What different types of solutions for organizing disciplinary expertise have developed in project-based firms that rely extensively on interdisciplinary and co-located project teams?

In Sustaining and Developing Disciplinary Expertise in Project-Based Organizations: Balanced and Integrated Solutions, authors Cecilia Enberg and Karin Bredin explore the implications of this question by:

• drawing on multiple works by experts in the field, as well as their own previous research;
• undertaking case studies of three project-based tech companies with different organizational setups;
• conducting interviews with both management and employees with diverse areas of expertise (including designers, programmers, and testing specialists);
• recommending the most effective corporate approaches to developing and maintaining expertise among specialists in both cross-functional and single-discipline teams; and
• offering their insight into areas where further research might be done.

Enberg and Bredin’s research bridges organizational management and human resource management using a framework to analyze both structural and activity-based solutions for the maintenance and development of disciplinary expertise. Managers, researchers, and disciplinary specialists alike will benefit from the case studies described and analyzed within these pages.