Assessing member expertise in groups: An expertise dependence perspective

In contemporary organizations, the knowledge needed to perform work is frequently housed within groups. In order to effectively leverage this knowledge, however, groups must identify relative member expertise. Unfortunately, assessments of expertise in groups can be error-prone, given the human tendency to rely on efficient but noisy schemas and heuristics. The purpose of this paper is to consider the factors that lead to more mindful and, ultimately, more useful expertise attributions in task groups. We begin with the observation that mindful expertise attribution can be modeled as a motivation problem using expectancy theory. In order for group members to move beyond superficial expertise attributions, they must see value in doing so (valence) and they must feel that exerting that effort will be both possible (expectancy) and beneficial (instrumentality). We build on this basic observation to propose an “expertise dependence theory” of mindful attributions in task groups.