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The purpose of this paper is to learn about professional employees in the early stage of their careers, particularly, their understanding of competence development and career advancement. Law firms have a relatively low rate of turnover of professional staff when compared with employee flow rates that are standard in other organisations and industries. In law firms, the collective stock of embodied knowledge changes gradually influenced by recruitment cohort phases and employee departures. This paper aims to analyse lawyers employed in a reasonably munificent internal labour market context, seeking to understand their accounts of how their competencies can be developed and how their careers may be advanced.

This paper considers the competences and careers of a group of junior professional knowledge workers employed full‐time in a large law firm and conceptualises their competence development and professional career advancement through an existential ontological conceptualisation using a qualitative interpretive research methodology.

The findings from interviews with lawyers in the Planning and Environment area of specialisation are reported concentrating on employees' perspectives. Lawyers' self‐understanding is strongly influenced by career stage and position in the organisation. Their understanding of work in contrast reveals more individual and idiosyncratic clusters of work activities and distinctive ways of acknowledging and developing technical and professional expertise. They express a preference for a focal group of other people at work selecting from primary orientations to either clients or peers or self.

It is concluded that policy makers, practitioners, and academic researchers all have roles to play in assisting people at an early stage in their career to reflect on their existing expertise, assess current work practices, and develop and pursue strategies for competency development and career advancement.

This paper aims to examine employees' conceptions of the meaning of experience in job‐competence and its development in workplace context. The aim is to bring out the variety of conceptions related to experience, competence and workplace learning.

The paper is based on interview data from six Finnish small and medium sized enterprises. The data were collected as a part of a larger European Union research project, Working Life Changes and Training of Older Workers (WORKTOW) during spring 1999. The approach chosen for the analysis presented in this paper was phenomenography.

The findings in the paper show the importance accorded to experience in competence and in workplace learning. The employees valued work experience as the main source of their competence. They also developed their competence mainly through learning at work. The role of social participation in work communities and learning through experiences was emphasized.

The paper shows that differentiating employees' conceptions paves a way to more specific perspectives on the development and utilisation of experience‐based competence in work communities and organisations.

In this paper the findings are discussed in the light of construction and development of older workers' job‐competence in working life. It is argued that experience serves several kinds of purposes in workplace learning also among experienced workers.

Reports on research which examined informal learning at work in two technology intensive SMEs. While learning was continuous and active, depending on the branch and level of job experience, stimulus to learning and competence development varied. The study suggested there are advantages from a more systematic organizing of learning in the workplace.

Drawing upon the capability approach, this study aims to investigate the impact of sense of competence on work–life and life–work enhancements. It also examines the mediating roles of mindfulness and flow at work in the above relationships.

A sample of 254 medical doctors in various hospitals in Vietnam was surveyed to validate the measures via confirmatory factor analysis and to test the model and hypotheses using structural equation modeling.

The results demonstrate that mindfulness and flow at work fully mediate the effects of sense of competence on both work–life and life–work enhancements, but sense of competence does not have any direct effect on both.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is among the first to examine the roles of sense of competence, mindfulness and flow at work in work–life and life–work enhancements, adding further insight into the literature on work–life balance. It also offers evidence for the capacity approach in explaining work–life and life–work enhancements in an emerging market, Vietnam.

The purpose of this study is to gain more understanding of how competence might matter from the perspective of well-being at work. The authors explore how perceived competence is connected to perceived work-related well-being among Baby Boomer, Generation X and Generation Y employees.

The authors explore how perceived competence is connected to perceived work-related well-being among Baby Boomer, Generation X and Generation Y employees. The frames of reference of the study are based on literature on employee well-being (measured with work engagement and overcommitment) and competence, as well as on generational discussions. The quantitative, questionnaire-based study was conducted in 88 companies in Finland, with the total number of respondents being 4,418.

The main finding was that perceived competence related to current duties is statistically significantly connected to employee well-being. The results indicate that high competence results in high employee well-being in all generational groups. Further, Generation Y estimated their work well-being, both in terms of work engagement and overcommitment, lower than Baby Boomers or Generation X. The results suggest that developing competence of employees in organizations seems to be an important means to also support work well-being. It is especially important to pay attention to that among Generation Y, who take their first steps in working life. Competence is a meaningful factor for coping in working life in continually changing work environments. Incompetence is not just a factor for poor performance but also a potential threat to employee well-being.

Most of the competence/workplace learning results research concentrates on cognitive competence and skills, often from the employers’ benefit viewpoint (useful skills, productivity increase). This study starts from the finding that new generations of workers rather look for a meaningful work life, and thus, a feeling of having the necessary competences directly improves their well-being and, thus, life quality. Furthermore, the study is based on an original questionnaire-based study conducted in 88 companies in Finland, with the total number of respondents being 4,418.

