The Development Of Team Expertise In The Workplace

The demand for service customization has increased dramatically in Today’s knowledge society. And the consulting companies have to provide customized service with the changing customs’needs, which facilitate the professionalization for these practitioners through collaboration. Team becomes the collaborative space for the professional knowledge workers, and the development of team expertise in the workplace is becoming more of importance to the survival and development of teams, even of the organization.The primary focus of this study is on the development of team expertise in the workplace, and the purpose of this study to discover the characteristics of team expertise development and its mutual relationship. This is intended to construct a middle-range theory that has tradeoff between the accuracy and generality.For such a purpose, this study applies a multi-case study strategy. Respectively, each case study focuses on its own accuracy and specificity. And the cross-case analysis takes the generality into account.Multiple methods have been applied for data collection, e.g. semi-structured interviews, observation, document analysis and focused interviews. The process of team expertise development has been clarified from multiple characteristics, within the framework of activity theory and combined with various theories.All the three teams investigated are local Chinese consulting companies that focus on the field of organizational learning or talent development. In order to better comprehend the process of team expertise development, in each case study (see Chapter IV， V and VI), different tools of activity theory have been applied in gradually progress to analyze the specific team to show the different aspects of team expertise development.Eight characteristics of the team expertise development have emerged from the three case studies and the original texts, and then a cross-case analysis has been conducted on distribution and collectiveness, routine and expansiveness, adaptability and confrontation, continuity and displacement. Based on Eisenhardt methodology, the cross-case analysis makes constant comparisons among three cases, and applies the principles from activity theory to analyze each characteristic, with comparisons with other related theoretical literature. The finding of this study is that these eight characteristics are four pairs of "Unity of Opposites" relationship, distribution as top-down and collectiveness as bottom-up (see Chapter VIII), routine as internalization and expansiveness as externalization (see Chapter IX), adaptability as force from inside to outside and confrontation as force from outside to inside (see Chapter X), continuity as individual move toward full participation within team boundary and displacement as individual move out of team boundary(see Chapter XI). For a pair, each characteristic complements the other. A cross-case study strategy has been applied to present, analyze, and clarify each characteristic within the framework of activity theory.Finally, based on the contradiction principle from activity theory, a multi-layer interactive relationship between the eight characteristics has been constructed, it is the Primary Contradiction and Secondary Contradiction that drive the continuity and displacement, it is the Secondary Contradiction that drives the distribution and collectiveness, it is the Tertiary Contradiction that drives the routine and expansiveness, and it is the Quaternary Contradiction that drives the adaptability and confrontation. The interactive integration between different levels of contradiction unifies these eight characteristics, and they dynamically constitute the multi-layer interactive relationship structure for the team expertise development.Based on local practice, the original texts and the principles from activity theory, this study proposes eight characteristics for team expertise development, and discovers the multi-layered interactive relationship between each other, which in turn constitute The "Panorama" of team expertise development.