FE rapport,
University of Gothenburg, Department of Business Administration

Abstract: Change and transfer of competence within an industrial company – complex and interactive engineering.

This paper presents how transfer of knowledge and competence occurs in relation to a major organizational change. The particular setting of predominantly engineers as organizational players can be one explanation as to how structure sometimes is emphasized more than content. The theoretical issue in this paper is one of competence transfer and how competence is communicated through the interaction of people. Collective competence is a term used to se how this interaction creates organizational learning and development. The theoretical foundation is primarily symbolic interaction; however the paper is more of a case study than a theoretical argumentation. One issue that is has been focused is the structure of meetings, and it is a concurrent issue on the agenda. The reason for this is that the meeting structure in order to correspond with hierarchical levels as well as the task and need for information has create a formal structure of meetings to enable the concerned person to be able to attend the meetings needed. For a person with high hierarchical status as well as one with many tasks there is a meeting to go to every moment of the week. The task of competence and knowledge transfer has been an issue that has not been discussed in the sense one would think it has been. It has been in the background and the issues discussed and focused on, mostly as unspoken but very dominant agenda are of a more practical nature. The change has two major practical restrictions, group sizes should not exceed 10 persons and the whole setting for the change had to be set before summer vacation (in order to be able to move everybody’s office equipment etc). The official agenda, however, is that the work should be subject to more commonality, the efficiency should be increased and the balance between projects and line organization should be restored.

Keywords: Collective competence; learning; interaction; transfer of knowledge

31 pages, May 26, 2003

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