Competence Building and Leveraging in Interorganizational Relations

The competence-based perspective on strategy and management offers an integrative approach to strategy and management theory, research, and practice. Nearly two decades of research, theory development, and application have demonstrated the theoretical coherence, researchability, and practicability of a fundamental focus on organizational competences. The competence-based perspective is now providing a productive broad church for advancing theory development, research, and practice in both strategic and general management.In the twenty-first century, network-based strategies and processes are becoming essential aspects of both firm strategies and operations. We are therefore pleased to present here a new volume focusing on inter-organizational processes for competence building and competence leveraging.The papers in this volume begin with an in-depth literature review by Frederic Prevot of inter-organizational relations in alternative approaches to the creation and management of competences. The next three papers (by Joerg Freiling et al., Gabriel Gaullino and Frederic Prevot, and Heike Proff) elaborate several of these approaches to managing inter-organizational processes for competence building and competence reconstructionapplied in the contexts of the healthcare industry, educational programs, the utilities market, and processes of mergers and acquisitions.New ventures are also important forums for competence building in and among firms, and two papers (by Henri Burgers et al. and by Bhaskar Prasad and Rudy Martens) analyze the impact of corporate venturing on the competence modes that a firm adopts and the role of inter-organizational communication networks on technological innovation processes as an important form of competence building.The role of leadership in effective competence management is examined by Janice Black and Richard Oliver in a paper that identifies the differing leadership skills required in three different competence-building contexts: within a single organization, in a multi-foci organization, and within an industry.Finally, recognizing the difficulty that many firms have in identifying their competences, Graham Hubbard describes a practical approach to determining a firms current capabilities. Case-based analysis using Hubbards framework suggests that business units may actually have a rather small number (fewer than five) of identifiable and strategically significant capabilities that should play in central role in a firms competence-building processes.This volume is produced annually. It offers an integrative approach to strategy and management theory, research, and practice.

Ron Sanchez is professor of Strategy and Technology Management at IMD--International Institute for Management Development, Lausanne, Switzerland. He was previously on the faculties of University of Illinois (Champaign-Urbana), University of Western Australia, and Copenhagen Business School, where he will again be Visiting Professor of Management in 2003-2004. He has also taught in many countries of the world, including Argentina, China, India, Finland, Germany, Morocco, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. Professor Sanchez has degrees from MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) in psychology, comparative literature, architecture, and engineering, as well as a Ph.D. in Technology Strategy. He also received an MBA (with Honors) from Saint Mary's College of California. Before becoming a management professor, he worked as a design engineer, as a technical and market development representative for a major trade association, and as founder and manager of a firm specializing in organizing joint product development projects between American and Japanese companies.

Prof. Dr. Aime Heene holds a Ph.D. in eduational sciences and an MBA from Ghent University (Belgium). He is an associate professor at Ghent University and at Antwerp University Management School. At Ghent University he is the head of the Department of Management and Organization. Prof. Heene teaches strategic management for private and for public organizations and currently focuses his research on competence-based management in social profit organizations. He has been the vice-president of the Dutch-Flemish Academy for Management, a founding member and secretary of the Flemish Strategy Society, and a member of the advisory boardof the European Foundation for Business Qualification.

Ron Sanchez is Professor of Strategy and Technology Management at the International Institute for Management Development (IMD) in Lausanne, Switzerland. From 1998-1999 he was a Visiting Professor of Management in the Department of Industrial Economics and Strategy at the Copenhagen Business School.
Previous appointments have included Associate Professor of Management at the University of Western Australia, Assistant Professor of Policy and Strategy at the University of Illinois, and Visiting Professor of Strategic Management at ESSEC in France.