My impression is that specialist is just used as a label for imperative knowledge (process knowledge of how to do something), and generalist a label for process

My impression is that specialist is just used as a label for imperative knowledge (process knowledge of how to do something), and generalist a label for process selection and management, declarative knowledge essentially. What's ignored are cascades of knowledge, where specializing in the right thing can make you an expert in an adjacent task with very little effort, where the barrier might be just different labels or terminology. So you can become both a potential specialist and generalist by chosing the right thing to specialize in.