Core Competences as Meta-narratives - beyond the Affirmative Mode: Linking Knowledge, Power and Narrations

Core competences or capabilities are characterized in an almost exclusive affirmative way. Even if the perils of path dependence and core rigidity are acknowledged to some extent, the flip side of core competences is not really reflected in the well-established concepts. The paper focuses on such shortcomings accompanying the one-sided affirmative conceptualizations and tries to develop a more critical perspective. Based on a postmodern theory of knowledge three different types of knowledge problems are identified and transferred into an organizational concept on knowledge, power, narrations and meta-narratives representing the deep knowledge structure of an organization. This concept is related to the idea of core competence and the interpretation of core competences as meta-narratives offers an analytical and critical perspective and allows differentiating between core competences and core rigidities not only by referring to the market but also within an organization.