Competencies management in knowledge-based firms

As people are called to transform data, information and past experiences in to effective knowledge, the management of individual competencies will beco me more and more important in knowledge-based firms. This paper presents bo th theoretical and practical aspects concerning the management of competenc ies, based on a seven year field research conducted in a large R&D firm. Th e main conclusions of the research are: 1) competencies are constructed by organizational members who internee through natural language; 2) it is impo ssible to separate the act of competencies' identification from the act of evaluation; 3) relevant competencies emerge from explanation discourses del ivered by observers in the attempt to justify their judgement about the per formance of an individual within given situations; (4) it is possible, by m eans of fuzzy logic, to design evaluation support systems (ESS) of competen cies by analysing explanation discourses. These assumptions are particularl y suitable for organizations operating in a turbulent context, where compet encies frequently change.