La notion de compétence : continuités et changements par rapport à la notion de qualification

Abstract

Initially, debate about job qualifications was organized in two distinct currents: on the one hand, the determination to detect the objective criteria for qualifications and, on the other, the decision to analyze qualifications as the dated and localized result of a social compromise. Emphasis is laid on the first current’s affiliation with the notion of ‘competence’, which, focusing on the individual’s characteristics, does away with any reference to a social compromise. Why do the advocates of this current overlook, or even object to, this affiliation, when they present their approach as being radically new. It is hypothesized that the way competence has been operationalized explains this position: it has been used to raise questions about the French system of industrial relations and its institutions, all this with the aim of promoting a ‘new’ wage-earning relationship, one better adapted to ‘market requirements’. Empirical studies conducted in France and the United Kingdom highlight the weaknesses in this argumentation, which, starting out from the observation (supported by scarce evidence) of changes in these ‘requirements’, ends up claiming that it is necessary to base the wage-earning relationship on direct, individual negotiations between employers and employees. This approach’s claim to being an objective, scientific method is criticized by showing that it falls in line with Taylorism and is closely related to earlier attempts to study individual qualifications, attempts concluding that qualifications could only be defined socially – precisely what the advocates of competence think economy can do. After emphasizing the limits and issues involved in making competence operational, the authors recognize that this notion, especially thanks to the semantic clarification it entails, could, if recognition were given to the importance of social negociations, be of use to forsee the future of industrial relations systems.