Context Matters! On Possibilities of Being Competent in an Organisational Context

This paper explores how the context of competencies affects the way we see and value competence and how it thereby forms communication and strategies of action. The paper puts forward the view that the context of competence is often spoken of in incomprehensible terms and generally taken for granted and unproblematic, although it is agreed to be of great importance. By crystallising three different modes of contextualised competence thinking (prescriptive, descriptive and analytical) the paper shows that the underlying assumptions about context - the interaction between the individual and the social - has major consequences for the specific enactment of competence. The paper argues in favour of a second order observation strategy for the context of competence. But in doing so it also shows that prevailing second-order competence theories so far, in criticising (counter) positions (and their lack of including the context) have also failed to make their notion of context explicit and thus assume that the context is a clear and self-explanatory concept no matter the starting point.