Competencies and Organizational Learning

Organizational learning can be considered as systemic behaviour oriented to acquire capacities for dealing with the needs and challenges of organizations in competitive environments. This entails that there must be some measurable and flexible concept that drives the acquisition of those capacities. Competencies understood as the workplace capabilities of individuals or groups can be used as one of the approaches for managing such capacity-acquisition behaviour. Even though competency is not a new concept, the management of competencies through Information Technology for improved effectiveness and efficiency poses a number of significant challenges that still require much research to come up with general-purpose and reliable solutions in the Information Systems discipline. This chapter delineates the main concepts for a competency-based framework in the context of organizations, and enumerates some requirements for which definitive and commonly accepted solutions are still not available.