Nineteenth International Conference on Knowledge, Culture, and Change in Organizations

Abstract

Emerging trends in organisational theory suggest a need for reimagining “expertise.” Where do we locate expertise? Is it in the Individual who is knowledgeable, skilled or experienced? Or does expertise lie beyond an individual as well? What makes for a more comprehensive object of study? Is it the specialized individual, the system or the structure? Or is it a situation of collective engagement in an organisation that offers a different imagination of expertise? The paper studies how the coming together of several “experts” has the potential of generating multi-dimensional articulations of expertise. It uses a non-profit organisation as an ethnographic object for the purposes of this research. The organisation works on social and emotional learning through planned interventions in education. Their interface is with school teachers and students to enable value-based transformations in society. Organisations working on change management find themselves precariously defining what they do and how do they do it. Their models rely on articulations of the ‘Self’ and how some of their everyday practices are embodied. An endeavour to put their learning into products and services demands exteriorising and shaping personal knowledge. This crafting is done in a way that is translatable to other institutions. It is precisely in this regard that their expertise becomes diverse and diffused, concrete and inexplicable simultaneously. The paper seeks to explore what happens in these organisations that work on transformations? How do they articulate their niche? What differences are they bringing to change management in a wider organisational landscape?