5.2.1.1. Defragmentation challenges

The development of interdisciplinary and transversal expertise raises multiple challenges for a company. With the growing complexity of technologies, processes and services, companies are called upon to increasingly manage ambitious projects, which require combining diverse expertise in order to address complex issues. Indeed, the collective action of professionals within collaborative interdisciplinary communities also makes it possible to consider new avenues of exploration and thus encourages innovation. However, the success of transversal work depends on the organization’s ability to provide resources and autonomy to professionals in order to initiate a fruitful exchange of ideas and contributions.

R&D professionals may, depending on the needs of the company, be required to work in several types of communities of expertise. These communities vary depending on the duration and frequency of professionals’ intervention (short-, medium- or long-term intervention, occasional or permanent participation) as well as according to the types of knowledge that professionals implement during this intervention (institutionalized or emerging knowledge). First, engineers, scientists and technicians in R&D departments may be invited to work on the resolution of urgent problems or, in other words, to carry out “troubleshooting” activities. They also participate in R&D projects with rather medium- and long-term temporalities intended to develop new products or services based on research data. Alongside these temporal communities, R&D professionals with the recognized expertise level may be encouraged to contribute to permanent communities of expertise, for example, a “college of experts”, aimed at bringing the company’s experts together to discuss multidisciplinary issues.

5.2.1.2. Troubleshooting teams

The term troubleshooting refers to interventions which aim to identify the source of a problem. Troubleshooting is a key activity for many industrial companies. The ability to provide emergency response to solve complex problems becomes a key issue, which makes it possible to avoid malfunctions and thus maintain the performance of facilities, services and products. The quality of troubleshooting has a direct impact on companies’ reputation, because often the technological issues could not only influence the internal functioning of the company, but may also have significant societal impact (consumers’ health, safety of facilities, etc.).

To perform troubleshooting activities, the company can rely on high-level in-house expertise. Specialists and experts are called upon to identify the causes of problems and explore avenues that might offer solutions. Interventions are mainly short term, but some types of problem may require long-term interventions, for example when a shutdown of a technical unit is required.

Depending on the internal organization of each company, troubleshooting activities can be more or less formalized. In some companies, there are specialized units that receive requests for interventions and try to find appropriate expertise within the company. For this, they can rely on internal expertise databases. In other cases, the request for expertise can be done directly and in a less formalized manner by a person who comes across a malfunction.

The troubleshooting process passes through many stages. It begins with a diagnostic phase to identify the causes of a detected anomaly. Depending on the problem’s complexity, several scenarios could be considered in order to find an optimal solution to the problem. If the chosen scenario requires direct expert intervention, it will work in collaboration with the local teams that requested the expertise, trying collaboratively to solve the issue, restore the system (technology, service or product) to its original state or even improve its original characteristics. Once the problem is resolved, follow-up is required to make sure that there are no new malfunctions. Finally, a reporting phase regarding accidents is most frequently organized in order to capitalize on the problems encountered and foster organizational learning.

As demonstrated in the case of Total, the use of a single expert may be insufficient and the intervention of a group of experts may be necessary to match various disciplines and allow better analysis of different aspects of a phenomenon. Indeed, research shows that transversality and collaborative work initiate creative moments that are required for problem-solving, which further helps to generate new interpretations and widen the range of possible solutions. The initiation of such creative moments is, however, subject to certain conditions [HAR 06b]. Collective action by experts is only possible if the problem is already identified or if there has been a request for expertise. Depending on the organizational environment and the company’s practices, such help-seeking activity can be formalized or remain informal. This will determine the form of collective action. Second, everyone’s willingness to dedicate their time and collaborate effectively will be crucial for the success of help-giving activities. Finally, the ability to review initial issues, by adopting new interpretations that arise in reflective reframing, makes it possible to consider often unexpected and original new solutions.

