Lateral cooperation
The use of works councils Action learning
Etc. …
Strategy seminar
Development of group heads
Clarification and measuring (of competence)
Competence
Lateral cooperation
The use of works councils Action learning
Etc. …
Figure: Signifiers of competence
The point of the figure is to signify competence as a dynamic concept, that competence, for me, is an empty concept, void of content from the outset. The signifier “competence” can signify virtually anything, anything that the institutions deem relevant as content for a competence development programme. This approach tries to see competence as a concept that needs to be given meaning, viewing it as a “floating signifier”. This however, does not mean that competence can stay void of content, for those in the competence development processes. As also the consultants noted:
After being involved in the competence development project for half a year it no longer suffices to claim that we are doing competence development. We ask ourselves how “competence” materialises as competence in the project, but we are hardly able to come up with an answer apart from reproducing the many different processes in the organisation. But are we merely to accept that competence development is what we are doing as long as we refer to it as competence development? (Bojesen et al. 2006:112).
While it is perfectly acceptable for the “I as a researcher” to operate with the floating signifier, it becomes problematic, from the perspective of the “I as consultant” to accept any definition at face value as long as it is labelled
“competence”. The consultants and I have to disclose all relevant connections and signifying meanings of competence - not just those mentioned by “official”
spokespersons or institutionalised meanings. Then we must design a program aimed at a number of signifiers singled out in collaboration with participants from the institutions11. But as a researcher something in this approach seems disturbing.
11 The consultants and I also felt the need to know what we mean by competence, and this so urgently that after having worked about three months on the project we formulated the following seven points, mostly for our own sake:
1. The project aims to get beyond the approach to competence that exclusively attempts to implement development as a top-down process. Competence is not only something determined by exogenous stakeholders/forces (e.g. consultants or researchers), but just as much something that the institution can contribute to influence and define.
2. The project aims to concretise the perception of what competence is and what it is to become through a bottom-up process in which candidates for competence development participate actively.
3. The project finds competence to be a local, contextual phenomenon, which is constructed in a social field (e.g. of colleagues and groups) making it impossible at a general genetic level to construct “true” competencies. Therefore, the project aims to make sense of competencies through the daily work of the individual (employee, group, or institution).
4. Any generalised understandings of competence will thus always stem from and be a simplification of one (or several) local premises. Therefore, it does not make sense to implement standardised tools if we want them to have an effect on competence in practice.
5. The project prioritises action research (e.g. action learning) that intervenes by attempting to change the practice of the organisational participants in interaction with the
consultant/research team, and thus aiming for collective ownership of the project. Data generation via interviews for the purpose of diagnosis and documentation is necessary but not sufficient and should never stand alone.
6. Development and competence is often referred to as if organisations, groups or
individuals have a development problem (”we lack this and that competence”, “we have a competence gap”, “your competencies need improving”, etc.). This logic signals that if development is not dealt with actively nothing will happen – the world is fundamentally static.
7. The point of departure of the project is nevertheless that the world (and competencies) is (are) always in the process of changing, exactly because this is the condition of the world.
Or more philosophically: We are not in the world, but become humans by interacting with the world. The relevant question for the project is therefore not if development takes place, but rather what kind of development is taking place (and how it might be
manageable).
In the project’s view competence is fundamentally a contextual phenomenon, which is constructed in a social field. Therefore the project must include the specific humans and the context of competence development. Since development goes on continuously, the project is also about stabilisation through a certain form of control. Therefore the project can experiment with forms of control different from the traditional ones (classroom, future scenarios as benchmarks,
I am not so much interested in studying the many different links that competence seems to establish, as I am in discovering if there is any rationale or organising principle underlying the way in which competence seems to relate, to workings of practice. How can I describe this constant relating, mutating character in which competence transforms itself into many diverse matters?
This way of formulating my object of study as being one of constant mutation and transformation leads me to consider the utilisation of “assemblage” by Robert Cooper, the British social scientist into what he calls:
the continuous movement of parts in a restless flux in which the separate identities of the parts give way to a mutual coming and going, uniting and separating; and in which identities as self-contained units simply semble, seem, feign, pretend (Cooper 1998:110).
To Cooper, assemblage is “neither a unity nor a totality but a multiplicity” (Cooper 1998). Cooper, very eloquently points to the many double meanings inherent in assemblage, one of them being betweenment “this is the double function of the seam; it separates and joins at the same time” (1998:111). Maybe this is what I am looking for. Doesn’t competence work as an assemblage connecting different parts at the same time as separating them from others? And when I learn that Cooper in pointing to the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze says that assemblage (agencement, in French) also means arrangement, organisation and shares the touch of agency, the concept seems even more relevant. But how can it become useful to me in deciding on my object of study? One day driving home from a workshop session a question from one of my fellow consultants gave me a clue:
Consultant: So, who is your dissertation going to be about then?
AB: What do you mean?
Consultant: I mean, for instance, will I be in there, all that we, I say and do, will you write and analyse that or do you focus solely on the people we work with?
generalised evaluation and categorisation tools, etc.). Epistemologically the interesting issue is how competence (development) is constructed in a social field when testing alternative methods of control that start from continuous variability and competence as something emerging within the local, social field.
AB: Well, it’s going to be about the work that is produced in the four institutions, that includes you, me and the people we work with…
Consultant: That’s not very precise, is it?
The tacit implication of this question is that I am forced to choose whom specifically I am studying, because my choice will influence my methodology and my credibility as a researcher. My reluctance to answering the question has nothing to do with doubting that what I am doing makes sense. On the contrary, what I have been trying to avoid is having one single passive object of study in the centre, which would be subject to analysis from an endless number of perspectives.
Instead, I want to study practice and as a consequence, make objects appear and disappear with the changing conditions of practice. But the conversation with the consultant also made me think in terms of the who, the human individuals, in the competence projects. All the programmes include a number of subjects exposed to certain kinds of change processes in which thay are asked to take active part.
Competence is not merely an empty concept, but is constantly ascribed to someone in performing. The “continuous movement” of competence “in a restless flux” that Cooper talks about is always already linked to subjectivities. This is a breakthrough. Thus, my search for the proper categories, the nominalistic approach, should ultimately rest on the ambition of describing what is happening in between, in the daily processes at work, not only as a matter of what happens when competence is invited into the organisation; but as a matter of what happens to subjectivity when competence is actualised. Before we can sum up the consequences my way into the project has had for the performative power of competence I want to share with you a note on the scientific nature of my study and some of the key concepts employed in the text.