2022/03/30

Development and Learning in Organizations: An International Journal

36

6

15-18

Emerald Publishing Limited

Introduction Organizational silos are common in workplace settings. The term ‘silo’ originated from agricultural storage towers that segregate grain uniquely from other types of grain. Similarly, acquired expertise is built uniquely through segregated knowledge. Organizations often structure acquired expertise based on unique functionality such as human resources, engineering, and information technology. Recent scrutiny has associated this arrangement with organizational underachievement (Henman, 2020). This paper offers a viewpoint that workplace expertise may have inherent challenges, not as a product of functional arrangement (silo) but rather a consequence of the bounded perspective from which the ‘expertise’ was developed (e.g. the expertise of a computer programmer is a technical solution drawn from their programing expertise). Moreover, an expert’s bounded perspective is typically reinforced in organizational settings for capital advantage. This paper extends this condition to a process of organizational silofication.

Organizational silofication: implications in grouping experts for organizational performance [pdf]

Organizational silofication: implications in grouping experts for organizational performance D Silberman, RE Carpenter, E Cabrera, J Kernaleguen - Development and Learning in Organizations: An International Journal