The success of these three processes, which is crucial for the initiation of creative moments, is conditioned by the collective action-friendly environment. The ability to request and provide assistance, review initial issues and collectively find new interpretations must be part of the corporate culture, valued on a daily basis and rewarded through the processes of assessment, compensation and career management.

Moreover, some logistical efforts seem necessary. In order to be able to provide quick response in emergency situations, companies must maintain and update expertise databases and encourage exchanges between potential expertise seekers and experts. The forming of troubleshooting teams also requires particular attention to both ensure the complementarity of the knowledge to be applied and anticipate the quality of interactions between team members.

5.2.1.3. R&D projects and transversal expertise

As discussed in Chapter 2, in order to meet the requirement of competitiveness, a large number of companies have opted for “project-based” organization, structuring the latter on the most promising strategic axes. The success of these projects largely depends on the quality of the interdisciplinary work between R&D professionals who put their varied expertise at the service of the creation of products and services. Unlike troubleshooting activities, R&D projects often require a longer commitment. However, this period can significantly vary depending on the industries and life cycles of the products and services involved.

There are several types of R&D projects. Differentiation can be made according to the level of change involved: exploratory projects aiming at radical innovation and projects based on the improvement of one or more product and technology characteristics that enhance incremental innovation. Some authors also distinguish “hybrid” projects, which bring together the two types of innovation targeted by the same project [CHA 15].

The success of interdisciplinary work within R&D projects is subject to several conditions: clear objectives that are shared by all, complementarity of profiles within a team, effective communication, availability of necessary resources, valuation and recognition of projects members’ contributions.

However, even when these conditions are met, project teams may encounter many obstacles, because an interdisciplinary work within research projects is far from being a trivial task [EDM 09].

First, the complexity of the missions within R&D projects could give rise to ambiguity and uncertainty, related in particular to technological aspects, since the technology may not be in line with the identified needs. Changing market dynamics may also be a factor of complexity, because some disruptions could compromise the project’s objectives and sometimes jeopardize said project.

Another difficulty has to do with the functional and disciplinary diversity of the project teams. Although beneficial for innovation, diversity could be a source of disagreement. Differences in views and opinions as well as discrepancy in analytical patterns and interpretative models are quite frequent. It is therefore essential to create conditions that prioritize the psychological safety of team members in order to allow them to freely exchange ideas, be innovative, commit errors and, above all, learn.

Another challenge is the temporal nature of these projects. R&D professionals are required to participate in these projects according to their area of expertise. Some will be committed for the entire project period, while others will occasionally intervene in certain phases or on particular aspects. This temporality necessarily implies an adaptation period for a new team in order for them to get to know each other, find the best communication strategies, apprehend everyone’s expertise, share ideas and find the required consensus.

The fluidity of the boundaries of teams working on R&D projects does not simplify the collaboration challenge. The high turnover among team members can compromise learning and capitalization ability. Moreover, the advent of digital technologies, which makes it possible to access geographically dispersed expertise, also presents challenges related in particular to the difficulty of teams in communicating and sharing information without a physical presence.

Finally, the commitment and contribution of individuals to R&D projects must be valued and rewarded at the organizational level. This often implies the need for rethinking the reward system in order to integrate the criteria that value collective contribution.

Beyond the challenges of launching innovative products and services that help the company to develop its competitive advantage and position itself as a market leader, it is worth mentioning another aspect related to collaborative work. Participation in research projects also offers R&D professionals the privileged moments of learning. Interdisciplinarity, the diversity of situations to manage and the pursuit of common objectives allow them to deepen and broaden their field of expertise.

