Developing competence by implementing a learning management ...

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management system (LMS) in a large Norwegian oil company, Statoil, to elaborate on various perspectives on the term 'competence', as used by prac- titioners ...
Human Relations DOI: 10.1177/0018726706067599 Volume 59(7): 993–1016 Copyright © 2006 The Tavistock Institute ® SAGE Publications London, Thousand Oaks CA, New Delhi www.sagepublications.com

Between asset and process: Developing competence by implementing a learning management system Erna Håland and Aksel Tjora

A B S T R AC T

Competence and competence development are ‘buzz words’ widely used in organizations in Norway, as well as in other countries. Competence, as the company’s most important and valuable resource, is constantly highlighted. But what does this imply for the organization and for the employees? What are comprised in the concept of competence? In this article we present different understandings of competence among employees in a large Norwegian oil company, Statoil, as well as some of the different views on competence found in the literature. Based on semi-structured interviews in two different stages of a process of implementing a netbased learning system, we find that the focus is more on competence as asset than competence as process. This leaves out important dimensions of competence in the complex society of today and as expressed by several of the employees in Statoil.

K E Y WO R D S

competence  competence development  learning management system  organization

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Introduction The ability to develop and administer knowledge is the one single factor that to the largest extent decides a society’s productivity and welfare development. (Confederation of Norwegian Business and Industry [NHO], December 2004)1 In accordance with the quotation above, competence and competence development are ‘buzz words’ widely used in organizations in Norway, as well as in other countries.2 As much as 85 percent of Norwegian business managers express that continuing education and raising competence among employees are tasks of high priority for 2005 in a nationwide survey conducted by Deloitte in 2000 companies.3 Competence is regarded as the company’s most important and valuable resource, and competence development and competence control are seen as very significant tasks for the future. But what does this imply for the organization and for the employees? What are comprised in the concept of competence? In this article, we draw on a study of the implementation of a learning management system (LMS) in a large Norwegian oil company, Statoil, to elaborate on various perspectives on the term ‘competence’, as used by practitioners and managers and as used in academic texts. A considerable amount of the literature discusses the term, but according to Garavan and McGuire (2001), only limited emphasis has been put on employees’ conceptions of competence. This article is a modest contribution in this respect, as we aim to explore the importance of ‘competence’ as a basic condition for the implementation of a learning management system. The motivation for this article is therefore the fact that informants reporting on the implementation of an Intranet-based learning system, a learning portal, ended up illustrating different understandings of competence in their organization. In many ways, how the concept of competence is used and spoken of is expressed in the learning portal. More precisely, we address the question: which perspectives on competence and competence development may be identified through the process of implementing a net-based learning system in an organization (Statoil)? Although we relate our empirical findings to existing literature in the research field, the purpose of the article is mainly to make an empirical contribution. We explore the complexity of the concept of competence among employees in Statoil. By this, we aim to understand more of the current focus on competence and competence development in organizations, and we suggest that different understandings of competence imply different strategies for competence development.

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Our case: Statoil Statoil is an integrated oil and gas company in Norway with business operations in 28 countries and a total of 24,000 employees.4 Statoil was established as a fully government-owned company in 1972, but went through a process of privatization during the late 1990s, and was introduced on the stock exchange in 2001. This privatization meant new framework conditions and new demands of efficiency and productivity in a market exposed to competition. Statoil is heavily concerned with e-learning, and spends quite a lot of resources on a learning management system. The company has a catalogue of almost 1000 different courses; traditionally taught courses, e-learning courses and courses combining the two. In 2003, Statoil implemented a learning management system5 (LMS) or a learning portal, as it is termed internally. A learning management system is supposed to provide a structure for Intranet-based education and provide different tools for the administration of students and instructors, tools for producing and presenting lectures, groupware communication tools for collaboration and internal messaging, CV-databases and so on. The implementation process is organized as a project, called Learn@Statoil, that over a period of time involves people from many different parts of the organization. One major argument for Statoil’s implementation of a learning portal is its extensive catalogue of courses, with a difficult user interface. The objective of the new learning portal is to make it easier for the employees to participate in the courses, through giving an overview of relevant courses for any employee regardless of particular job or position, and making it easier to sign up for, or withdraw from, courses. The implementation of the learning portal has in this sense been ‘a tidying-up process within a noisy and confusing collection of courses’, as one of the informants put it. Via the learning portal it should be easier for the employees to get an overview of their own competence, and of what kind of courses might be of personal relevance, and then plan their own competence development.

