Michael A D'Eredita

"High performers" both fascinate and influence societies around the world.  These are individuals, teams/groups, or organizations that tend to set themselves apart through the application of specific skills and expertise.   Examples of high performers include a world-champion athlete, an expert team of medical personnel, or an organization capable of maintaining the position of market leader.  Their expertise is acquired through experience, often involving countless hours of deliberate practice and an inherently recursive relationship among individuals, groups, organizations and their respective social networks.  Information Technology (IT) enables individuals with specific skills and expertise to influence more people in a timely manner than ever before and allows collective expertise to be applied within synchronous or asynchronous distributed environments.  The potential of IT is realized when its function is aligned with these seemingly natural learning and social processes.   My research is focused on gaining insight into these processes in a manner that can be applied to the development and use of information-based technologies. 

Research Interests

Organizational Behavior

Knowledge Management

Survey, Statics, and Design

Organizational Learning/Change

Teaching Interests

My research specifically focuses on skill acquisition, expertise, "virtual apprenticeship," and "collective expertise."  I assume that one cannot understand the development of collective expertise without an understanding of the development of individual expertise andone cannot understand the development of individual expertise without an understanding of supportive social structures and behaviors.  Because of this, my research spans organizational, team/group, and individual levels of analyses and the relationships among them.   

My working definition of collective expertise is as follows:  "a problem-centric collaborative of individuals each 'having, involving, or displaying special skill or knowledge derived from training or experience.'   I assume that episodic-based cognitive processing forms the foundation upon which skill and expertise is built and that collective action is achieved only through a complementary understanding of the problem, how it should be addressed, and ones role in addressing the problem.  My research in this area focuses on action and behavior and how IT enables collective expertise to be applied within distributive environments. 

IT allows the traditionally face-to-face relationships of mentor-apprentice, coach-athlete, or teacher-student to exist within distributed environments.  This potentially allows the valued know-how of a limited number of experts to proliferate regardless of geographic or spatial constraints.  My research in this area focuses on how IT works to support virtual apprenticeship and explores the boundaries/potential of this type of relationship.     

Professional Interests

My professional development and motivation continues to be threefold. I am guided by my desire to contribute to scholarly knowledge in the areas of individual and collective expertise.  I am also guided by my desire to share, extend, and apply knowledge through teaching. Lastly, I am guided by my desire to lead and advise orgnaizations through initiatives that require them to grow and leverage their current strengths for optimal performance.

Personal Interests

rowing