Project management: is finding an expert enough to use their knowledge?
When a project encounters a technical or regulatory difficulty, consulting a specialist from another department seems reasonable. The management question is more precise: when is a one-off consultation sufficient, and when does knowledge transfer need to be organised?
What the literature establishes
Morten T. Hansen (1999, Administrative Science Quarterly) distinguishes searching for knowledge from transferring it between organisational units. In his study of product development projects, weak ties facilitate the search for useful knowledge but can impede its transfer when that knowledge is complex. Identifying the right person and being able to use what they know are therefore different tasks.
Receiving knowledge requires the ability to assimilate it
Wesley M. Cohen and Daniel A. Levinthal (1990, Administrative Science Quarterly) propose the concept of absorptive capacity: recognising the value of external information, assimilating it and applying it to commercial ends. This capacity depends, in particular, on the recipient's prior knowledge. For a project team, this suggests that expert advice may remain difficult to use if nobody has the background needed to understand the conditions under which it applies.
The premature conclusion
One might conclude that every expert consulted should become a long-term member of the project team. The cited research does not justify this rule: simple, readily transferable information does not necessarily require a sustained relationship. The judgement instead concerns the complexity of the knowledge to be transferred and the team's capacity to assimilate it. (our executive and employee training programmes)
What the evidence cannot prescribe
Hansen's study examines product development within one company, while Cohen and Levinthal's framework addresses organisational learning and innovation. These works establish neither an optimal consultation length nor a universal threshold of complexity. Counting the experts consulted or the documents received therefore indicates access to knowledge but does not demonstrate its assimilation.
A practical check in Genève
In a Geneva project in private banking, an international organisation, luxury watchmaking or commodity trading, select a consultation in which expertise from outside the team should inform a decision. Before the exchange, record the decision concerned; afterwards, ask the recipient to restate the recommendation, its conditions of application and a case in which it would not be appropriate, then have the expert validate that account. Over a one-month pilot, measure the proportion of reviewed consultations whose restatement is validated without substantive correction, defining this as a correction that changes the proposed decision or its conditions of application. This exercise, suitable for SHR's « Gestion de projet » programme, checks usable understanding rather than access to a specialist alone. To go further: explore the Project Management training in Geneva in the canton of Geneva, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
In pictures: Project Management in Geneva
- project management
- Geneva
- research
- training geneva