“Sailing in Calm Waters Doesn't Teach”: constructing expertise through problems in work—the case of Finnish human resource developers

abstract

This article examines the construction of occupational expertise through problematic situations encountered during everyday work. The human‐centred and knowledge‐intensive domains of current working life, for instance human resource development (HRD), contain various problem situations which tend to be open and unstructured, lacking a single solution. Those ill‐defined problem situations characterise also HRD as a domain of expertise which requires multidisciplinary formal knowledge and, especially, the ability to make use of it. Accordingly, it is suggested that learning to be an expert in HRD can be seen as a constructive process where varied formal knowledge and previous experiences of the domain are applied, contested and transformed into new forms of practical knowledge. Thus, much of the expertise in HRD will eventually be constructed through experience in practical problem‐solving situations. Those situations and the ways in which a HR developer interprets an event and chooses and tries out resolutions can be seen as an interpretative and narrative process which influences the construction of expertise. The study presented here aimed to understand within the narrative framework the nature of problematic situations in work as an experiential resource for the construction of expertise among HR developers. Twenty experienced HR developers in various workplaces in Finland were interviewed and asked to tell about problematic situations, how they were resolved and what was learnt from the process. The interviewees’ stories exhibited the diversity of HRD as a domain of expertise. However, in sum, communication, interactivity, collaboration and the involvement of management, which are commonly presented as ideals in HRD, are in fact the primary sources of problematic situations, and thus also of new learning in the HR developer's world. On the basis of the interviewees’ stories about problems and resolutions it is concluded, firstly, that much of an HR developer's expertise seem to be constructed through promoting and acting in dialogue, and, secondly, that it can be characterised as a flexible and inclusive state of mind rather than the application of routine procedures, and that going through problematic situations bestows confidence regarding practical knowledge in future situations.