The study investigated emotional competence at work and elaborated emotional competence in relation to sociocultural aspects of emotions at work.

Emotional competence at work was explored via interviews, surveys and observations. The study was conducted over one year, during which an emotion-training intervention was conducted within a medium-sized company, operating in the healthcare sector.

The study shed light on emotional competence at work, identifying three domains: individual emotional competence, emotional competence within interactions and emotional competence embedded in workplace practices.

This study was conducted in one organization.

Organizational developers are recommended to implement activities such as training interventions in order to build emotional competence; this applies not only at the individual level but also to achieve interaction among members of the organization within collective workplace practices.

Previous studies on emotional competence have been limited to the individual level. The sociocultural approach to emotional competence adopted in this study recognizes – in addition to the individual and interactional level of emotional competence – emotional competence at work as related to practices at work.

This paper aims to examine the effect of high-involvement work systems (HIWSs) on completing work and avoiding distraction as two dimensions of presenteeism. It also investigates competence as a mediator of the effect of HIWS on presenteeism.

Data were collected from 343 Bangladeshi bank employees using an online survey. The partial least squares-structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) was employed to assess the abovementioned linkages.

The findings demonstrate HIWS directly avoid distraction but do not significantly impact the completing work dimension of presenteeism. The findings also indicate that competence mediates the effect of HIWS on completing work but not on avoiding distraction.

Drawing on the job demands-resources (JD-R) model, this study empirically demonstrates the contrasting role of HIWS in completing work and avoiding distraction related to presenteeism. It also provides a novel perspective on the unexplored mediating mechanism of competence on the relationship between HIWS and presenteeism and offers new directions for HIWS and presenteeism research.

The review aims to demonstrate a broader perspective of human capital and employee well-being concept. Moreover, the study attempts to analyse theoretical notions underlying human capital and well-being relationship and thus to guide the integration of two distinct concepts.

This review followed the systematic literature search protocols from the Academic Journal Guide 2018 generated by the Chartered Association of Business Schools. Sixty-nine quantitative research papers were selected for the review.

Human capital is not only about individual competence but includes acquisition, utilization and development of competence in a broader sense. Employee well-being has been discussed from subjective and objective viewpoints and categorized into happiness, health and financial aspects. The review results suggest that various organizational theories, workplace learning and learning organization perspectives underlie human capital and well-being relationship. The review guides that the high involvement working model encapsulates well-being as part of human capital development.

This review discusses practical implications for human resource management practitioners.

This review is a unique attempt to assess the human capital and well-being literature systematically.

This paper aims to present findings from an interpretative study documenting how mobile project workers develop their conceptions of work performed in liminal (in-between) positions. The overall purpose of the paper is to elucidate how people in time-limited and ambiguous work positions develop competences to manage their dynamic work conditions.

This research relies on two narratives of mobile project workers drawn from a larger longitudinal study. The empirical material includes diaries and multiple interviews. The analysis takes a narrative approach and identifies how and when the mobile project workers enhance their level of liminality competence.

Three processes were identified as significant in developing higher liminality competence: understanding the value of in-betweenness, embracing the role as an inside-outsider and translating the liminal experience through reflexivity.

The paper demonstrates the need for employers to support individuals in passing through the three processes and to support thoughtful mobility across different project settings to improve the liminality competence of their employees.

In the dual ambition of offering insights based on interpretative research on competence and putting greater emphasis on people working in in-between positions, this study enhances the understanding of how individuals develop their conceptions of work in general, and their conceptions of liminality at work in particular.

The purpose of this article is to employ Self-Determination Theory to explain the mediated impact of work design – empowerment and serial and investiture socialization – on employee work affect. The theory proposes fulfilment of three psychological needs – autonomy, competence, and relatedness – will mediate individuals' ability to achieve contextually relevant well-being. An empirical study tests this claim and exposes the structure of the mediating effects.

Survey responses were collected from a sample of 239 front-line service employees using snowball data collection. SEM was used to test hypotheses.

Findings suggest that empowerment and serial and investiture socialization are significantly differentially related to need fulfilment. Additionally, all forms of need fulfilment do not directly influence employee affect. Instead, there are both direct and interactive effects that work simultaneously to influence employees' positive work affect.

This study exposes specific work design levers managers can manipulate to benefit employees. This research highlights the different effects of specific work design variables on employee work affect.

This paper extends understanding of Self-Determination Theory by exposing the direct and interactive effects of need fulfilment on work affect for service workers. Also, it delivers a deeper exploration of the impact of work design on employees by modelling multiple work design variables as well as process variables simultaneously to provide a more detailed picture of how work design influences employee work affect.