Competence in the knowledge society The term competence has been used in the managerial context since the late 1970s in the US (Rees & Garnsey, 2003), for example, defined as an underlying characteristic of the person (Boyatzis, 1982). The concept has evolved in different disciplines during the same period, in management as well as in different traditions of the psychological and sociological work research, as well as education research (Gudmundsson, 2003). However, there has been

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a huge diversity of interpretations of the concept and no consensus on a definition (Garavan & McGuire, 2001; Norris, 1991; Rees & Garnsey, 2003). Competence and related concepts have been adapted in numerous ways (Nordhaug, 1990b; Rees & Garnsey, 2003). There has been a shift from talking about qualifications to talking about competence when workplace learning and lifelong learning6 is considered (Høyrup & Pedersen, 2002). It remains unclear whether this means that a new label for more or less the same content has been introduced or if it indicates a genuine shift in the understanding of what is important in workplace learning. Competence is understood as more than just the formal qualifications, and refers to qualification in a broader sense, for example, how an individual develops knowledge and skills in a social context. It implies a notion of application, that is, an active handling of problems in an adequate way (Høyrup & Pedersen, 2002). Jensen and Prahl (2000) argue that competence is more than individual qualifications. They suggest that the ‘competent’ is related to the dynamic interaction between human beings, and not to the individual or organizational structure; it is an inter-subjective phenomenon. They claim that the common mode of thought in the education system, management practice and mainstream literature on organization and management, reflects a reductionist understanding of individual qualifications and previously given work-demands. Neither management questions alone, nor development of structure or culture alone, nor a question of individual development alone, can explain competence development. All these dimensions have to be taken into consideration in order to understand competence development. The shift from qualifications to competence can also be understood as a response to new demands in society (Gudmundsson, 2003). The increasing complexity of today’s society and the constant rapid changes require individuals that not only possess a number of skills, but are ready to adjust these skills according to known and unknown challenges (Høyrup & Pedersen, 2002). Competence development seems to be an accepted strategy to adapt to new environments in work (Andersen et al., 2000; Nordhaug, 1990a). Growing amounts of resources are spent on competence development, and it is regarded increasingly important for the success of firms (Nordhaug, 1993). On a national level, competence development of the workforce is presented as a solution for better competitiveness, increased efficiency and the securing of welfare (Høyrup & Pedersen, 2003). The use of the concepts of competence and knowledge is extensive in governmental as well as everyday language, and in organizational contexts. This can be understood as implications of the so-called ‘knowledge society’, in which the importance

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of knowledge appears to be increasing (Nonaka, 1994). Following this trend, the resource-based view (where knowledge and competence are seen as the organizations’ most crucial resources for strategic advantage) has become dominant in the strategic management field (Henderson & Cockburn, 1994; Spender & Grant, 1996). From this tradition the knowledge-based view emerges (Grant, 1996; Spender, 1996), with an increased acceptance of the importance of un-measurable phenomena (Spender & Grant, 1996). Current and future work life is said to consider the employees as more important than just as wage-earners that receive instructions; but rather more like competent, independent and unique members of the organization; more like valuable contributors (Brandi et al., 2001). The knowledge-worker emerges as the worker of the future, or what Brandi et al. (2001) label ‘the competence gold’. They observe that work life is changing and that organizations face new challenges in the form of globalization, rapid technological development, efficiency demands, environmental and ethical considerations, demands from shareholders, changed character of time (enormous pressure on time for the individual and for the organization), and new understandings of co-workers and competence. Knowledge and competence are considered the most important parameters of competition in an increased number of organizations, and it is emphasized to identify, develop and maintain the organizations’ core competencies – the co-workers and their ability to acquire new knowledge and new competencies. ‘Learning organization’ is another concept in the knowledge society. Organizations are supposed to be competent, learning, flexible and prepared for an ever-changing environment. A learning organization is seen as an ideal type of organization that is able to learn effectively and hence to prosper (Easterby-Smith & Lyles, 2003). The knowledge-based view of the firm, meaning that creation and application of knowledge are the most crucial activities in the firm, implies that organizations should become learning organizations in order to maximize their knowledge base (Bierly et al., 2000; Senge, 1990). Increased attention is paid to ‘knowledge management’ and the new organizational strategist, the chief knowledge officer (CKO) (Bierly et al., 2000). Elkjær (2000) argues that competence development in organizations in general is a question of how to adjust the employees to the tasks that are supposed to be solved, while in learning organizations the point of departure for competence development is the organizations’ main objective. The co-workers’ competencies should be improved according to this objective. Furthermore, she argues that the design of the learning organization should not be based on a change of co-workers’ mental models, but rather the organization’s work practice and the space (the organization) where this unfolds.