Researchers distinguish two types of learning emanating from R&D projects, namely intra-project and inter-project learning [CHR 15]. Organizations often seek to formalize learning within a single project, by putting in place assessments, capitalization tools and sharing sessions on acquired knowledge or skills. However, very little reflection is conducted on the ability to learn and develop expertise through a series of projects. This lack of a systemic approach generates a very partial and static vision of learning and the creation of expertise, since this does not enhance temporal and dynamic analysis. However, this task is far from obvious. Such an approach requires not only an efficient infrastructure and an adequate communication system for the monitoring and coordination of inter-project learning, but also the creation of new organizational roles and new types of interactions. The role of R&D managers in particular is reconsidered not only to ensure a necessary supervision of the matching of needs to resources, but also to jointly coordinate, with project managers, all professionals’ learning paths through their successive participation in projects. This ability to integrate individual learning into collective expertise should allow, in a temporal perspective, a dynamic and coordinated management of knowledge and career paths to be ensured.

5.2.1.4. Colleges of experts

Specific types of community have emerged within industrial organizations. These are communities made up of experts from various fields who seek to use their knowledge to contribute to the development of new strategic development paths for the company. These communities, which could exist under different names (“colleges of experts”, “communities of the future” and “communities of experts”), are positioning themselves as levers of innovation and indispensable strategic decision support tools.

The creation of colleges of experts often follows the implementation of the dual-ladder system in an organization (see Chapter 4). It aims at enabling experts to contribute collectively toward the development of strategic areas by relying on exchanges between different fields of expertise.

These communities are made up of working groups that could have a varied structure and life cycle. Some are structured according to targeted contributions, by distinguishing, for example, subjects relating to radical innovation on the one hand and incremental innovation on the other, as is the case at STMicroelectronics [CAB 17]. Others are instead organized by strategic themes that require multidisciplinary expertise, as is the case at Orange (see Box 5.3). Most communities have a governance structure (the members of which are usually elected from among the experts) that ensures overall functioning and establishes a link between the different working groups. These communities have varied activities: benchmarking, identifying prospective avenues of exploration, analyzing new technologies, training, knowledge management and so on.

5.2.1.5. Challenges of interdisciplinary work: roles, interactions and knowledge creation

Collective action of experts carried out in an interdisciplinary manner has significant advantages for individuals as well as the organization. In fact, transversality is often considered by researchers and practitioners as a primary means of initiating innovation. The crossing of different disciplinary fields helps to broaden individual knowledge and avoid fragmentation. It is also an effective way of knowing and recognizing each others’ expertise. Moreover, transversal work could be very helpful for decision-making processes: a collective opinion of experts will have more legitimacy than an individual opinion and would thus enable experts to further contribute to the company’s strategic orientations [LEL 18]. Finally, this transversality also contributes to strengthening the collaborative culture that generates a better circulation of ideas and expertise within the organization.

At the same time, such collective and collaborative work faces several challenges at relational, organizational and strategic levels.

Relational aspects play a significant role when it comes to collaboration between people who have in-depth, well-established and deeply rooted expertise in a specific area of knowledge. Moving out of one’s disciplinary field to consider related fields requires a certain openness and willingness to confront and accept other interpretations and analyses. Under such conditions, collaboration may only be beneficial if there is good understanding and mutual respect between participants. It also requires the organization to ensure the complementarity of expertise and equally take into account the interactional capacities of the people who will be working together.

Whether it involves troubleshooting activities, working within R&D projects or participation in the college of experts, the contribution of R&D professionals to these different communities must be supported and valued through different organizational processes. Such contribution must specifically be taken into account during annual performance assessments and may become one of the major criteria for the development of a professional career. The ability to carry out interdisciplinary work requires specific skills, and the company must strive to foster their development. Beyond efforts to institutionalize a collaborative culture, special training courses could be provided to both raise people’s awareness with regard to the issues and forms of collaborative work and develop their skills, particularly in the coordination of cross-functional teams. Despite the autonomy of R&D professionals and their strong preference for self-control over their resources, a certain degree of leadership may be needed in order to coordinate and implement collective action.

Finally, from a strategic perspective, it is essential that the results of the collaborative work of R&D professionals are taken into account by decision-makers and considered as a valuable support for defining future orientations of the company. Otherwise, the motivation of these highly skilled professionals to engage in transversal work could be compromised.

