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This paper presents a viewpoint that considers the construction of ‘expertise’ as an impediment to successfully using cross-functional expertise in the organization. The construction of expertise forms a bounded perspective that creates hidden impediments to success that culminate in organizational underachievement.

Experiential knowledge of the authors that incorporated 20 years of organizational management experience and extensive practice of hiring experts to progress organizational learning, knowledge, and development is the primary basis of this work.

A common misperception of ‘expertise’ relates to a limiting perspective on what expertise is? Organizations segregate expertise (silo) as a way of increasing functionality and division of labor in an organizational structure. However, organizational underachievement is not due to functional arrangement in the organization’s structure (which is a commonly held belief) rather a byproduct of a bounded perspective necessary to construct expertise.

Organizations who understand that the bounded perspective of expertise is the source constraining use of their acquired expertise gain insight to an actionable opportunity to rectify cross-functional restraints. Core elements are offered to minimize the impact of organizational silofication.

This paper is unique in that it introduces a bounded perspective as the source impeding the use of workplace expertise rather than functional placement.

This monograph reports on the strategic and operational roles of learning and development (L&D) professionals in Irish, UK European and US organisations including multinational corporations, small to medium enterprises, the public sector and not for profit organisations. This paper aims to investigate the contextual factors influencing L&D roles in organisations, the strategic and operational roles that L&D professionals play in organisations, the competencies and career trajectories of L&D professionals, the perceptions of multiple internal stakeholders of the effectiveness of L&D roles and the relationships between context, L&D roles, competencies/expertise and perceived organisational effectiveness.

The study findings are based on the use of multiple methods. The authors gathered data from executives, senior managers, line managers, employee and L&D professionals using multiple methods: a survey (n = 440), Delphi study (n = 125) and semi-structured interviews (n = 30).

The analysis revealed that L&D professionals increasingly respond to a multiplicity of external and internal contextual influences and internal stakeholders perceived the effectiveness of L&D professionals differently with significant gaps in perceptions of what L&D contributes to organisational effectiveness. L&D professionals perform both strategic and operational roles in organisations and they progress through four career levels. Each L&D role and career level requires a distinct and unique set of foundational competencies and L&D expertise. The authors found that different contextual predictors were important in explaining the perceived effectiveness of L&D roles and the importance attached to different foundational competencies and areas of L&D expertise.

This is one of the few studies to have investigated the L&D professional role in organisations from the perspective of multiple stakeholders using multiple research methods.

The idea of Simon according to which instructions are premises for further decisions is formalized with respect to informationally decentralized organizations. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The paper is built on the economic theory of teams by Marschak and Radner. Team theory is particularly suited to the analysis of informationally decentralized systems. Teams are composed of agents who strive for a common aim, but are informed of different parameters that characterize the state of nature. In particular, the members want to maximize the team payoff function that depends on both the actions of the members and the state of nature.

For teams à la Marshack-Radner, since every member needs to compute optimal action rules, the paper shows that two types of expertise are required: forecasting expertise (as competence over the randomness of the parameters that affect the team payoff function) and organizational expertise (as comprehension of the relevant characteristics of the other members). When the members are supposed to have complete expertise, the only role of orders is the communication of information about the state of nature. Instead, when instructions report actions under the control of the senders, the team population can be classified into ranks, each one having a particular computational problem to solve. The paper analyzes the conditions under which instructions can correspond to different and ordered degree of intelligibility of the team operations. Through instructions non-decodable information is built directly into the decision rules chosen by the receivers, and instructions can realize economies in the use of expertise.

Instructions are formally shown to play a crucial role when expertise is differently distributed across agents.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how decision-maker attributes unfold to precipitate organisational failure. The analysis brings to light how key attributes such as information-processing capabilities and human capital decay interact to bring about business decline and exit.

The study is based on an integrated review and conceptualisation of the literature.

The study articulates how a set of attributes of decision makers, i.e. human capital obsolescence, powerlessness, meaninglessness and institutional linkages, contributes to organisational failure.

The paper concludes by setting out an array of strategies of learning from others’ failures.

In spite of a growing body of research on organisational failure, scholars have placed overwhelming emphasis on ecological explanations and business failure prediction models. The study moves beyond the ecological explanations to offer a more fine-grained analysis of firm-level factors that precipitate business failure.

Although studies of “core competence” appear frequently, the concept lacks a clear definition that allows one to operationalize it and use it to develop falsifiable predictions. We propose a definition based on the phenomenon that core competence is typically applied to – adaptations to different external context. Sourcing insight form the paradigm of organizational ecology, we develop arguments rooted in theories of structural inertia and environmental imprinting. Empirical analyses of failure rates of entrants in the Italian automobile industry confirm our propositions that core competence is a source of competitive advantage when industry entry is based on relevant capabilities and a source of inertia and obsolescence when core competences need to be substantially altered. We conclude that whether core competence materializes as a dynamic capability or exposes the firm to liability to selection and obsolescence is a random process. Its outcome hinges on environmental variation and the resulting firm-environment (mis)alignment and is thus largely beyond managerial control.

The purpose of this paper is to test whether organisations in the public domain have embraced a corporate type of discourse, mirroring the private sector’s preferred orientation towards expertise, or whether they maintain their traditional discourse of goodwill towards the publics they serve. At a critical time for the public sector with inadequate funding and dominance of New Public Management approaches, will it be more motivated to portray itself as expert and efficient rather than altruistic?

