ABSTRACT
This chapter takes the different concepts of competence that can be found on both sides of the Atlantic. While it is still a question of dealing with knowledge, skills, and other abilities at the individual level, there are significant differences between the North American and European works. Competence can be considered innate, or on the contrary, it can develop throughout the lives of individuals, with the use of different levers such as learning by doing or training. Work on the collective level is also very interested in the appropriate leadership to manage these groups. But the collective competence of these groups has been relatively little studied in comparison to the work on the individual and strategic levels of competence. There is an original literature on individual competence in Europe that offers a much more contextualized perspective. Like the literature on collective competences, the literature on inter-organizational competence is relatively undeveloped and recent.
