Routine Expertise, Adaptive Expertise, and Task and Environmental Influences

Organizations are operating in a dynamic landscape, creating unexpected changes to their internal and external environments. Employees must adapt to these changes, while also having to perform routine aspects of tasks. Hence, employees oscillate between adapting to changes and performing within the status-quo, making adaptive expertise increasingly important. Adaptive expertise is the ability to perform at a high level when faced with novel situations, while also exhibiting expert performance for routine tasks that may still be relevant in the novel situation. Employees can develop adaptive expertise on the job if they are presented with an appropriate level of non-routine tasks after performing satisfactorily on routine aspects of their tasks, and if provided with adequate support by their organization. The key is to provide a variety of tasks, which help employees learn to recognize opportunities and develop creative skills. These learning experiences provide employees with opportunities to create new knowledge and tools, and to combine them in novel ways, thus dealing appropriately with changes in their dynamic environment. This chapter explores how adaptive expertise can be developed through informal learning and focuses on the importance of adaptive expertise for organizations operating in increasingly dynamic environments. We argue that the importance of adaptive expertise for organizations lies in their ability to recognize opportunities and through this adopt innovative work behaviors.