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In the prevalent rationalistic approaches, human competence at work is seen as constituted by a specific set of attributes, such as the knowledge and skills used in performing particular work. As an alternative to the rationalistic approaches, an interpretative approach, "phenomenography," is proposed and explored here. Findings suggest that the meaning work takes on for workers in their experience of it, rather than a specific set of attributes, constitutes competence. More specifically, the results demonstrate that the particular way of conceiving of work delimits certain attributes as essential and organizes them into a distinctive structure of competence at work.
Organizational actions such as producing cars, treating illnesses, transporting, and educating are always based on human competence. A fundamental managerial problem is to develop human competence at work in a way that enables an organization to remain viable. Today, developing competence is also becoming an increasingly important issue. Rapid technological change within areas such as microelectronics and communications in combination with growth in service and knowledge-based industries (Ekstedt, 1988; Eliasson. Folster. Londberg, Pousette, & Taymaz, 1990: Neff. 1998) has led to the need for an ongoing development of competence for competitive success
work. Approaches to competence developed within the interpretative research tradition are reviewed to further clarify what constitutes competence. On the basis of that review, I propose an interpretative approach, "phenomenography," and report an empirical examination of that approach conducted through a competence analysis of engine optimizers at the Volvo Car Corporation in Sweden.
IDENTIFYING HUMAN COMPETENCE: A CLASSIC MANAGERIAL PROBLEM
Only recently has the concept of competence been used more systematically in management. Primarily, it is the concept's focus on the relation between person and work that researchers such as McClelland (1973), Boyatzis (1982), Kolb (1984), Morgan (1988), and Nordhaug (1993) have found attractive when identifying and describing essential human knowledge and skills at work. As Morgan (1988) argued, the concept of competence encourages scholars to think not only about knowledge itself, but also about the knowledge that is required in competent work performance. Hence, the expression "human competence at work" used in this study does not refer to all knowledge and skills, but to those people use when working.
Although the concept of competence has not been in frequent use until recently,...