How workers meet new expertise needs throughout their careers: An integrative review revealing a dynamic process model of flexpertise

Abstract

In expertise research, the focus is shifting from how one becomes an expert in a specific field towards understanding how workers sustain the value and recognition of their expertise by being flexible. This so-called flexpertise requires that workers meet new expertise needs within and across the boundaries of their current expertise domains and working contexts. The current study grounds a new theoretical paradigm regarding this individual adaptivity by introducing a ‘dynamic process model of flexpertise’. By deploying a system dynamics lens, it synthesizes the scholarly knowledge from different disciplines about flexible or adaptive forms of expertise. The model incorporates six categories of adaptation processes that involve intra-individual changes and social interactions over time, and that are interconnected by means of feedback loops without a single start- or endpoint. This enables scholars and practitioners to identify leverage points where small interventions can have a large effect on the individual's adaptivity. As such, the dynamic model provides a new paradigm on how to foster workers’ continued possession of expertise that is valuable to organizations’ competitive advantage and enables organizational and societal transitions and innovations, while safeguarding an individual's career sustainability.