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Table 1 Different perspectives on competence, following Garavan and McGuire (2001), Høyrup and Pedersen (2002) and Sandberg (2000). The table should be read as a simplification of perspectives on competence and competence development Rationalistic and positivistic perspective

Phenomenological-, humanistic- and social constructivist perspective

Utilitarian instrumentalist view on competence

Competence as liberating and empowering

Competence as attributes-based, mechanistic, Competence as context-dependent, internal bureaucratic and context-free framing of competence in the local organizational culture Benefit- and efficiency perspective

Work life as encouraging the co-workers’ experience of work life as meaningful

Competence as individual characteristics

Competence as relations, competence as more than individual characteristics

Worker-oriented

Work-oriented

Two principal perspectives on competence can be found in the literature: the rationalistic and positivistic perspective and the phenomenological-, humanistic- and social constructivist perspective (Garavan & McGuire, 2001; Høyrup & Pedersen, 2002; Sandberg, 2000). We will elaborate on these perspectives later in the article, in connection with an analysis of employees’ understandings of competence in our case. A simplified presentation of these perspectives and their implications is shown in Table 1.

Methods and data This article is empirically based on semi-structured interviews and document studies. The first author conducted semi-structured interviews in two different stages of the learning portal project, before implementation (spring and summer 2003), and six months after implementation (spring 2004). By 1 September 2003, most employees in Statoil had access to the learning portal. During interviews and more informal visits to the organization, competence was constantly highlighted and spoken of, and it has therefore become a point of departure for the analysis of the implementation of the learning portal. At the first stage, 16 persons that were involved in the learning portal project were interviewed. The project is organized with a project leader, five

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work groups (‘Implementation’, ‘Content’, ‘Lay-out’, ‘IT-solution’ and ‘Further development’) and a supervising board headed by the director of HR. Interviews were conducted with members of the supervising board, including the director of HR, the project leader and leaders of all the work groups. In addition, interviews were conducted with the leaders of four socalled business schools in Statoil, ‘Exploration and Production Norway’ (UPN), ‘Manufacturing and Marketing’ (F&M), ‘Human Relations’ (HR) and ‘Natural Gas’ (GAS). The business schools are 17 internal Statoil departments that are supposed to manage courses and competence development for each business area. These departments are also organized across the business areas in a so-called Statoil School of Business and Technology (SBT). Since the implementation of the learning portal and the development of business schools are two inter-related processes, it was important to include informants from both projects. In the second stage, six months after the implementation, interviews were conducted with the same informants as in the first stage. Two persons had changed jobs since the first round and interviews were conducted with those that were now in the same positions. In addition, 10 so-called endusers of the system, that is, users that did not have any direct contact with the project and the project team, were interviewed. These informants were chosen in consultation with the project leader and some of the managers of the business schools. Care was taken to include informants both from the main office in Stavanger and from the gas processing installation at Kårstø. Informants were selected strategically according to these criteria and opportunistically based on their availability. The group of end-users consisted of employees in different positions in the organization, from managers to trainees and apprentices. Three women and seven men participated. In total, 42 interviews were conducted. All interviews were tape-recorded and later transcribed ad verbatim. In addition to interviews, various documents, provided by the project leader, were studied. These were mainly concerned with the implementation process, and included a project handbook, presentations of Statoil School of Business and Technology, reports from user tests carried out before implementation and accounts from several meetings during the implementation project. The first author also had the chance to make observations during user tests carried out before the implementation in three different departments in Statoil, in addition to a meeting with all the leaders of the business schools. Informal conversations with people in the organization have also provided useful information, although these have not been applied as formal empirical data. More general documents about Statoil as an organization

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(annual reports, the website, a book of the Statoil history) have provided useful additional information about the case organization. The aim in the interviews has been to gather information on informants’ subjective experiences, and in a constructivist perspective seen as mutually constructed by the interviewer and the interviewee (Silverman, 2001). In the analysis of the interview data, we have interpreted various understandings of the actors. The interview transcripts were coded and categorized into thematic categories, first with the help of the qualitative analysis software NUD*IST, inspired by a grounded theory approach (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) in which we let themes follow mainly from empirical data. Hence, in this article, we focus on how the very phenomenon of competence stands out as important in the empirical data, even though it was not necessarily addressed as a main issue in the start of this research project. The analysis should be considered as guided mainly by the empirical material since competence as an important phenomenon came from the informants themselves, and since we in the first categorizations worked on the empirical material without theoretical references. However, later on, a theoretical elaboration of ‘competence’ has followed the analysis, as suggested by Silverman (2001: 4), that theory provides ‘a footing in the world’. We found the theoretical framework that is presented later in this article useful and appropriate for the analysis. The literature provided ‘lenses’ for further analysis and for a deeper understanding of the phenomenon. In this way, we gained new insight in the material and the research question.

Exploring the concept of competence in Statoil We explore the concept of competence in Statoil on an individual as well as an organizational level. Based on the employees’ understandings of competence, we have identified two main categories: competence as asset and competence as process. We are interested in the informants’ various expressions of what competence is and not necessarily in the informants themselves. Even though it is not found in our empirical material, a person may hypothetically express a view of competence as asset in one context and as process in another one. However, this is not the focus in this article, since we are interested in categorizing the various understandings of competence that exist among the employees in the case organization and not in categorizing the informants as belonging to the ‘asset-group’ or the ‘process-group’.

