Managing expert work requires the ability to comprehensively examine the surrounding community. Leadership and influence occur on many levels. As organizational culture researchers and developers, we perceive the internal relationships within an organization through three levels: individual, close community, and organizational. It is important to recognize the dynamics guiding each level to ensure that leadership and expert work are genuinely impactful.
The organizational culture of an expert community is often thought to be based on the diverse creative expertise of individuals and an atmosphere characterized by community and flexible networking. Heilmann (2022) and Hörkkö et al. (2019) also see expert organizations as arenas for interaction-related games and politics. The field of games naturally forms around the inherent tension between autonomy and community.
Fundamentally, members of the organization are valued as experts in their own areas of expertise. This guarantees autonomy for individuals within the community, giving employees responsibility for their own work. On the other hand, organizational culture emphasizes community and networking. Employees must utilize each other’s expertise and create strong professional relationships both internally and externally. Experts are expected to be active in information gathering, collaboration, and participation in collective knowledge creation (Hörkkö 2022).
Expert work is increasingly hybrid, making the combination of different skills and talents essential (Jännäri et al. 2018). This requires both leaders and those being led to have the ability and skill to combine individual independence and the demand for community into a functional whole.
Layers of life
Both leaders and those being led must have the ability to understand the cultural relationships within the organization to successfully balance individual autonomy and community action. The expert community lives its life on three levels.
At the first level, the organizational culture is influenced by the individual work orientations of experts. These guide the individual’s relationship to work, its development, and changes in work. Work orientation indicates whether we prefer to work alone or together and what kind of leadership expectations we have (Mäki & Mäki 2024).
At the second level, work cultures are influenced by official and unofficial groups. Official groups are established permanently or temporarily around tasks, projects, and initiatives. Unofficial groups grow from individuals’ similar work orientations. For community, it is significant whether the different groups within work cultures are siloed fortresses or networked close communities.
The third level is the public organizational culture, shaped by negotiated agreements and norms. Ideally, the three levels influence harmoniously, complementing each other. The levels can also create barriers, silo heights, where mutual tensions and collision points form.
Leadership in expert communities is often thought to occur through the third level. However, if aiming for a functional and productive work community, the work orientation and work culture levels influencing community cannot be ignored.
Leadership encounters as the glue of community
Personal work orientations easily form groups of like-minded individuals, i.e., work cultures, of which there are several in expert organizations. If we want to proactively lead and support the activities of different work cultures, it is good to recognize work orientations already at the individual level.
Leadership encounters (Mäki 2023) are places where the shaping of work orientations and work cultures can be influenced. The effects of encounters are visible in the work culture of close communities and gradually accumulate in the organizational culture.
In leadership encounters, the operational culture is articulated together with the individual or work team, which is the construction of a shared reality. The tense starting points created by work orientations and work cultures must be recognized and sufficient common glue found.
Understanding organizational culture is challenging. There is often an assumption that it covers all members of the organization with their ways of operating. However, it must be remembered that organizational culture is the sum of its parts.
The blog was originally published in Haaga-Helia’s eSignals online magazine.
Sources
Heilmann, P. 2022. Asiantuntijuuden käsite ja osa-alueet. Hallinnon tutkimus 41, 4.
Hörkkö, E., Silvennoinen, H. & Järvinen, T. 2019. Henkilöstön suosimat työssä oppimisen muodot. Hallinnon tutkimus, 38, 2.
Jännäri, J., Poutanen, S. & Kovalainen, A. 2018. Gendering expert work and ideal candidacy in Finnish and Estonian job advertisements. Gender in Management: An International Journal, 33, 7, s. 544-560.
Mäki, A. 2023. Johtamiskohtaaminen – törmäyksiä vai yhteistä ymmärrystä? Blogi. Psycon.
Mäki, A. & Mäki, K. 2024. Johtamiskohtaamisten aallokossa. Tunnista työorientaatioiden voima. Professional Publishing Finland.
Authors
Annastiina Mäki, Lead Consultant, PhD, KL, Psycon Oy
Kimmo Mäki, University Lecturer in Higher Education Pedagogy and Leadership, DSc, KL Haaga-Helia