Meta-functional expertise is the breadth of one’s
strategically important
knowledge
Knowledge is an Declarative knowledge, awareness of facts, a Knowledge by acquaintance, familiarity with individuals and situations, or a Procedural knowledge, practical skill. Knowledge of facts, also called propositional knowledge, is oft ...
. It differs from the traditional conceptualization of
expertise
An expert is somebody who has a broad and deep understanding and competence in terms of knowledge, skill and experience through practice and education in a particular field or area of study. Informally, an expert is someone widely recognized a ...
, which is generally considered to be a great depth of knowledge in a
defined area, and where thus
experts are people who are distinguished as knowing a lot about a particular subject. Comparatively, a ''meta-functional expert'' is considered to be somewhat knowledgeable in many different areas but not necessarily an
expert
An expert is somebody who has a broad and deep understanding and competence in terms of knowledge, skill and experience through practice and education in a particular field or area of study. Informally, an expert is someone widely recognized ...
in any single domain.
Compared to generalists
Someone high on meta-functional expertise is similar to a
generalist in that they have a wide array of knowledge. However, where generalists know many different things meta-functional experts have enough depth of knowledge in each area to be considered knowledgeable by other members of their team at work.
Results of meta-functional expertise
Individuals high on meta-functional expertise are:
*Better able to acquire
social power
In political science, power is the ability to influence or direct the actions, beliefs, or conduct of actors. Power does not exclusively refer to the threat or use of force (coercion) by one actor against another, but may also be exerted thro ...
at work because they can translate between
specialists.
*More successful as
entrepreneurs
Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value in ways that generally entail beyond the minimal amount of risk (assumed by a traditional business), and potentially involving values besides simply economic ones.
An entreprene ...
*More
innovative
Innovation is the practical implementation of ideas that result in the introduction of new goods or services or improvement in offering goods or services. ISO TC 279 in the standard ISO 56000:2020 defines innovation as "a new or changed ent ...
*More likely to get promoted at work
*Better able to get information from people outside of their work team
Groups with more meta-functional experts on them perform better because they:
*Communicate better with one another and share more ideas
*Understand their surroundings better
*Gain knowledge external to the group more efficiently
*Are more
innovative
Innovation is the practical implementation of ideas that result in the introduction of new goods or services or improvement in offering goods or services. ISO TC 279 in the standard ISO 56000:2020 defines innovation as "a new or changed ent ...
[Fay, D., Carol Borrill1, Ziv Amir, Robert Haward and Michael A. West. 2006. Getting the most out of multidisciplinary teams: A multi-sample study of team innovation in health care. ''Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology'', 79: 553–567]
See also
*
Interdisciplinarity
Interdisciplinarity or interdisciplinary studies involves the combination of multiple academic disciplines into one activity (e.g., a research project). It draws knowledge from several fields such as sociology, anthropology, psychology, economi ...
, utilization of specialist knowledge from several areas to solve a problem
*
Interdiscipline The term interdiscipline or inter-discipline means an organizational unit that involves two or more academic disciplines, but which have the formal criteria of disciplines such as dedicated research journals, conferences and university departments ...
, a discipline based on several disciplines, but which can also be considered an independent discipline
References
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Knowledge