5.2.2.1. Learning and unlearning

Although currently organizations are more and more interested in transversality, the challenges of maintaining and developing strong expertise around critical areas are however no less important. The challenge is twofold. This involves not only learning new skills but also avoiding the loss of well-mastered knowledge. The departure of an expert or restructuring of a service are some of the factors that are likely to destabilize organizational memory around a field of expertise and also compromise its legitimacy both inside and outside of the company (with regard to its customers and partners). The phenomenon of organizational forgetting is increasingly attracting researchers’ attention, and multiple studies are being carried out to understand the causes and consequences of this process [MAR 03b]. Forgetting is not always detrimental for the organization. In some cases, this can increase organizational performance, especially if it concerns forgetting inefficient practices or processes to relearn new ones. This is intentional forgetting, which can be desired and sought by the company especially in the context of change management. However, in most cases, organizations face unintentional forgetting that is likely to compromise their ability to master a technology or find expertise.

Despite investments in knowledge management, organizational forgetting is becoming more than ever a concern for technological companies. Indeed, some strategic choices could be disruptive for organizational memory. On the one hand, to reduce costs and improve flexibility, companies tend to outsource certain types of expertise. Such outsourcing, which originally concerned “support” functions such as information systems and some sub-fields of HRM (e.g. payroll services), then spread to certain “core business” expertise that could provide a competitive advantage to the organization. On the other hand, as shown above, companies are increasingly developing “project-based” organization to foster multidisciplinary work [EDM 09] in order to reinforce innovation capacity.

Both strategies can have a significant impact on the company’s ability to manage expertise over the long term. Several examples have shown that the total or partial outsourcing of specialized resources can cause the loss of in-house expertise because of the inability to address certain organization-specific problems due to the absence of critical knowledge and competencies. The organizational memory is thus compromised, which could have long-standing consequences for the use and development of expertise.

Similarly, too much transversality (particularly through “project-based” structuring) could possibly jeopardize the ability to develop an in-depth expertise that generally takes about 10 years to build. Thus, the development of a solid “intradisciplinary” expertise becomes a critical issue for the company and a necessary condition for generating efficient transversal work.

Consequently, the role of organizational communities where specialized expertise can be accumulated, maintained and passed on to future generations should not be overlooked. Monodisciplinary communities of expertise thus become a favored space for the development of strong in-house expertise.

5.2.2.2. Monodisciplinary professional communities: positioning and status

According to Barley and Tolbert [BAR 91], companies need to have permanent access to specialized expertise internally. In technological and industrial companies, this expertise can accumulate within monodisciplinary communities of expertise [EYH 03, LEL 14] made up of members who share the same body of knowledge and work together to respond to expertise needs. For these professionals, communities provide a favored environment for learning, socialization and professional evolution. For the company, the dynamics of such communities ensure the quality of expertise and guarantee the maintenance of organizational memory.

Monodisciplinary communities can have various forms and statuses. Some communities are organized into specialized departments and have a formal status and visibility in the organizational charts. But corporate recognition is not a prerequisite for the existence of a community. These communities can bring together professionals who are not geographically and/or functionally connected, but share the same profession, the same identity and common professional values, and are required to work together on specialized expertise needs.

The positioning of such communities, as well as their evolution within the company, depends on the overall organizational strategy. The strategic orientations of the company, its competitive environment and technological choices could both initiate the emergence of new communities and cause the disappearance of some others. This in turn can have a significant impact on the career paths of R&D professionals. The presence of a strong professional community, deeply rooted in an organizational structure, will be a considerable asset for those wishing to choose a specialization path. This makes it possible not only to benefit from peer exchanges and to learn new developments in the field, but also, above all, to minimize the risks of specialization by acquiring recognized and valued expertise. On the contrary, the absence of the established community can pose some risks because knowledge is not yet formalized and their strategic character is not certain. Indeed, it involves exploring the unknown with uncertain results, which can possibly endanger the career development of those who engage in such exploration. At the same time, such uncertainty also offers the opportunity to be at the origin of the development of a new area of expertise, which could be a promising starting point for becoming an expert in this newly created field.

