PhD Courses in Denmark

Course organizers and lecturers

• Dr. Kasper Trolle Elmholdt, Associate Professor, Department of Politics and Society, Center for IT Management, Aalborg University (elm@dps.aau.dk) (Organizer)
• Dr. Mohammad H. Rezazade Mehrizi, Associate Professor, School of Business and Economics, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, KIN Center For Digital Innovation (m.rezazademehrizi@vu.nl) (Co-organizer)

Guest lectures for specific sessions

• Dr. Pedro Monteiro, Assistant Professor, Department of Organization, Copenhagen Business School
• Prof. Ruthanne Huising,  Work, Technology, and Organization Research Center, Emlyon business school
• Prof. Davide Nicolini, Warwick Business School, visiting professor at BI Norwegian Business School Oslo

Course description

Technological developments, particularly in the areas that directly touch on skilled and knowledge work, are raising once again questions on “expertise”. Researchers are thus called to examine how is expertise developed, applied and organized with particular attention to the intended and unintended consequences of technologies in these processes. This PhD course aims to introduce PhD students to these academic conversations and thus provide them with the insights, methods, and skills to investigate and contribute to scholarship in this area.

The course focuses on the following topics

• Scholarly debate on expertise: foundational traditions, current research, and future developments
• Technologies & expertise: how (emerging) technologies generate novel expertise, disrupt existing one, and generally re-configure modes of learning and knowing
• Organizing & expertise: understanding expert authority, coordination among specialists, and the management of experts and expertise

 Learning objectives

• Understand how expertise is developed, applied, and recognized through academic scholarship in organization and management
• Develop a critical understanding of the interplay of expertise and technologies  (including but not limited to artificial intelligence and similar digital technologies)
• Gain experience in how to investigate the impacts of technologies on the development, application and recognition of expertise
• Critically analyze the relations between organizing and expertise
• Develop scholarly insights on current trends around expertise and expert work

 How to apply

• There are limited places in this course; please make sure you apply as soon as possible.
• Please write a brief statement about how your current PhD research is related to the topic of expertise and what you expect to learn through the program (300-500 words)

Prerequisites: There is no formal prerequisite, but a basic familiarity with qualitative research is ideal. Students are expected to have read all required readings before each class.

Program:
The course runs from September to November 2024 and combines online and in-person attendance in Copenhagen at Aalborg University.  We focus on different aspects of expertise in each session, and the sessions will combine a mix of student presentations, lectures, and group work.

Practicalities:

• Credits: 5 ECTS
• Fee: Free (but limited places)

Teaching methods:

The course consists of

• Dialectic lectures: Where we engage in critical reflection on the readings, and collective discussions, we use multiple forms of plenary discussions, peer-discussions, and interactive exercises.
• Mini-ethnographic investigation: to gain a first-hand experience of the reality of expertise and practically learn how to investigate it, students will perform a mini-ethnographic examination of a domain of expertise (per their choice) in the period between the first and the second part of the course (see the schedule below) and produce a research essay, which will be presented at a final symposium.

Description of paper requirements, if applicable:

• A critical essay, maximum 10,000 words on a specific area of expertise (students’ choice)
• Format: a standard academic paper
• To be presented in the symposium (online)

Key literature:

Mandatory literature: An approx, 300 pages compendium will be created based on extracts from books below:

• Abbott, Andrew. 2014. The System of Professions: An Essay on the Division of Expert Labor. University of Chicago Press.
• Barley, S. R. (2020). Work and technological change. Oxford University Press, USA.
• Barley, S. R. (1996). Technicians in the workplace: Ethnographic evidence for bringing work into organizational studies. Administrative science quarterly, 404-441.Collins, H., &  Evans, R. (2019). Rethinking expertise. University of Chicago Press.
• Eyal, G., & Medvetz, T. (2023). The Oxford Handbook of Expertise and Democratic Politics. Oxford University Press.Eyal, G. (2019). The crisis of expertise. John Wiley & Sons.
•  Pasquale, F. A. (2023). Battle of the Experts: The Strange Career of Meta-Expertise. In The Oxford Handbook of Expertise, edited by Gil Eyal and Thomas Medvetz.
•  Huising, R. (2023). Professional Authority in The Oxford Handbook of Expertise, edited by Gil Eyal and Thomas Medvetz.
• Heimstädt, M., Koljonen, T., & Elmholdt, K. T. (2023). Expertise in management research: A review and agenda for future research. The Academy of Management Annals.
• Pakarinen, P., & Huising, R. (2023). Relational Expertise: What Machines Can't Know. Journal of Management Studies.
• Treem, J. W., & Leonardi, P. M. (Eds.). (2016). Expertise, communication, and organizing. Oxford University Press.

Suggested literature:

• Susskind, Richard, and Daniel Susskind. 2015. The Future of the Professions: How Technology Will Transform the Work of Human Experts. Oxford University Press, USA.
• Pryma, J. (2022). Technologies of expertise: opioids and pain management’s credibility crisis. American Sociological Review, 87(1), 17-49.
• Sandberg, J., Rouleau, L., Langley, A., & Tsoukas, H. (Eds.). (2017). Skillful performance: Enacting capabilities, knowledge, competence, and expertise in organizations (Vol. 7). Oxford University Press.

Time: 9-11 September 2024 (in person), 9-10 October 2024 (online), 8 November 2024 (online).