"A Critique of Sandberg's Approach to UnderstandingHuman Competence at WorkAbstract — The article published in the Academy of Management Journal written by Professor JorgenSandberg (2000) had achieved good status among the researchers in the field of organizational andmanagement studies. The main purpose of Sandber g’s article is to study what constitutes competence or workers ata workplace. In this paper, I discuss and Sandberg's theoretical framework, method of analysis and mainfinding s rate how the main research question in Sandberg's article remains unanswered.Index Terms — Competence, phenomenography, interpretative approach, phenomenology, rationalisticapproach.1. INTRODUCTIONDuring the last few decades, organizational and management research works have been dominated bythe quantitative research techniques, specially the hypothetico-deductive method (Johnson, P. 2015). However,Cassell, C. el al (2006) indicated that qualitative research methods do also have deep roots in the managementand business research practices_ Neverlheless, many authors suggest that qualitative research methods can offerbetter understanding of organizational and management matters.The particular subject of managing worker's competence inside organizations has been dominantlystudied through qualitative research techniques, namely phenomenological and phenomenographicapproaches (Jamil, R. 2015), Phenomenography refers to the research approach which ai ms to describethe several ways that a set of individuals understand a phenomenon/fact, while the aim of phenomenologyis to explain and simplify the meaning and formation of a phenomenonlact. Larsson, J. and Holmstrom, I. (2007) indicated that – unlike phenomenology - Phenomenography is still not a very well-known researchapproach.Phenornenographic approach follows the Empiricism practices which oppose Rationalism_ 11 was developed inSweden during the 1970s by the educational psychologist, Ference Marton, and his coworkers_ As theapproach was developed in Sweden, it's logical that the Swedish Professor Jorgen Sandberg (2000) had examinedit when he was trying to answer the research question: Why some workers perform better than others?During his argument to support Empiricism against Rationalism, Sandberg criticized all rationalisticapproaches for understanding human competence at workplace. Moreover, Sandberg also criticized the earlierinterpretative studies as they did not review the differences in human competence that may take place inside thesame group of human resources.Though I do acknowledge that Sandberg's (2000) article had enriched the way of understanding and evaluatinghuman competence inside organizations, I noticed that the article suffers some flaws and gaps that may raisedoubts about some of its main findings/2. PURPOSE AND OBJECTIVES OF SANDBERG'S STUDYThe main purpose of Sandberg's (2000) research work was to study what constitutes competence of workers at aworkplace. The other objectives of Sandberg's article are listed herewith:I. To answer the main research question; why some workers perform work more competently thantheir colleagues who work in the same group?II. To highlight the main shortcomings of the dominant Rationalistic approaches for identifying competence.III. To present and support the interpretative approach for understanding human competence at work, wherein ifs believed that worker's conception of their work - rather than particular collection ofattributes - constitutes competenceIV. To examine the interpretative approach through analyzing the competence of a group of engine optimizers al Volvo Car Corporation in Sweden. V. To bridge the research gaps that Sandberg (2000) observed in the earlier interpretative studies. Those earlier studies could not demonstrate how the context-dependent attributes / qualitiesare incorporated in competent work-performance_ They also did not identify the changes in competenceThai may take place within the same group of people inside an organizationSandberg could successfully present the main purpose of his research work as he reiterated the aim of his studyboth in the introduction and the conclusion parts of his article. However, I show in the following sections thatSandberg could not successfully answer the main research question in his article.3. SANDBERG'S THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKIts evident from Sandberg's (2000) article that he is a loyal follower of the Phenomenography school. He stronglydefended Phenomenographic methods against all Rationalistic approaches. Furthermore, he strictly followed the datacollection methods of the traditional Phenomenographic approach, which relies mostly on interviews with open- ended questions. Moreover, the Phenomenographic way of analyzing results is very clear in Sandberg's arguments.Sandberg made il clear throughout his article that the main two theories for studying competence are:i. The Rationalistic Approaches, in which competence is seen as context-free. In these approaches,competence is constituted by a certain collection of attributes_ Moreover, work and workers areconsidered two separate entities. Sandberg's listed three different Rationalistic approaches for studying competence:a. Worker-oriented approach: It focuses on workers' attributes (knowledge, skills and abilities).b. Work-oriented approach: It captures actions required for completing a certain work, and then convertsthese actions to workers' attributes.c. Multi-method approach ii. The interpretative Phenomenographic approach, in which competence is seen as context -dependent. In this approach, competence is constituted by the way workers conceive their work.Moreover, work and workers are considered one single entity. Sandberg criticized all Rationalistic