Dynamic Capabilities and T-Shaped Knowledge : A Viable Systems Approach

As change in context is continuous and fast, the viable system's decision-maker faces the challenging emergence of conditions of complexity, and struggles to manage the system in order to maintain and improve its effectiveness in the context. In such conditions, a key point, from our perspective, is that the system, by interacting with other entities and addressing new problematic situations, accomplishes a relevant social learning process by adjusting/adapting its knowledge aligning its variety to the emerging needs, so developing new competences.According to the Service Science (SS) there is a growing need for T-Shaped professionals. A T-Shaped professional is endowed with competencies necessary to develop some kinds of innovation by leveraging not only on problem solving skills but also and mainly on decision making capabilities. This endowment can represent a relevant source of competitive advantage, especially when organizations are expected to address conditions of high complexity. In this respect, we argue that a shift of focus from competencies to capabilities is essentially required to develop a T-Shaped knowledge.This view has relevant implications for the redefinition of the education programs and opens to the deepening of several research issues aimed ta better defining a knowledge based management approach