Dynamic Capabilites and the Development of Organizational Competencies

The recent discussion in the field of strategic management broadly favours the idea of a dynamization of organizational comptencies on order tp overcome potential dysfunctions and rigidities of organizational competence building. The major question addressed in this paper is wether, how and to what extent it is possible to re-conceptualize organizational competencies to become a dynamic construct. After a brief recapitulation ot the distinguishing features of organizational competence, two baxic approaches of dynamic capabilities are identified and presented. By reconstructing the argumentation logic of both it will be shown that both approaches offer solutions that in the final analysis are likely to destroy the idea of organizational competence building. The last section of this paper aims to develop an alternative approach which preserves the advantages of competence building and tries rto solve the rigidity issues, not by integrating a dynamic dimension into the competence construct but rather by establishing a dual mechanism. This two tier solution is called competence monitoring.