Jörgen sandberg. Stockholm School of Economics. A classic managerial problem, страница 14

In contrast to the prevailing rationalistic approaches to the study of competence, this study is based on an interpretative approach, namely phenomenography. The empirical findings and the approach adopted provide a new understanding of, and a new method for, identifying and describing what constitutes human competence at work. The most central finding generated by the phenomenographic approach is that human competence is not primarily a specific set of attributes. Instead, workers' knowledge, skills, and other attributes used in accomplishing work are preceded by and based upon their conceptions of work. More specifically, the findings suggest that the basic meaning structure of workers' conceptions of their work constitutes human competence. It is the workers' ways of conceiving work that make up, form, and organize their knowledge and skills into distinctive competence in performing their work. Hence, the findings suggest that a worker's particular conception of work defines what competence she or he develops and uses in performing that work.

A number of other previously concealed aspects of competence are highlighted by the findings that workers' ways of conceiving of their work constitute competence. First, attributes do not have fixed meanings, but rather, acquire meanings through the specific way that work is conceived. For instance, the empirical results demonstrated that the meaning of the attribute knowledge of the engine varied depending on the particular conception in which it appeared. In the first conception, optimizing separate qualities, knowledge of the engine meant understanding how the qualities of an engine reacted to changes in parameters. In the second conception, optimizing interacting qualities, knowledge of the engine meant seeing links among the qualities of an engine and, finally, in the third conception, optimizing from the customers' perspective, knowledge of the engine meant a practical sense of an engine. Hence, workers' ways of conceiving of their work create and shape the context from which the attributes acquire their specific meaning for competent work performance.

Second, the conceptions of work stipulate not only the meaning of the attributes, but also which particular attributes are developed and maintained in accomplishing work. For instance, being accurate and methodical only appeared as a separate attribute in the first conception. Similarly, carrying out the optimization in the right order and being accurate only appeared as a separate attribute in the second conception, and a practical sense of the engine only appeared in the third conception. Thus, depending on the conception of work, a specific set of knowledge, skills, and other attributes is developed and maintained in work performance.

Third, workers' conceptions of work not only give rise to distinctively different forms of competence but also to a hierarchy of competence at work. The hierarchy of competence was empirically demonstrated by an increasing comprehensiveness of conceptions of engine optimization. More specifically, conception 3 included three forms of competence, conception 2 included two forms, and conception 1 included one form of competence in engine optimization. This hierarchy suggests that those optimizers expressing conception 3 are the most competent, and those expressing conception 1 are the least competent. This suggestion was empirically confirmed by the fact that those optimizers who expressed the more comprehensive conceptions were able to operate according to the less comprehensive conceptions, but the reverse did not seem to be the case.

Finally, the findings provide an alternative un•derstanding not only of what constitutes competence, but also of how competence is developed. Departing from the rationalistic approaches, in which competence development is regarded as attribute acquisition, the findings of this study suggest change in conceptions of work as a more basic form of competence development. This is because the results show that workers' ways of conceiving of work stipulate which attributes they develop and what meaning these attributes take on in work performance. More specifically, the results suggest two basic forms of competence development: (1) changing the present conception to a different conception of work and (2) developing and deepening present ways of conceiving of work.