Can professional boundaries be knowledge enablers?

Abstract

Classical studies in the Sociology of the Professions have laid the foundation of our understanding of the conditions that render knowledge sharing across professional boundaries problematic. Recently, however, scholars have suggested that those classical analyses need to be revisited and reassessed (e.g. Evetts, 2006; Noordegraaf, 2007) as professional boundaries have been eroded and re-delineated by different contemporary trends (Fournier, 2000). In order to address this gap, this paper presents a comparative investigation of expert knowledge-sharing across professional boundaries in four cross-occupational teams in the English National Health Service; two of them primarily composed of established professionals and two of hybrid professionals. By analyzing these two types of cross-occupational teams, this paper’s contribution is the identification of different configurations of professional boundaries, which in turn facilitate or hinder knowledge exchange across professionals. Based on these findings, I propose to re-conceptualize boundaries as zones of knowing. This new conceptualization helps explain how professional boundaries play a perceptual role in cross-occupational groups and, under certain circumstances, can actually facilitate diverse expertise identification and coordination.