Knowledge Management for Competence Management Giuseppe Berio (Dipartimento di Informatica, Università di Torino, C.so Svizzera 185 10149 Torino, Italy berio@di.unito.it) Mounira Harzallah (LINA, University of Nantes, Christian Pauc, la Chantrerie, BP. 50609 44306, Nantes Cedex3, France mounira.harzallah@univ-nantes.fr) Abstract: In companies, competence management involves several heavy processes that we have categorised in four classes: competence identification, competence assessment, competence acquisition, competence usage. Competence management, being the management of knowledge about competence, can also take advantage from the knowledge engineering techniques to support the mentioned processes. The paper classifies the knowledge engineering techniques proposed in the existing literature to support the competence management according to its processes. According to the performed classification and based on the authors’ previous work on competence management information systems (CRAI approach), the paper provides a critical discussion of the mentioned knowledge engineering techniques: their strengths and benefits in the context of the processes carried out. Keywords: Knowledge Engineering Techniques, Individual Competence, Competence Management Information Systems, CRAI Model Categories: E.2, H.3.2, H.1.1 1 Introduction Broadly speaking, competence management is the way in which organizations manage the competencies of the corporation, the groups and the individuals. It has the primary objective to define, and continuously maintain competencies, according to the objectives of the corporation. A competency is a way to put in practice some knowledge, know-how and also attitudes, inside a specific context. Competence management is becoming more and more important: competence has been well recognized as extremely important for the achievement of company goals, complimentary to, for instance, core business processes, customer relationships, financial issues and so on [Hamel, 94], [Norton, 96]. Our current thinking is that competence management can be organized according to four kinds of process (i.e. inside each one, several processes may run) (figure 1): • Competence identification, i.e. when and how to identify and to define competencies required (in the present or in the future) to carry out tasks, missions, strategies; how competence is represented is included here. • Competence assessment, i.e. (i) when and how to identify and to define competence acquired by individuals and/or (ii) when and how an enterprise Journal of Universal Knowledge Management, vol. 0, no. 1 (2005), 21-28 submitted: 7/2/05, accepted: 18/4/05, appeared: 28/6/05  J.UKM