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Competence as individual asset The informants define competence in a number of ways. Many of them quote a standard definition that apparently a lot of them have learned: knowledge, skills and attitudes. Others elaborate on the theme to some extent, and some even separate competence and knowledge. The quotation below expresses a perspective where competence is seen as an individual characteristic, a personal asset. Well, you know, to me competence is a totality of skills, it has to do with professional knowledge, personal knowledge and social skill . . . and that put together makes up competence in different situations. So, to me, it involves something about the person, something professional and the aspect of interpreting situations. Competence is something that rests with humans or persons. (End-user) According to Garavan and McGuire (2001) and Sandberg (2000), definitions of competence in the literature reflect three particular approaches: worker-oriented, work-oriented, and multidimensional (suggesting drawing the best of both approaches). The worker-oriented approach is predominantly input-based and focuses on variables related to a person. This perspective is represented in the work of Boyatzis (1982) and Spencer and Spencer (1993), and is reflected in the quotation above.

Competence as organizational asset Statoil is concerned with managing employees’ competencies and wishes to be more systematic in its orientation towards competence development. According to the informants, Statoil’s aim is to strengthen structure, system and control, and to attain visibility, availability, tidiness and overview. The organization wishes to get more control of employees’ competencies, that is, which competencies that are present in the company, which competencies the company needs, and how it can preserve competencies in the company when people leave. Statoil wants to be more professional in employees’ competence development and aim for a higher consciousness when it comes to learning and competence development. The learning portal is supposed to facilitate competence development in a systematic way, and to make it available to all employees in a simple manner, through one common gateway. The goal is also to make visible that the company emphasizes learning as a prioritized task. The ambition is to develop the employees in the direction that the

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company wants to go, so that the competencies match the challenges the company faces. The next quotations illustrate some of the points presented in this section. I hope to achieve an increased focus on learning, by setting up the portal, [. . .] that is, you hope that it will contribute to focusing on personal learning in the sense of developing personal skills in accordance with the current needs of the company. Now this does not follow automatically from the learning portal, but at least we’re aiming at a presentation and configuration that will increase people’s awareness of their competence and Statoil’s competence needs. (Member of the supervising board) I think it must be closely linked to objectives and results and strategies, to having a clear idea of what you want to achieve, and being honest about what we can do, and being good at mapping our resources, what we are actually doing, and having a good overview of what we are really doing. And then somehow map the gaps and work systematically, perhaps, let’s say that if you have defined in different dimensions, if you are good at this and she is good at that, and over the next year I want you to have taken at least one measure within that area to lift you up to that level, or . . . (End-user) The informants focus on the company’s need for competence and how this can be met by the individual employee. These views are in concordance with a functionalist perspective on competence and organizations. Philosophically, the competency movement is inspired by Taylor and the functionalist view of organization and management (Garavan & McGuire, 2001). Competency models seek the ideal combination of skills, knowledge, attitudes and experience. According to Garavan and McGuire (2001), the literature on Human Resource Development (HRD) reflects an increased need to understand how to succeed selecting and developing effectively performing employees that are also capable of responding quickly and flexibly to business needs. This is a response to organizations facing demands for higher productivity, increased flexibility and lower cost. Garavan and McGuire (2001) claim that an increased usage of competency models by organizations has been the focus of workplace learning in the US and the UK. Competency frameworks are used to identify learning needs and ensure that learning activities address business needs. Consider, for example, the following quotation from a work group leader:

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. . . the decision must be based on getting a better overview of the entire HR process, that is, trying to get a sensible overview over the employees’ competence, at the same time as becoming better equipped to using available resources for the appropriate tasks and where these competencies are needed. As of today we haven’t ‘registered’ the individual employees properly, while ventilators and machines [laughter] and products and money are registered down to the last detail . . . the LMS would make it possible to register the value of the people in the organization, that is, their competence. (Work group leader) Here, the employees’ competencies are seen as an entity that can be entered in the same way as machines or money or products. The value of people can be measured in a systematic way, or, at least, should be accounted for in this way. The use of the term ‘knowledge transfer’ points in the same direction: A recruitment problem, but also a knowledge transfer problem. That is, how do you make these aged people – well, mostly men – willingly reveal their knowledge in time for a good transfer to happen? Perhaps somebody sees that by collecting knowledge and organizing it better, we can improve the safety of that transferring process. (Member of the supervising board) Knowledge, or competence, is perceived as an artefact that can be transferred from one employee to another. The employee seems to be considered an empty jar that can be filled with the adequate competencies to match the company’s goals. Competence can be seen as both liberating and empowering, and as utilitarian instrumentalist. The latter is more common in management literature (Garavan & McGuire, 2001). In this view the goal is a fit between strategic objectives and competencies possessed by the employees. The competency model perspective is adequate for strategy, structure and system models of the organization, but is not harmonizing too well with the post-modern trend of workplace learning and individualized focus (Garavan & McGuire, 2001). In a utilitarian perspective, workplace learning does not need to be validated in strategic terms and the employees’ competencies must be treated rationally and quantitatively (Garavan & McGuire, 2001). The result might be that learning activities are defined too narrowly, at the cost of more long-term development plans. Norris (1991) points out that competence is generally described in terms of observable behaviour and explicit criteria, referred to as performance criteria or levels of performance. The pre-determination of

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good practice that follows, is not in accordance with the ability to handle change and flexible environments. Pre-definition of competence may confirm the researchers’ own model of competence, rather than capture workers’ competence (Sandberg, 2000).

