The experiential sources of managerial expertise: The case of a Mars exploration simulation commander

Abstract

This paper addresses the possibility of grounding managerial expertise on experience. If lived experience can be considered as a source of learning, its contribution to the construction of expert knowledge in management seems much less obvious. Critics have highlighted an ideological tendency to reify management in a generic body of knowledge that does not take practices into account. The aim of this article is less to contribute to such a corpus than to comprehend expertise from an experiential perspective. A pragmatist lens is used to define experiential expertise as a cognitive, embodied, and situated activity. Our fieldwork is a simulation of a Mars exploration in the Utah desert. Adopting an organizational ethnography approach, the article focuses on the practice of the head of mission. This practice, initially considered as an enigma by the crew, unfolds according to different orientations. The results allow us to avoid received ideas regarding the intrinsic content of managerial expertise, and to reinforce the importance of a plurality of lived experiences for accomplishing collective action in an exploratory situation. On this basis, we highlight an alternative approach to traditional management learning.