Resourcing expertise: How existing schemas and communication processes shape the meaning of expert work in a global organization

ABSTRACT

This research draws on a resourcing perspective to challenge the assumption that expertise should be conceptualized as an asset with consistent value for organizations, and offers an alternative view that expertise is enacted through communicative processes that create resources-in-use. Analysis of the introduction of an offshoring center offering potential expert work in a global automotive company revealed that the meaning of this potential resource was shaped by existing schemas regarding the role of expertise within the organization. Ongoing communication among workers enacted the expertise in fundamentally divergent ways, leading organizational members to characterize offshore center workers as either ineffective contractors or supportive collaborators. Findings extend ongoing discussions in organizational communication by demonstrating expertise as emergent in communication among workers.

KEYWORDS:

• Resourcing
• resources
• expert
• schemas
• offshoring
• organizational communication

Acknowledgements

The researchers would like to thank Diane Bailey and Daisy Chung for their assistance with data collection. We would also like to thank all of the engineers at IAC who generously shared their time and insights with us during this project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 We did not include the Mexico and Brazil Centers in our analysis because engineers at these two sites were exempt from the company's lingua franca mandate and were not required to speak English at work. Although their English language fluency was, for the most part, quite high, we excluded them from this particular analysis to assure that differences in language fluency did not materially affect our findings.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jeffrey W. Treem

Jeffrey W. Treem (Ph.D., Northwestern University) is an associate professor in the Department of Communication Studies in the Moody College of Communication at The University of Texas at Austin. His work explores the relationship between communicative practices and social perceptions of expertise, primarily in organizational contexts.

William C. Barley

William C. Barley (Ph.D., Northwestern University) is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. His research explores the processes enabling individuals from different disciplines to work together to achieve goals they would be unable to achieve alone.

Paul M. Leonardi

Paul M. Leonardi (Ph.D., Stanford University) is the Duca Family Professor of Technology Management at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His research examines how implementing new technologies and harnessing the power of informal social networks can help companies take advantage of their knowledge assets to create innovative products and services.