Understanding human competence at work: An interpretative approach

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.