Communicating Expertise: Knowledge Performances in Professional-Service Firms

Researchers in many disciplines treat expertise as an individually held attribute that allows for consistently superior performance in a specific domain. However, in knowledge-intensive environments, where work practices are ill-defined, invisible, and their outputs are ambiguous, attributions of expertise are not likely to emerge solely from objective criteria such as task performance or professional standing. This study offers an alternative communicative view of expertise arguing that attributions of expertise are developed from visible performances of knowledge in the practice of work. Using qualitative data collected from fieldwork at two public relations organizations, this work develops themes regarding the attribution of expertise in knowledge-intensive firms and then shows that experts are more likely than nonexperts to perform behaviors reflective of those themes. Findings suggest that attributions of expertise in knowledge-intensive organizations emerge through social interactions and are produced by and a product of communicative acts.