Abstract
We explore how members of a community of practice learn new tools and techniques when environmental shifts undermine existing expertise. In our 20-month comparative field study of medical assistants and patient-service representatives learning to use new digital technology in five primary care sites, we find that the traditional master-apprentice training model worked well when established practices were being conferred to trainees. When environmental change required introducing new tools and techniques with which the experienced members had no expertise, third-party managers selected newer members as trainers because managers judged them to be agile learners who were less committed to traditional hierarchies and more willing to deviate from traditional norms. This challenged community members’ existing status, which was based on the historical distinctions of long tenure and expertise in traditional tasks. In three sites, the introduction of this illegitimate learning hierarchy sparked status competition among trainees and trainers, and trainees collectively resisted learning new tools and techniques. In the other two sites, managers paired the new, illegitimate learning hierarchy with the opportunity for trainee status mobility by rotating the trainer role; here, trainees embraced learning in order to exit the lower-status trainee group and join the higher-status trainer group. Drawing on ideas of status group legitimacy and mobility, we suggest that managers’ pairing of an illegitimate learning hierarchy with the opportunity for trainee status mobility is a mechanism for enabling the situated learning of new techniques when traditional expertise erodes.
Highlights
The work and occupations and work and employment literatures have been critical in explaining how workers can learn to use new tools and techniques in everyday work by learning from experienced specialists or trainers
When environmental change required introducing new tools and techniques with which the experienced members had no expertise, third-party managers selected newer members as trainers because managers judged them to be agile learners who were less committed to traditional hierarchies and more willing to deviate from traditional norms
Regarding introducing new bases of status distinction, managers unintentionally did this when they chose as trainers those who they judged as agile learners who worked quickly, as willing to challenge the traditional hierarchy, and as willing to deviate from traditional norms and support the values consistent with the new processes
Summary
The work and occupations and work and employment literatures have been critical in explaining how workers can learn to use new tools and techniques in everyday work by learning from experienced specialists or trainers. Workers and organizations face a dilemma when the external environment shifts in a way that either undermines the core work practices that need to be taught or dramatically changes the technological environment in which work happens. Such situations demand introducing new tools or techniques with which experienced members have no expertise. Given the vast transformation taking place in the world of work, situations in which experienced members do not have the expertise required to train newer members are increasingly common (e.g., Barley 2015, Bechky 2019, Anteby and Chan 2018, and LifshitzAssaf 2018). Knowledge sharing requires time and effort from organization members, and it may lower productivity (e.g., Perlow and Weeks 2002, Hargadon and Bechky 2006, Grodal et al 2015, and DiBenigno 2020)
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