Competence as individual process European researchers have to a larger degree a work-oriented approach, where the perspective is output-based and takes work as its point of departure (Garavan & McGuire, 2001). The focus is then more on the application of competence, than competence in itself. . . . but it doesn’t say much about how we actually carry out our work, and to me that is important too. So, both formal competence and your body of knowledge, but also how we actually do what we are supposed to do, or make use of that competence. (Work group leader) As the informant points out, competence as a term might be related to work performance, that is, how one does one’s work or how one makes the most of one’s formal competence (qualifications). Nordhaug (1987, 1990b, 1993, 2004) and Nordhaug and Gooderham (1996) work close to this notion of competence and define competence as knowledge, skills and attitudes that are usable, actually used, and of utility value in work life. Attitudes or motivation are therefore not included in this definition. Even though this view takes into account context and experience, we will argue that it expresses a quite functionalistic and quantitative understanding of competence. Competence is treated as something that can be identified, measured and counted. Dalin (1993) separates formal competence (knowledge and skills documented through exams and formal tests) from practical competence (competence that expresses itself through work). Competence is defined as attitudes, practical or theoretical knowledge, technical and social skills, understanding based on experience, and the use of other people’s experience in a network. In addition, Dalin (1993) is concerned with competence on two different levels. Competence development on the individual level includes the above-mentioned characteristics developed in relation to current tasks, future tasks, and the common life in the organization. On an organizational level, competence includes the organization’s ability to use the employees’ total practical competence in work towards goals. Following the typology from Garavan and McGuire (2001), another

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question is whether competence can be transferred from one organization to another, or put another way, if competence is universal or contextspecific? It is reasonable to argue that in the worker-oriented perspective, competence is seen as transferable in the sense that a competent worker may move from one organization to another and bring with him his competencies. In the work-oriented perspective, competence will be contextdependent. Høyrup and Pedersen (2002) represent such a perspective when they define competence as the capability to perform a certain task or a certain job. The concept comprises knowledge, experience and skills. A person is using his abilities and experiences to solve a situation containing a problem of some kind (Høyrup & Pedersen, 2002). Competence is then a capacity to make use of learned qualifications, professional as well as social, which may be activated, but not necessarily applied in any given situation. Hence, competence expresses an individual’s potential in the form of total knowledge, understanding and skills in a context with demands and resources (Jørgensen, 2001). Skills and situations are seen in relation to each other. Skills imply the possibility of learning a new ability on the basis of organizational and cultural pre-requisitions. Competence is a pre-requisite for more learning, as well as socially relational, context-dependent and situated – a person is performing in accordance to the challenges he or she is facing (Ellström, 1992). The mode of action reflects more of the individual’s capacity than only skills and qualifications, but also attitudes, values and so on, which are integrated on an individual level and influenced by experience. One of the informants very clearly separates knowledge from competence. Competence is defined as experience and skills to solve certain tasks. It does not necessarily contain reflection, elaboration and understanding. Knowledge is then understood as a broader concept comprising these components, and the informant points to the lack of guarantee for having knowledge even though you have competence. In a way, knowledge can’t be described, it has to do with our associative skills, the ability to put things in a connection, to relate to . . . that is, to organize chaos, from very many different angles . . . (Member of the supervising board) However, this can be also understood as the difference between qualifications and competence, where competence implies reflexivity.

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Competence as organizational process Several informants point to the importance of other learning activities than traditional courses for development of competence. Activities during daily work routine, such as participation in projects and work rotation, are seen as just as significant. So far, my experience in taking part in these so-called courses is that there’s a lot of repetition. There’s nothing innovative or new, but there’s a lot of repetition. So far, I would say that taking courses at Statoil may not be the most efficient, that is, it’s a tool, and a useful tool sometimes, but it’s not an innovative tool. I have stronger faith in job rotation, in using . . . well, take a few more credits for that matter, getting new visions, that’s just as valuable. I also believe in moving around in the company, not being stuck in one job, that’s important too. And recruiting new people, getting a more interdisciplinary composition of workers. (End-user) . . . they are building all these new schools in different areas of the company, so I feel that perhaps that pendulum swings a bit too far, that there are too many courses and too much . . . so that I think there’s a . . . I think we develop just as much in our daily work at Statoil, by working with concrete cases and challenging projects. That’s my experience, anyway. And looking back, I think my competence was strengthened the most in my daily work, not at courses. But, of course, they complete each other. (End-user) Competence development is perceived by these informants as a dynamic process that is part of daily work practice. Competence is viewed as contextdependent and based in the local organizational culture. . . . courses are a part of the competence development. But I think the greater part of this development takes place at your work place, by solving tasks, working in a team, participating in projects . . . could be what really produces the greatest competence development [. . .] most of us attend courses five to ten days a year, while competence development happens 365 days a year. (Work group leader) The perspective on competence as developed within the internal organizational context on a daily basis is also found in the literature. While Garavan

