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

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, 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 substantive ability of individuals, a "constructivist perspective" sees expertise as socially constructed quality of collective actors, and a "situationist perspective" sees expertise as a situated enactment involving human and nonhuman actors. These perspectives make different assumptions about the nature of expertise and therefore reach different conclusions about its benefits and problems. By teasing out similarities and differences across the perspectives, we work toward greater construct clarity and develop six integrative opportunities for future research. We conclude with suggestions about how each of the three perspectives can help us better understand the crisis of expertise.