Browsing by Author "Raaska, Nea"

Target: In the future, working life requirements change the competence needs where multiexpertise is often emphasized. The purpose of this study was to examine professional experts’ views and experiences about multiexpertise. In addition, the aim of this study was to examine what kind of skills do experts consider to be essential in their experience to work as a multiexpert. Lastly, this study examined factors that challenge and support multiexpertise based on professionals’ experiences. This study was made in collaboration with a media- and marketing organization where a multiexpertise competence development project had been started. The theoretical framework of multiexpertise in this study was defined based on different expertise theories. Multiexpertise is defined as a model of relational, horizontal and collective expertise that develops in different expertise networks. Method: This research was a qualitative case study. The research data consisted of nine half-structured thematic interviews. Research participants worked as experts in the target organization and they had expanded their expertise to multiexpertise. Thematic interview questions focused on themes of professional’s core competence, learning new skills, participation on learning and multiexpertise. The research data was analyzed with theory-guided content analysis. Findings and conclusions: According to the results experts experienced that multiexpertise brought them deep understanding and ability to work more flexibly between different stakeholders. Multiexpertise also required strong core knowledge and demanded explicit multiexpertise skills. These skills were self-leadership, solution orientation, ability to change and continuous learning. The factors that challenged multiexpertise were lack of time, lack of organizing and following up the training, the lack support in training and the distributed and unavailable knowledge in the organization. On the contrary, the factors that supported multiexpertise were the work community, encouragement to competence development and the sharing of knowledge and know-how. The most significant result was the experts need to be heard and understood in the target organization within the multiexpertise competence development project. Significance: This study offers new and significant scientific information about multiexpertise. In addition, this study gives valuable knowledge to the target organization about multiexpert’s experiences. The multiexpertise model that was developed in this study describes practice-base modern expertise and gives a good base for future research.