Competence Attrition: A linguistic theory of the effects of external competence acquisition for organizations

Abstract

What happens to old competences in organizations when new competences are acquired? In this paper, we propose a competence attrition theory to explain the effects of acquiring new competences on previously acquired ones. While the presumed positive role of available competences for the acquisition of new competences has been the subject of extensive research, the potentially negative effect of the acquisition of external competences on the availability and use of existing competences has not been sufficiently theorized. We aim to do so by extending existing learning and absorptive capacity theories with insights from linguistics on competence attrition. Specifically, informed by parallel patterns in language acquisition and attrition, we develop a set of focused propositions on competence acquisition and attrition in organizations. We end the paper by discussing the implications of our theorizing for existing theory and research.

Influence of Knowledge Management and Individual Absorptive Capacity towards Innovation Capability among Agricultural Researchers: A pilot study

“…As knowledge management derived from knowledge-based theory focused on internal knowledge as the main resource for an organization's performance, Cohen & Levinthal (1990) proposed the idea of absorptive capacity that is vital to increase the speed, magnitude, and frequency of innovation through the process of acquiring, assimilating, exploiting, and transforming the knowledge (Juknevičienė et al, 2018). Kedia & Bhagat first coined the role of absorptive capacity in explaining firm receptiveness to foreign technology in 1988 (Guercini & Lechner, 2023). Later, Cohen & Levinthal (1990) discussed the influential absorptive capacity concept that underpins most of the related fields today.…”