"Table of Contents1 Purpose and the objectives of the study 32 Theoretical framework 33 Placement of study within the research area 44 Research Approach 55 Research methodology 56 Presentation and analysis of the results 57 References 8 1. Purpose and the Objective of the studyThe aim of the study - to investigate what constitutes human competence at work- isvery well defined and has been discussed in Abstract, Introduction, Discussion andConclusion. 'While defining it in the Introduction, the aim is immediately linked with theresults of the study which proposes interpretative approach as an alternative to therationalistic approaches for defining what constitutes the competence at work. Realizingthe key managerial problem of developing human competence at work in wake oftechnological development, he points at the critical issue of lack of understanding of theingredients that form the human competence at work,The study is more a comparative analysis between rationalistic approach andInterpretative approach for defining and understanding the competence at work.Identifying the key flaws and limitations in the rationalistic approach which definescompetence as a set of attributes such as the knowledge., skills and ability (KW toperform work, the author proposes Interpretative approach( Phenomenology) to replace the mostly used rationalistic approach. As the objectivesand the results of the research are interlinked; one finds it difficult to recognize that it wasfailure or{ the limitation of the rationalistic approach that triggered the formation ofresearch objectives or it was `the versatility or presupposition of the Interpretativeapproach to be solution that contributed to it.2. The theoretical frameworkThere has been in-depth, vivid and to an extent comprehensive identification anddiscussions of the theories related to human competence at work, The reader comes a crossto two sets of theoretical framework, that is, rationalistic and interpretative approaches atthe very start of the article in the Abstract. There are consistent discussions about the theories and approaches that have emerged historically while defining the humancompetence at work. He starts with Frederick Wilson Taylor's (1911) all time famous Timeand motion study" which gives the principle of scientific management for improvedproductivityFurther, the discussions categorize the Job Analysis as mostly used approach foridentifying competence; and that was based on scientific principles of the rationalisticresearch. He gives very little account of Job Analysis, though he calls it very dominanttheory. The time the current article was finalized (in 2000), comprehensive work wasdone on the Job Analysis; and a new broader term work analysis' was coined to replace JobAnalysis (Sanchez, 1994; Sanchez & Levine, 1999). The very discussion about work andworker has remained at the center of the defining the competence and training anddevelopment modules and approaches. The distinction between work and workerrequirement can be in uniformity with 'two worlds of taxonomies of human behavior,identified by Dunnette( 1976), The concept of work and work oriented approaches, whichforms the core of Sandbergs discussions of theories and theoretical framework in this articlehad the obvious link with the Dunnette's work. That has not been hinted.He follows it with critique on three categories of rationalistic approaches: workeroriented, work oriented and multimethod; and substantiates his critique by goingthrough many citations, He specifically criticizes Coyatzis's (1982) generic model ofcompetence in management, ( this approach has been extensively used in LISA and UK)by concluding from the work of Jacob's ( 1989) who called these competencies to be togeneric and abstract and; therefore, of the limited value for contributing to the CompetenceDevelopment. With this conclusion, one would argue that do we need a set of competenciesfor every person? Generic set of competencies can provide the foundation which can be further developed for specific work, person, organization and condition. He termed all thethree approaches discussed above as attribute-based phenomenon.Further, he gives a brief critical evaluation of rationalist approach. Referring Yuk1(1994),Attewell(1990), Norris (1991) and his own previous works of 1991 and 1994, he tries to provethat all rationalistic approaches focus attributes that define competence. And all theseattributes are abstracts and simplified, which make these approaches as indirect as KSAs do notclearly define that what the ingredients of competence for preforming work are.In his discussions for developing rationale, he has not mentioned the rationalistic perspectivederived from human capital theory ( Becker, 1975) which has remained as an importantresearch area for defining competence ( Ellstrorn, 1997He has succeeded in putting his point while criticizing rationalist theories of "dualisticontology" that takes the competence into two separate entities of worker and work, Thisrationale of dualistic ontology do facilitate the argument, but at the later stage, when hedefines Interpretative approach, he says that the competence and the work being experiencedare two interlinked things, this argument becomes weak. The weakness is because even if werefer work and worker together still they can be distinguished separately, We are able toidentify them separately even if they are merged together; then why that cannot be called asdualistic ontolog,He gives detailed account of the development of theoretical framework of Interpretativeapproaches, Starting from Weber (1964/ 1947) whom he has termed as the first initiator of theconcept, he goes through series of citation of Phenomenological sociologists Schutz (1945, 1953),Berger and Luckmann (1966), and Giddens (1984, 1993). He calls it as Phenomenology- thecondition that person and world are inseparably linked through persons' lived experience of theworld (Berger & Luckmann, 1966; Husserl, 1970/1900-01; Schutz, 1945, 1953). With strong arguments he tried to establish that point of departure should be workers' livedexperience of work rather than considering work and worker as separate entities. With thistheoretical framework, he stresses with considerable impact that the Phenomenology basedInterpretative approach is an alternative way of comprehending the human competence atworld3. Placement of study within the research areaThe author has succeeded in establishing the need to go beyond the rationalistic approach fordefining competence. As discussed earlier, he has gone through the historical evaluation ofresearch that has been conducted to understand the human competence at work. The key gapthat he has pointed out is rationalistic approach to be indirect, not able to describe thecompetence directly; and the framework does not answer to it, till the assumptions underlyingthese theories are studied on ontological and epistemological level. The author is aware ofthe development of the interpretative research and finds it appropriate to fill the gap ofseparating work and worker as described under rationalistic approaches with the 'workers'lived experience of the work'. He has been able to give a comprehensive overview of theinterpretative approach that is based in phenomenology, In fact, to my understanding, he isrefereeing to the Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), which he should havedefined further and given more references to research work that has been done in that area.The primary goal of IPA researcher is to investigate how individual make sense of theirexperiences ( Pietkiewicz, Smith, 2012)"