Management and the Hybridization of Expertise: Eftpos in Retrospect

Abstract

This paper will show how the UK banks learnt the strategic value of retaining IT expertise in-house through their experience of the design of EFTPOS networks. The banks began by attempting to ‘buy-in’ IT expertise from other organizations, but they were first compelled to locate expertise in a jointly-controlled organization called EFTPOS UK, then forced to develop the new IT expertise within their existing IT departments. These manipulations of the ‘organizational location’ of expertise gave individual banks the ability to create their own technology strategies, which they promptly exploited in an attempt to gain competitive advantage. It will be argued that a greater capacity to form individual technology strategies and exploit competitive advantage will result from the active management of two other dimensions of expertise: these are termed the internal location and the individual partition of expertise. The first term refers to where in the organization technical expertise is located and the second to how technical expertise is divided between individuals. The process by which the individual partition of expertise changes is called the hybridization of expertise and it is argued that although this is to an extent ‘natural’ it may certainly be managed. The case for a more aggressive and explicit expertise strategy, including the active management of the process of hybridization, is made by reference to the nature of the network design and practices in the management of technical expertise in other industries.