approaches because they consider competence as a collection of context- free attributes that humans utilize to complete their work. Such understanding of competence does not describe ifworkers use the identified attributes for carrying out their assigned work tasks. Ii also does not describe how theseworkers use the identified attributes. Furthermore, Sandberg's interpretation of the writings of Michael Polanyi - the Hungarian chemist whointroduced the concept of tacit knowledge - is also questionable. Polanyi (1962) indicated there are two categories ofknowledge: (i) tacit knowledge and (ii) focal knowledge. Each person does have tacit knowledge, however if isusually hard for him/her to describe if. A certain portion of knowledge chat is built-up out of experience is tacitknowledge. In his book The Tacit ! Dimension", Polanyi (1966) indirectly indicated that an act of "knowing" iscontext-specific in the sense that shared regulations between two persons are essential for transferring tacitknowledge. Polanyi (1966) did not clarify how context and regulations are created, however Sandberg still used "TheTacit Dimension' book to support his argument about the context-dependence feat competence, Crane, L, (2016)clarified that the 'personal coefficient' mentioned by Polanyi (1966) does actually refer to context, however it does notexplicitly mean the context is personal. It is understood by many researchers that such context is a referent toeither culture or environment, Therefore, Sandberg's reference to ''The Tacit Dimension" book is not really relevant.4. SANIBERG'S RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONEven though I do have some critical views about Sandberg's research methodology and analysis, I do acknowledge thathis article is a better-representation of the phenomenographic approach to studying competence, To the best of myknowledge, Sandberg (2000) demonstrated the first interpretative attempt to identify variations of competence for agroup of people who work in the same learn. Sandberg could also highlight some of the flaws in the Rationalistic approaches to understandingcompetence. However, in my opinion, the most important contribution of Sandberg's work is his demonstration of the importance of ihe way that workers shall conceive their work. This can genuinely enhance recruilmeni- processes, training p i =s, competence-capturing processes and competence-development programs insides 1 organization5. SANDBERG'S RESEARCH METHODOLOGYAs explained above. Sandberg tried to faithfully adopt the traditional phenornenographic techniques in hisstudy. In this section, I briefly describe his research methodology and highlight my personalobservations/comments whenever applicable. 5.1 SELECTION OF WORK TEAMI believe that Sandberg's choice of Volvo's engine optimizers for examining the interpretative approach wascarefully studied. The tacit dimension is very strong inside such working team; hence its an ideal team fordemonstrating the context-dependency of competence and the importance of workers conception of work.Should Sandberg chose another working team that relies more on explicit (i.e. articulated or codified) knowledge,rather than tacit knowledge (e.g. cashiers, accountants, etc), it would have been more difficult for him todemonstrate that the attributes. are not the main elements of human competence_5.2 DATA COLLECTION METHODThe following steps where followed by Sandberg for collecting the research data:? He selected 20 engine optimizers out of 50 all-male optimizers. He supported his selection byearlier studies about relevance of theoretical sampling. He also confirmed that in his study, he couldnot identify new variation in competence after reviewing 15 engine optimizers. However, Sandbergadmitted later that such sample size cannot guarantee that all actual conceptions were captured.? He arranged a seminar for the engine optimizers to explain the purpose of his study.? He spent one week at their department to observe the optimizers' work ? He attended internal induction seminars about the optimizers work.? He conducted a 2-to-3 hour interview with each of the 20 selected workers.? He asked two main open-ended questions during the interview:1) What does the work of engine optimization mean for you?2) What does a competent engine optimizer mean for you?? He then raised follow-up questions in order to get further elaboration.? All interviews were voice-recorded and then articulated on 700 pages.I personally believe that there is one important missing final step in Sandberg's data collection method, that step isthe verification of the interviewed optimizer's ability to perform his reported conception of work. This could beachieved by (1) observing the optimizer's actual work after expressing Iti[s conception and (2) consulting the directline manager of the optimizer.However, as such verification work requires certain tacit experience by the interviewer, it was not possible forSandberg to carry out such verification by himself. In my opinion, without such verification, it's not possible toconclude that all optimizers who did not provide comprehensive understanding of competence (e.g. they providedConception 2) cannot perform according to the higher conception (e_g. Conception 3).The only verification that Sandberg could carry out was through asking the optimizers of lower conception aboutthe performance of optimizers who adopted higher conception.6. SANDBERG'S PRESENTATION & ANALYSIS OF RESULTSThe following steps where followed by Sandberg for analyzing the research data:? He read the transcript of each interview several limes? He categorized the engine optimizers into certain groups according to their conceptions.? He read the transcript of each interview again. "