Friday, July 10, 2026, 12:30-14:00 CEST
Online
Chairs/Organizers:
Valerio Iannucci, Boston University, US
Pedro Monteiro, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark
Panelists:
Daniel Beunza, Bayes Business School, UK
Elena Bruni, LUISS University, Italy
Oddný Helgadóttir, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark
Ruthanne Huising, ESSEC Business School Paris, France
Andrew Sturdy, University of Bristol, UK
Expertise–legitimized specialized knowledge–is a core concern of our time. We routinely turn to it to address some of our most pressing problems, such as (public) health, security, or climate change. It is also, obviously, at the root of contemporary organizations, as work increasingly relies on greater specialization. At the same time, we are witnessing a diffusion of a more plural and heterogeneous ecology of specialized knowledge that increasingly vies for legitimacy, both alongside and against established expertise.
This plurality encompasses forms of expertise that vary in both the degree of their formalization and their relationship to
established scientific expertise. Along one dimension, this plurality ranges from loosely organized, experience-based understandings
to more formalized alternative theories that rely on popular resonance as sources of legitimacy outside conventional peer
review. These forms also vary in their orientation toward established expertise, from collaborative engagements, such as citizen
science, to explicitly oppositional ones, such as science denial and conspiracy theories.
These dynamics point to a reconfiguration rather than a simple erosion of expertise. This is particularly salient for organizational
scholarship, where expertise has long been constituted through a dense ecology of actors, including academics, consultants,
managers, and intermediaries, across which concepts travel, are translated, and acquire practical force. Yet, while the topic
of expertise has been studied across a variety of subdomains in organization studies, we are only beginning to understand
how its growing plurality is organized and how this challenges our understanding of organization and organizing.
This panel brings together colleagues who have studied different forms of expertise in relation to professions, management
practitioners, lay activists, science denialists, and heterodox economic theorists. It aligns with the overall work of Standing
Working Group 8 (Expertise in and around Organizations). It will include a brief introduction by the chairs (5 minutes), short
introductions by each panelist (5 minutes each), and a moderated panel discussion with ample opportunity for audience participation
(60 minutes).
Biographies:
Valerio Iannuci – tba
Pedro Monteiro is an Assistant Professor at Copenhagen Business School, Denmark. His academic work explores how organizations develop, recognize,
and integrate expertise as well as the functioning and dilemmas of bureaucratic organization. Pedro has co-convened an EGOS
sub-theme in 2019 and sub-plenaries in 2024.
Daniel Beunza – tba
Elena Bruni – tba
Oddný Helgadóttir – tba
Ruthanne Huising is a Professor of Management and Organizations at ESSEC Business School, France. As an ethnographer of work and organizations,
she studies how organizations negotiate external pressures – most often regulatory change – and the implications of these
changes for professional control and expertise. Ruthanne has co-convened a sub-theme at EGOS Colloquia 2019 and 2020.
Andrew Sturdy is a Professor of Management at the University of Bristol, United Kingdom. He has an interest in the use and governance of
management consultancy and professions more widely.