Bureaucratic Cartographies of Expertise: The Organization of Specialist Domains in Complex Settings

How and with what consequences is expertise organized? More specifically, how the multiple formal arrangements in complex settings configure specialist domains and its implications for management of knowledge. I examine this question through a case study of PlaneCo, a blue-chip aeronautical company where the organization of expertise was a core concern and many formal organization arrangements were in place to chart and manage it. Conceptualizing these arrangements as bureaucratic cartographies I draw on 15 months of ethnographic fieldwork in the company’s engineering unit and find that they crystalize conceptualizations of expertise, catalyze the formation of specialist domains, and compound distinct experts together. These processes in turn have a downstream effect in the management of knowledge to the extent that they influence the resources afforded to specialists and the flow of knowledge. Unveiling these processes bring contributions to our understanding of knowledge specialization and integration as well as the interplay of bureaucratic organization and expertise.