Local experts: Facilitators of learning about computer technology in public organizations

This study explored the role of local experts who facilitate the learning of computer applications by public employees. Topics studied include their motivation to become local experts, the process by which they impart knowledge, their relationships with end-users, supervisors, and information systems specialists, and contextual organizational variables that either facilitate or hinder their contributions to the learning process. The main theoretical framework for this study is "adult learning theory" which posits that adults, such as public employees, will initiate and manage their own learning activities when they can do so.; The local experts in four public organizations were identified in a survey. Interviews revealed that local experts are largely self-taught, computer literate individuals who have acquired the reputation and status of local expert primarily through their own informal actions. Local experts are self created, not creations of their organizations. Their primary motivations are intrinsic and social in nature. They play significant roles as trainers, trouble shooters and information services liaisons, primarily on software concerns, and serve all levels within the organization. Demand for the services of local experts is episodic, an attribute common to an adult learning environment. The study shows that local experts engage in a complex diagnostic and response process of problem evaluation, assessment of their own response capacity and the capacity of end users, tailored development and delivery of their responses to the end user and a feedback process by which they gauge if end-users have learned to resolve the problem at hand.; This study lays the groundwork for future research whereby scholars and practitioners can seek to develop strategies to nurture the emergence of local experts and integrate the informal learning environment with their formal human resource development and information technology policies. Furthermore, this study helps to validate adult learning theory as an important theoretical construct for organizational learning.