| Abstract: |
In this research we explore the issue of “competence management”, as usually
defined in the corporate vocabulary, mostly in the human resource (HR)
function, and more particularly of “strategic competence management” (long run
management of competences which are critical to achieve strategic goals). We
try to show that competence management is a dynamic organizational competence.
We analyze it in the case of a large European telecommunications company,
France Télécom, in the years 2001-2003. The telecommunications sector is
characterized by quick changes in technology, markets and industrial
structures, and therefore a high level of uncertainty. It is also a high tech
activity, based upon continuously evolving personal skills which require long
education and training times. There is an apparent contradiction between
uncertainty, which makes planning difficult, and the necessity to plan new
competence development with long response times. This contradiction cannot be
solved if competences are defined in a static way, as structural attributes of
actual or potential employees or groups of employees. The strategic competence
management issue must be considered rather in the frame of a dynamic,
process-based view, which involves an on-going collective and reflexive
activity of actors themselves to define and manage their competences. We
tested process-based competence management in the case of two
telecommunication domains: high bit-rate ADSL telecommunications and Internet
services to small and medium businesses. The reflexive and collective
competence management process had to be instrumented with instruments which
did not aim at an accurate representation of competences as objects, but
rather tried to offer a meaningful support for actors’ continuous
(re)interpretation of present and future work situations in terms of critical
competences. As a conclusion we extend the example of competence management
instruments to the general issue of management instruments, in the context of
uncertain and dynamic environments. Information-based theories of instruments
view instruments as specular representations of situations, which allow
optimal or satisficing problem-solving procedures. But when business
environments continuously evolve and resist prediction, we must move towards
an interpretive view of management instruments as meaningful signs, which help
actors to make sense of the situations in which they are involved. Their
relevance is not an absolute ontological truth but the practical effectiveness
of their context-situated utilization and interpretation. A semiotic and
pragmatist theory of activity and instruments can then be proposed. |