Publications
Monteiro, P. (2024). “How Not to Organize In-House Experts: Lessons From Boeing.” MIT Sloan Management Review.
In the race to recruit and deploy talent, organizations often focus on attracting highly skilled experts and then optimizing internal knowledge flow. But translating expertise into better business decisions and superior outcomes hinges on how well in-house experts are organized. Balancing specialization with collaboration, matching experts with the right tasks, promoting a broad spectrum of expertise, and embedding domain expertise into leadership are all factors that matter. The disasters involving Boeing’s 737 Max 8 airliner, which claimed hundreds of lives, and the company’s ongoing business struggles offer a stark lesson: Poor organization of expertise can have severe consequences. Only by thoughtfully placing and valuing experts can managers unlock their workforce’s full potential.
That insight was derived from my recently published research, which was based on interviews with engineers, technicians, and product managers specializing in dozens of expertise areas at another major aeronautical organization. The 15-month in-depth field study examined how experts are organized — staffed into job roles, grouped in departments and projects, and classified in specialty directories. My findings indicate that the design of organizational structures can reveal and enhance expertise — or devalue and obscure it. The research also informs guidance on how to improve your organization’s approach to organizing experts.
In the race to recruit and deploy talent, organizations often focus on attracting highly skilled experts and then optimizing internal knowledge flow. But translating expertise into better business decisions and superior outcomes hinges on how well in-house experts are organized. Balancing specialization with collaboration, matching experts with the right tasks, promoting a broad spectrum of expertise, and embedding domain expertise into leadership are all factors that matter. The disasters involving Boeing’s 737 Max 8 airliner, which claimed hundreds of lives, and the company’s ongoing business struggles offer a stark lesson: Poor organization of expertise can have severe consequences. Only by thoughtfully placing and valuing experts can managers unlock their workforce’s full potential.
That insight was derived from my recently published research, which was based on interviews with engineers, technicians, and product managers specializing in dozens of expertise areas at another major aeronautical organization. The 15-month in-depth field study examined how experts are organized — staffed into job roles, grouped in departments and projects, and classified in specialty directories. My findings indicate that the design of organizational structures can reveal and enhance expertise — or devalue and obscure it. The research also informs guidance on how to improve your organization’s approach to organizing experts.
Monteiro, P. (2024). Generating, Grading, and Ghosting: How Organizing Experts Shapes Expertise. Journal of Management Studies. Published ahead of print. DOI: 10.1111/joms.13056
Experts increasingly refine their expertise into specialties as they labour in and around organizations. Yet, previous research assumes that experts are organized in the workplace in ways that passively accommodate or mirror pre-existing specialties and focuses on organizational structures that codify the content of experts’ knowledge as an encroachment. Drawing on a qualitative field study in an aeronautical organization's engineering unit, this paper examines the organizational structures that chart the area of experts’ knowledge, i.e., their specialties. The findings show that organizational structures are generative, defining the contours of existing expertise and catalysing the formation of new ones (generating). However, organizational structures also encode criteria that implicitly rank some forms of expertise over others, thereby reinforcing status hierarchies (grading), and misalignment across organizational structures renders some forms of expertise invisible (ghosting). By showing the active role of organizational structures in shaping expertise rather than simply housing it, this paper contributes to our understanding of expertise development as well as status dynamics and access to resources among experts. Further, the paper reveals how misalignments across multiple organizational structures may impact the management of knowledge and human capital.
Experts increasingly refine their expertise into specialties as they labour in and around organizations. Yet, previous research assumes that experts are organized in the workplace in ways that passively accommodate or mirror pre-existing specialties and focuses on organizational structures that codify the content of experts’ knowledge as an encroachment. Drawing on a qualitative field study in an aeronautical organization's engineering unit, this paper examines the organizational structures that chart the area of experts’ knowledge, i.e., their specialties. The findings show that organizational structures are generative, defining the contours of existing expertise and catalysing the formation of new ones (generating). However, organizational structures also encode criteria that implicitly rank some forms of expertise over others, thereby reinforcing status hierarchies (grading), and misalignment across organizational structures renders some forms of expertise invisible (ghosting). By showing the active role of organizational structures in shaping expertise rather than simply housing it, this paper contributes to our understanding of expertise development as well as status dynamics and access to resources among experts. Further, the paper reveals how misalignments across multiple organizational structures may impact the management of knowledge and human capital.
Monteiro, P., Nicolini, D., Erickson, I. Cohen, L., Dokko, G., Corporaal, G., Karunakaran, A., Bechky, B., O’Mahony, S. (2024). “Beyond the Buzz: Scholarly Approaches to the Study of Work.” Journal of Management Inquiry. Published ahead of print. DOI: 10.1177/10564926241261259
The place of work in organization studies and management has waxed and waned. Yet, today, social and technological developments have raised again interest in the study of work and this curated discussion brings together experts in key approaches to this topic. Seven contributions have been selected to provide a panorama of what we know about work while pointing to some uncharted territories worthy of future exploration. The contributions outline the principles behind and value of systemic, contextualized, or holistic view of work and report insights on how changes in some work components reverberate in its broader ecology. We hope this curated discussion will make us more aware of the collective journey scholars have charted so far while posing new questions and opening or re-directing new avenues of inquiry.
The place of work in organization studies and management has waxed and waned. Yet, today, social and technological developments have raised again interest in the study of work and this curated discussion brings together experts in key approaches to this topic. Seven contributions have been selected to provide a panorama of what we know about work while pointing to some uncharted territories worthy of future exploration. The contributions outline the principles behind and value of systemic, contextualized, or holistic view of work and report insights on how changes in some work components reverberate in its broader ecology. We hope this curated discussion will make us more aware of the collective journey scholars have charted so far while posing new questions and opening or re-directing new avenues of inquiry.
