Learning firm specific knowledge and skills: Conceptual issues and empirical results

The paper discusses the significance of firm specific knowledge and skills resources among employees, discusses strategies for measurement, and reports the results of an empirical study of learning and competence acquisition. First, the concept of firm specific competences as originally developed within neo-classical human capital theory is discussed. It is argued that the conceptualisation within this theoretical direction has crucial limitations, because of its emphasis on technically related firm specificity. In order to more comprehensively grasp the relationship between employees and companies it is necessary to supplement the technically linked specificity with organizationally related specificity. This paper accordingly distinguishes between intraorganisational competence and firm-specific technical competence. Intraorganisational competences are the non-task-specific competences related to one particular organization and include knowledge about colleagues, culture, structure, procedures, networks and activities in different parts of the organizations. Firm specific technical competences are task-specific competences related to one particular organization and include skills needed to complete specific tasks in the firm, competences needed to operate or maintain tailor-made equipment, knowledge about firm-specific work-practices and competences related to manufacturing unique products. Second, the paper discusses the challenges of operationalizing and measuring firm specific competences among employees. Until recently the two types of firm-specific competences have not been operationalized for the purpose of self-report survey data collection. A new multi-item, self-report measure was constructed for the purpose of the empirical study reported her. For each item, the employee is asked to assess his or her degree of knowledge or skill with regard to specific subject matters within the task-specific and the non-task-specific domain respectively. Third, these measures were applied in a study of learning and competence acquisition among 980 managers and professionals in an oil company. The study was designed to investigate the effects of internal job mobility, organizational structure and communication pattern on the