Year
2014
Abstract
In management studies, competence is defined as the demonstrated capacity of an organization to accomplish a given activity with an assured level of performance (cost, quality, delay, risk). Competence development therefore is identified with organizational success. No wonder then that this topic has been present in organization research and managerial practices for a long time, with limited results. Such a relative failure is here attributed to some lack of knowledge about organized collective activity, though it is the very basis of competence. La competence can only develop through a reflexive return – an inquiry, in the pragmatist sense – of work collectives on activity, following two types of collective configurations: communities of practice reflexively examine how to achieve activities which all correspond to the same type of competence, e.g. within a given professional craft; communities of process reflexively examine cross-functional activity systems which fulfill a given social requirement, and particularly organizational choices (division of labor, coordination, etc.). Communities of practice and communities of process combine and challenge each other in organizations. Competence develops through this mutual and iterative stimulation between the professional and the process perspectives. It allows actors to take some hindsight on their professional practices as well as on the existing organization, and to re-design organization and competences jointly: developing competences also means redesigning organization.
LORINO, P. (2014). Développement des compétences et reconstruction de l’activité collective. Dans: Apprendre dans l’entreprise. 1st ed. PUF, pp. 207-220.