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Modelling Opportunity Recognition Competence as a Foundation for Teaching and Learning in Vocational Education

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Abstract

Due to tremendous worldwide changes, the entrepreneurial imperative demands innovation. Therefore, companies as well as employees require innovative thinking and acting skills to cope with modern challenges. Opportunity Recognition represents the starting point for such entrepreneurial endeavours. Hence, this paper focuses on modelling Opportunity Recognition as well as the development of an Opportunity Recognition competence model as the foundation for teaching and learning in vocational education. Building on vocational situations that trigger innovations (opportunities) and the necessary competence facets that are needed to apply competent vocational behaviour in such situations (Opportunity Recognition), we conduct a systematic literature review and develop a comprehensive Opportunity Recognition competence model. We thereby link the found vocational situations (opportunities) with the found more abstract and latent competence facets of Opportunity Recognition and operationalise them by more observable indicators, which can be construed as evidence for the latent construct and related to successful performance in associated vocational situations. This modelling procedure of “evidence-based reasoning” allows inferences from the observed behaviour to the underlying, although not directly observable, Opportunity Recognition competence. The resulting Opportunity Recognition competence model may serve as a foundation for developing evidence-based curricular goals for vocational education through both instruction and assessment.

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Notes

  1. In Germany, the curricula are derived from a discourse of the so-called ‘four tables’: the Federal Government, the State Ministries, the Employers` Associations and the Trade Unions, which has resulted in overarching standardised occupational competences that are fully recognised in the national labour market (Weber and Lehtinen 2014; Weber and Achtenhagen 2016).

  2. Such “innovative behaviour” is conceptualised and anchored in manifold disciplines: for example, business (e.g., entre- and intrapreneurship or entrepreneurial employee activity), vocational and adult education (e.g., proactivity) or workplace learning (e.g., innovative work behaviour, work agency) (Bosma et al. 2013; Billett 2009; Eteläpelto et al. 2013; Harteis and Goller 2014; Messmann and Mulder 2017; Mulder and Winterton 2017; Parker and Bindl 2017). Nevertheless, there are many overlaps. For example, Eteläpelto et al.’s (2013) concept of “work agency” assumes a ‘subject’ centred in a socio-cultural context seeking ‘creativity’, ‘autonomy” and ‘self-fulfilment’, who ‘acts as a force for change’ to ‘develop existing work practices’, even when confronted with resistance, and who causes reforms within an organisation. In business, the concept of intrapreneurship also refers to an ‘individual employee’ within a ‘complex organisation’ who seeks to meet his or her needs for ‘autonomy’, ‘invention’, ‘management’, or ‘completion of projects’, as well as for ‘implementation of process changes’ within a ‘complex bureaucracy’ coping with ‘uncertainty’, ‘resistance’ and ‘risks’ (Toutain and Fayolle 2017; Wiethe-Körprich et al. 2017).

  3. We are aware that such a model does not include all single conceivable facets and its operationalisations. Because we intend to use this competence model to formulate curricular goals, instructional means and related assessments, we highlight the significant facets of knowledge, skills and attitudes that have been identified as characteristic for mastering typical intrapreneurship challenges.

  4. Due to the lack of a standardised definition, the use of words such as recognise/recognition, discover/discovery, perceive/perception and others is not consistent within the domain of Opportunity Recognition. Rather, some authors use the same term to describe different phenomena, and others use different terms to describe the same. Herein, we refer to the term Opportunity Recognition as the overall construct of interest. When we use terms such as perceive/perception, we refer to the processes associated with the identification of potential business opportunities (as the first step within Opportunity Recognition).

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  1. Institute for Human Resource Education and Management, Munich School of Management, Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich, Ludwigstraße 28 RG, 80539, Munich, Germany

    Christine Kreuzer & Susanne Weber

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  1. Christine Kreuzer
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  2. Susanne Weber
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Correspondence to Christine Kreuzer.

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Kreuzer, C., Weber, S. Modelling Opportunity Recognition Competence as a Foundation for Teaching and Learning in Vocational Education. Vocations and Learning 11, 399–423 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12186-017-9194-7

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