The monodisciplinary professional community, due to its strategic nature for the maintenance and development of key knowledge, becomes an important management object, though little known by managers. In order to understand how such a community works, it seems relevant to focus on the knowledge dynamics as well as the roles and interactions of specialists and experts within these communities.

5.2.2.3. A new management object

The benefits of considering the monodisciplinary professional community as a new management object lies in the need to manage two processes simultaneously: managing specialized knowledge dynamics around a specific area and managing individuals who are the holders of this knowledge, their learning dynamics and their career paths.

Analyzing roles and relationships within such a community brings a valuable contribution that allows us to define the avenues for managerial actions. The concept of role is considered as an essential element in understanding organizational behaviors [ALV 05, KAT 66]. Role refers to a set of activities and behaviors expected of a person [KAT 66] within an organization. If these expectations are not clear or contradictory to the person’s perception, role ambiguity or role conflict may arise. The consequences can be harmful both for individuals (e.g. work-related stress caused by uncertainty) and for the organization (loss of key knowledge, ineffectiveness of professional relationships, declined performance, etc.). It is therefore important to clarify organizational roles and to ensure that there is no erroneous interpretation that is likely to generate ambiguity or conflict. But beyond the clarification of roles, the challenge also lies in the capacity to enact these roles in order to make them a real resource for individual and collective progress.

Within the monodisciplinary professional community, each person performs a specific role. The strong interdependence of each role and their complementarity make it possible to better meet expertise needs. Thus, when one of the organizational actors requests expertise, this will initiate the expertise relationship, in which all of the roles will be activated to provide the necessary collective expertise. The key to understanding the functioning of the community lies in the ability to provide a detailed analysis of all its roles by differentiating them with each other. It helps in understanding the possible paths of progression between these roles over time. Finally, such analysis makes it possible to initiate a management action to manage the roles and missions of a community’s members, the knowledge on which these roles are based and paths of progression between these roles. As a result, the career choices available to professionals become visible.

Research, carried out at the Centre de Gestion Scientifique de l’École des Mines de Paris (Center for Scientific Management at the Ecole des Mines, Paris) has helped to refine a management tool that facilitates the visibility of a role structure and the pathways of a monodisciplinary professional community, as well as to influence the dynamics of its evolution [EYH 03, LEL 14].

The tool proposes a mapping of roles along two axes, namely technical expertise and interpersonal skills. The first axis corresponds to the level of technical or scientific knowledge as well as the mastery of technologies or processes. The second axis refers to the individual’s interpersonal or managerial skills, especially team, project and relationship management skills. Each of these axes consists of several skills that are referenced in a competence sheet. Grading facilitates the distinction of roles that exist within a community by analyzing the level of excellence on each axis. In Figure 5.1, the letter “R” represents the generic roles that refer to all of the missions, knowledge and activities that may exist at these two-dimensional competence levels. The ellipses that surround these roles mean that the actual skills of those who perform such roles may be rather dispersed according to the specific aspects of generic roles. For example, in some professional communities, the roles of business manager and expert can be performed by the same person, which will not be the case in another community. Once the different roles are positioned, it is possible to link them with arrows, which indicate the possible paths within the specialty.

It has been shown that one of the bottlenecks in the management of monodisciplinary professional communities is dealing with role ambiguity and ensuring its evolution. “If we do not know the difference between a specialist and an expert, it is impossible to know when, how and in what conditions a specialist could become an expert” [LEL 14]. Mapping could thus become a useful tool for visualizing the structure of the professional community, allowing the enactment of mutually dependent roles and professional paths. The analysis of this map that reflects the composition of the community at a given moment should allow managers to then look forward to a “desired” state of the community and thus build a new “target”. This could help technical and HR managers to coordinate their efforts to align knowledge management practices with the management of R&D professionals’ roles and career paths.