The paper applies a rhetorical framework to provide a detailed analysis of organisational value statements posted on the web sites of public and private organisations. The research considers the value priorities of 50 organisations in the UK and Scandinavia in order to gauge the extent of convergence between the two sectors’ preferred discourses.

The research shows that the public sector sticks to its guns in maintaining a web-transmitted values discourse which forefronts goodwill towards its clients. It also shows that the public and private sectors take different approaches to goodwill.

Strategists and communication specialists are encouraged to contemplate the extent to which their organisation’s projected web image equates their desired image to avoid alienating important public audiences and reinforce levels of trust. The current framework brings attention to the complex nature of goodwill and may be employed to better balance a discourse of organisational expertise against a discourse of goodwill in planning authentic value statements.

The dynamic environment in which the academic library operates requires explicit links between business strategy and a new management priority including the development of people; this is the focus of human resource development (HRD). It serves the needs of an organization by ensuring that employees’ expertise is state-of-the-art, something that is critical in a period of rapid technological development coinciding with ever-expanding societal needs. HRD can be relied upon to support and shape a wide range of academic library initiatives requiring a competent and engaged workforce by recognizing people as the organization’s most critical asset, one that drives competitive advantage and helps it out-perform the market. Emphasis is placed on developing an organizational context that will attract and develop talented individuals and leaders and keep them engaged. Furthermore, HRD activities must respond to job changes and integrate staff skills sets with the long-term plans and strategies of the organization thus ensuring the efficient and effective use of resources. This chapter explores HRD as a strategic concern of the organization and how it can best serve the organization in the long term. In so doing, it considers how HRD can help the academic library focus resources in those areas where there are strong likelihoods that they can produce substantial improvements in future capacity and performance. This kind of strategic planning helps the organization configure resources within a dynamic competitive environment, thus serving market needs and satisfying stakeholder expectations, helping meet its business purpose and maintain its strategic direction. The case study developed here highlights the need for the effective linkage of HRD and strategic planning for the advancement of the academic library. It suggests the need for developing and implementing both a strategic plan and an HRD plan and developing a culture of strategic human resource development (SHRD) in academic libraries.

A major part of knowledge management for knowledge-intensive firms such as professional service firms is the increasing focus on thought leadership. Despite being a well-known term, it is poorly defined and analysed in the academic and practitioner literature. The aim of this article is to answer three questions. First, what is thought leadership? Second, what tensions exist when seeking to create thought leadership in knowledge-based organisations? Third, what further research is needed about thought leadership? The authors call for cross-disciplinary and academic–practitioner approaches to understanding the field of thought leadership.

The authors review the academic and practitioner literature on thought leadership to provide a rich oversight of how it is defined and can be understood by separating inputs, creation processes and outcomes. The authors also draw on qualitative data from 12 in-depth interviews with senior leaders of professional service firms.

Through analysing and building on previous understandings of the concept, the authors redefine thought leadership as follows: “Knowledge from a trusted, eminent and authoritative source that is actionable and provides valuable solutions for stakeholders”. The authors find and explore nine tensions that developing thought leadership creates and propose a framework for understanding how to engage with thought leadership at the industry/macro, organisational/meso and individual/micro levels. The authors propose a research agenda based on testing propositions derived from new theories to explain thought leadership, including leadership, reducing risk, signalling quality and managing social networks, as well as examining the suggested ways to resolve different tensions.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, they are the first to separate out thought leadership from its inputs, creation processes and outcomes. The authors show new organisational paradoxes within thought leadership and show how they can play out at different levels of analysis when implementing a thought leadership strategy. This work on thought leadership is set in a relatively under-explored context for knowledge management researchers, namely, knowledge-intensive professional service firms.

The commercial emergence of knowledge‐based information technology represents a tremendous opportunity to enhance the practice of human resource management. Unfortunately, much of the potential of knowledge‐based systems (KBS) to leverage expertise and promote organizational learning remains unrealized because of poor management and piecemeal adoption of the technology. With the impending shortage of skilled professionals in many economies, it is imperative to consider this technology in the human resource planning process. Critically examines the applicability of KBS to HRM activities. Defines basic concepts while benefits, costs and limitations are considered. Profiles current applications which help to manage and leverage human resources.

This study aims to investigate how boundary work is carried out at the incident site during exercises with police, ambulance and rescue services, and how boundary awareness is developed based on this boundary work. Collaboration in emergency work is challenging on many levels. The unforeseen and temporary nature of incidents presents basic challenges. Another important challenge is boundaries between specialised and autonomous emergency service organisations. Knowledge on how exercises are performed to increase the individuals' and organisations' preparedness for future joint-response work is relatively limited.

Empirically, full-scale exercises involving police, ambulance and rescue services and with repetition of practical scenarios and joint-reflection seminars are studied. Interview data with 26 exercise participants were analysed using thematic analysis. The analytic focus is on how boundaries are identified, negotiated and managed in the participants’ work.

Much of the work in the exercises was performed within distinct areas of expertise, in accordance with concrete routines, skills and responsibilities. Boundary work was often organised in the form of distribution of labour or creating chains of actions. The exercises shed light on challenges related to other aspects of emergency response, such as a lack of resources, diverging primary responsibilities, time-criticality and hazardous environments. The design allowed participants to explicate boundaries, to test and discuss alternative solutions and to visualise the effects of different solutions, as the scenarios were repeated.

The study found that the boundaries that were identified were often of institutional character, and were also related to the specific scenarios and to the actions taken in the activities. By integrating real-life experiences of collaborative work in the exercise, the exercise gained a certain meaning that was essential for the participants to develop boundary awareness.