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and McGuire (2001) claim that the majority of the competency literature provides a rationalistic and positivistic perspective, in which competence is seen as attributes-based, context-independent, mechanistic and bureaucratic, the phenomenological view is presented as a contrast. In this view, it is argued that the understanding of competence should take into account the internal organizational context, the role of the employee and his experience at work. Competence is not important in itself, rather, how individuals experience work is important for competence. Competence has to be internally, and not externally, framed. This point is reflected in ethnographic studies of competence, in which good practice is defined in relation to the local organizational culture (Norris, 1991). The importance of local experience and knowledge for good practice and for developing appropriate processes in organizations are also highlighted by Brown and Duguid (2001). Furthermore, this view implies that competent practice cannot be defined in advance, since it is situation-specific. Høyrup and Pedersen (2003) follow this presentation of different perspectives, as they identify two different views of competence: the rationalistic, positivistic paradigm and the humanistic, phenomenological and social constructivist paradigm. The first one represents a benefit- and efficiency perspective, where competence development consists of maximizing the co-workers’ total work abilities. The objective is increased profit, and the way to achieve this is to develop the co-workers’ individual competencies through learning. Competence is seen as an individual characteristic that is context-free. In the other tradition, competence is seen as relations, that is, something that goes beyond the individual. Work life is meant to encourage the co-workers’ independence and experience of work life as meaningful. A similar differentiation is found in Sandberg (2000), between a rationalist approach where human competencies at work are perceived as constituted by a set of attributes, and an interpretative approach, ‘phenomenography’, where competence is understood as constituted of workers’ experience of work. Sandberg (2000) claims that a rationalist approach in general implies a dualist ontology and an objectivist epistemology, that is, that work and worker are understood as two separate entities, and that objective, explicit work exists independently of the worker. In opposition to this view, work and worker in a phenomenological, interpretative approach is understood as one entity through the lived experience of work. The meaning work takes on for the worker in his or her experience of it constitutes competence (Sandberg, 2000). This implies that competence is situational and contextdependent. I don’t want it [the learning portal] to be too focused on technical widgets, on the technical computer stuff. I want to see the learning

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portal as an arena, if you could put it that way . . . as a meeting place where people who are involved with competence development can meet and look at . . . share . . . what’s it called . . . share cards with one another. I think that’s the most important thing. (Member of the supervising board) The informant argues for the learning portal as a social arena where knowledge and experience may be shared and competence be developed. This is more in accordance with the phenomenological perspective presented earlier. Another informant points to the idea that a learning portal may be seen as a switch or an intersection where the individual perspective and the company perspective meet, providing competence development relevant to each employee and at the same time giving the company overview and greater opportunity for control. But the LMS could have been used as a catalyst, I mean, something that could trigger off other things in a way, because it was different, it was exciting, it was fun to work with. And then, someone who could see the opportunity could have joined in and used it as a tool to arrange bigger thoughts. (Work group leader) The learning portal may then be seen as an exiting empowerment in itself, or as a stimulus to look at competence as empowering. In this view, competence is mainly perceived as locally grounded in the individual employees: I think it’s necessary to make everyone understand that they are important pieces in the puzzle and that they will get . . . both a personal development but also a professional development, and by doing that, the company shows that they actually want to prioritize each worker, and I believe that if they are going to anchor the competence in Statoil, it has to come down to each and every one. (Work group leader) The different perspectives on competence found in Statoil are presented in Table 2. Competence as asset can be placed within the rationalistic and positivistic perspective, while competence as process can be understood within the phenomenological, humanistic and constructivist perspective (see Table 1). Competence can be seen as an individual asset and as an organizational asset. On the individual level, competence is understood as personal

