Novice–expert consultations as a vehicle for organizational learning - a field study in engineering product development

Product development is a knowledge intensive activity and organizational learning across projects and functions is vital for its success. This paper explores novice–expert consultations as a vehicle of social learning through a detailed analysis of meetings during an engineering training programme. Although the meetings were initiated for the purpose of information seeking, this amounted to only 8% of the time compared to knowledge creation between novices and experts (43%) and context sharing (49%). This effect became even stronger during later stages of the project. A correspondence analysis of the conversational balance and activities showed differential patterns for the kind of information provided or requested by both actors, such as novices requesting information on previous designs and organizational procedures while experts inserted unsolicited solutions. Both expert and novice were found to contribute equally and interactively to the discussion and analysis of solutions. The findings illustrate the role of consultations as a means of professional development as well as organizational learning. While it is unlikely that this type of social learning could be replace by a knowledge management system, it could be supported by providing access to members’ areas of expertise and by illustrating the rationale of previous designs.