Abstract
Distinctive and difficult-to-imitate capabilities have been recognized as the key source of a firm’s competitive advantage and have gained much attention in recent years. This line of research is still, however, relatively young. Researchers have mainly tried to categorize and illustrate types of capabilities, and to show how they change over time. Little attention has been paid to the systematic and intentional development of capabilities or to practitioners’ active contribution to capability building. This chapter introduces a developmental intervention conducted at a Finnish road-building company as an endeavor to purposefully create a new understanding of the nature of capabilities, and to develop new collaborative capability-building practices among functional specialists, such as HRD practitioners and systems developers. The goal was to critically evaluate the current system of capability building, to break away from the traditional function-based division of work among specialists in development activities, and to find a more systemic and concurrent form of capability building. The analysis presented in this chapter is based on the Cultural Historical Activity Theory and dialectical approach, which provide an alternative way of conceptualizing capabilities: not as aggregates of externally linked elements, but as evolving activity systems.
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Notes
- 1.
Figure 3 shows the model in the form it was used in the intervention. However, later, the formulation of the life cycle of a development activity was changed to even more effectively highlight the dynamics of the capability in question.
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The author would like to thank Professor Jaakko Virkkunen for his valuable comments on different versions of this chapter.
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Schaupp, M. (2011). From Function-Based Development Practices to Collaborative Capability Building: An Intervention to Extend Practitioners’ Ideas. In: Poell, R., van Woerkom, M. (eds) Supporting Workplace Learning. Professional and Practice-based Learning, vol 5. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9109-3_12
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