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Table 2

Between asset and process

Different perspectives on competence among employees in Statoil Asset

Process

Individual

Competence as individual asset

Competence as work performance

Organizational

Competence as the collection of the employees’ individual assets

Competence as process and relations in everyday work in the organization

characteristics and skills. On the organizational level, competence reflects the collection of the employees’ individual assets. An implication of this perspective is that competence development means to provide the employees with the adequate competencies in such a way that the total collection of competencies in the organization makes it possible for the organization to achieve its goals. When competence is seen as process, competence on an individual level is defined as work performance, that is, how the individual employee carries out tasks in everyday work, or the interaction between worker and work. On an organizational level, competence is understood as ongoing processes in relations to and between the employees in the organizational culture. Following this perspective, it becomes important in competence development to make an effort to create an organizational culture where competence development can take place in everyday work. This could imply to design challenging work content, to create an atmosphere where discussion and reflection among employees are seen as necessary and desirable, as suggested by Brown and Duguid (2001), and to facilitate team work – for example through the establishing of communities of practice. Wenger (1998, 2000) is concerned with the importance of communities of practice for learning in organizations. He claims that communities of practice are crucial to an organization’s competence and to the evolution of this competence. Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for an activity and where learning and improving the activity are maintained as they interact regularly.7 Wenger (2000) defines competence as what we do and what we know – more precisely; what it takes to act and be recognized as a competent member of a community of practice. Learning is legitimate peripheral participation in communities of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991) and seen as a social process which requires interplay between social competence and personal experience (Wenger, 2000). This view on learning implies that ‘knowledge transfer’, as a term used by some

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of my informants, is problematic. When knowledge is locally grounded within a specific context in a community of practice it cannot automatically be transferred to other settings. This perspective reflects an understanding of competence as an individual asset, but also takes into consideration the importance of process. Competence as asset is a condition for learning as process. Wenger (1998) further argues that when a person brings his individual competence to a community with others and their individual competencies, competence within this community is negotiated between the members – a local regime of competence is established. The competence required to join a community of practice is neither merely individual nor abstractly communal – it implies a common, negotiated definition, but is experienced and manifested by individual members of the community (Wenger, 1998). This perspective embraces the interdependency of competence as asset and competence as process, and also reflects how the understandings of competence may vary according to context.

Conclusions This article has been concerned with the question: how is the concept of competence used and spoken of in Statoil and in the literature? On the one hand, the agenda of the implementation project and the expectations and visions expressed by several of the informants, where competence is seen as something that can be identified and measured in a systematic way, illustrates a rationalist view on competence (see Table 1). The focus is how to close the gap between the employees’ abilities and knowledge and what the company needs. This implies an understanding that it is possible to identify and describe competence needs in the future and then ‘fill’ the employees with adequate courses and training. On the other hand, several of the informants are concerned with bringing competence development down to the individual employee, that is, to base competence locally in the different departments in the organization. This view takes context into consideration. It is highlighted that competence development is more than traditional courses, but what goes on in the daily work practice. This illustrates a view on competence where competence is context-dependent and internally framed in the local organizational culture (Norris, 1991; Sandberg, 2000). Høyrup and Pedersen (2003) argue that behind the apparent consensus that we need competence development, there is a hidden fight between different interests and different perspectives. The organization can be seen as an arena for fight and struggle between different groups and interests to

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gain support for their particular demands and ideas (Ellström, 1992). The different actors might have different agendas concerning power and interests when competence development is discussed and planned. Also Rees and Garnsey (2003) question the apparent objectivity and neutrality of the concept of competence, especially related to gender. We have identified different views on competence and competence development among the employees in Statoil. There has not been established one, common perspective on what competence is and how competence development should be carried out. This might complicate competence development processes, but it could also be valuable to have an ongoing discussion on how the company should work with competence development. The rather rationalistic and positivistic view on competence expressed by some of the informants in the Learn@Statoil project, can be seen in opposition to the demands of the complex society of today. As in opposition to qualifications, competence implies a notion of reflexivity. This means that to build competence through a learning portal could be difficult. The learning portal, at least in the technical version that is used today, appears to be more like a collection of the employees’ qualifications and possibilities to acquire new qualifications, than a tool to build competence. The learning portal can be seen as an advanced catalogue of courses and not much more than that in this early version of the system. This cannot be said to stimulate reflexivity. Some of the informants are very aware of this and express a realistic and down-to-earth perspective on what one might achieve through the learning portal and what one might not. They express a perspective where the learning portal is ‘only a tool’. Still, several informants have great ambitions, plans and expectations to how the learning portal may contribute to competence work in the company. They express visions of greater consciousness for learning and competence development in the company through the implementation of the learning portal. It remains to be seen whether this can be achieved in later and more advanced versions of the system and when the learning portal has been in use for a longer period of time. The learning portal (and the LMS in general) represents only a limited way of considering competence. This focus implies just a few aspects of what competence might be, that is, the complex multitude of competence is not captured. To meet the challenges of the complex society of today, other strategies of competence development might be more appropriate. Obviously, a systematic tool for course administration does not exclude other ways to develop and handle competence. However, the ambitious goals concerning competence and the learning portal, as expressed by several of the employees, signify in our analysis the prioritizing of structurally based development of

