: Knowledge Brokerage in the Age of Learning Algorithms.” Organization Science, 33 (1), 59–82.
•