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human resources. Moreover, informants consider the implementation of LMS as one of several necessary strategies to strengthen development and maintenance of competence in the company. More generally, the implementation of LMS in Statoil represents a widespread national and international trend. For example, all universities in Norway have, or are in the process of implementing, such systems and several of the large organizations are doing the same. The strong move towards this particular strategy suggests a broadly diffused perspective on competence as an entity that can be counted, measured and standardized. The focus is more on competence as asset than competence as process (see Table 2). This may leave out important dimensions of competence in the complex society of today and as expressed by several of the employees in Statoil. Also, this strategy contrasts the current (at least in scholarly analysis) stronger focus on practice and practice-based, situated (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Luff et al., 2000; Suchman, 1987), as well as tacit (Polanyi, 1983) knowledge. The question remains whether views on competence as advocated by these studies can be represented in more advanced versions of LMS later, or if such a tool is the way to go at all, whereas competence development is concerned. Either way, we feel safe to suggest that there is a need to pay attention to the fact that different perspectives on competence imply different strategies for competence development, as well as tools for such. In our university, we experience that the use of course management systems strengthen the potential for surveillance and control of each individual student’s work during the whole semester. More weight is put on term theses and exercises (assets) than more informal learning situations, such as long-term work with supervision (processes). Similarly, LMS in Statoil may be used to control and supervise competence management and development across the company with the use of an enterprise-wide information system. Without leaning toward a determinist understanding of technological systems, we will conclude that the LMS as used by Statoil promotes the potential of strengthening a structural view of competence as assets (overview of competence in the organization) rather than treating competence as various reflexive learning processes (practical individual training). Although it may turn out that an enterprise-wide LMS can help developing a broader overview of the enterprise as a whole, and hence perhaps a stronger organizational identity, we expect that the actual competence development will still be handled in practice-related activities in real-work contexts, such as described by Lave and Wenger (1991) and Wenger (1998). According to Garavan and McGuire (2001), the vast amount of

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literature on the term competence has not been especially concerned about employees’ understanding of the term and how they relate to competence development and maintenance. In our study of the implementation of an LMS, however, we identified the employees’ understanding and use of the term competence as an important issue for a potentially successful implementation of an LMS and knowledge management more generally. Our study has shown that views on competence vary among the employees, and that these variations need to be addressed when working with competence development. This article is mainly an empirical contribution, drawing on users’ and planners’ thoughts of the potential of an LMS, and demonstrating that there are different intentions and strategies toward the meaning of competence and the potential of an LMS as an enterprise-wide system. The LMS is not bound to fail as a system, and might very well support the need to visualize competence development across a large organization. However, the potential of LMS might be further utilized if organizations implementing learning management systems maintain a focus on practical workplace training in context, in addition to developing and maintaining the LMS itself.

Notes 1

2

3 4 5 6

7

NHO: Konkurranseevnebarometer 2004. Lokalisering Norge, [http://www.nho.no/ files/kbarometer_pdf.pdf]. NHO is the main organization for Norwegian employers. Membership consists of more than 16,000 enterprises ranging from small familyowned businesses to large industrial enterprises. The concept of ‘knowledge’ is related to ‘competence’, but we will not include a discussion of the similarities and differences between these two concepts in this article. Even though we touch upon ‘knowledge’ when the ‘knowledge society’ is discussed, the main focus in this article is the discussion of ‘competence’. Press release by Deloitte, 24 January 2005, [http://www.deloitte.com/dtt/press_release/ 0,1014,sid%253D6959%2526cid%253D71520,00.html]. 10 October 2004, [http://www.statoil.com]. SAP Learning Solution. ‘Learning’ can be defined in a number of ways. Wenger (1998) proposes a social theory of learning where focus is on learning as social participation. ‘Lifelong learning’ implies an ongoing learning process throughout life. We will not go further into a discussion on learning theory in this article. Definition from Wenger’s homepage: [http://www.ewenger.com/theory/index.htm].

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Erna Håland (Cand.polit.) is a PhD student in Sociology at the Department of Sociology and Political Science and at Program for Learning and ICT at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). Her field of interest is organization studies, especially organizational learning and knowledge management. She is currently working on a PhD project concerning the implementation of a Learning Management System (LMS) in an organization, with Statoil as a case study. [E-mail: [email protected]]

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Aksel Tjora is Associate Professor in Sociology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Department of Sociology and Political Science, as well as the Norwegian Research Centre for Electronic Patient Records (NSEP). His research focuses mostly on development and use of technologies, and especially on collaborative and communication technologies. In particular, he is doing much research in health service organizations, with emphasis of the role of information technologies, telemedicine and the patient role. As a musician and neighbourhood enthusiast, he has also extended his research into music technology and creativity, as well as social studies of architecture and housing. He has published in journals such as Sociology of Health & Illness, Science Technology & Human Values, New Technology, Work and Employment, and Qualitative Research. [E-mail: [email protected]]