The ambitions of organizational scholarship to enhance employee's performance is viewed as a process of moving from controlling workers to empowering them, from giving orders to creating participatory interactions.These movements are usually pursued in the shadow of a supposed scientific management exactness that aim for a higher performance. However, such ambitions often ultimately translate into organizational efficiency in the sense of less input for more output in performing certain tasks, or in terms of creating customer value. In this scenario, no matter how capable employees are in performing a range of tasks related to a knowledge area, their performance is always evaluated relative to tasks specific to the context of the given organization and dependent upon its demands.

In this study, we examine a highly innovative industrial context, where the arrangement of human competence, and modern agile management processes are implemented with hopes of employee empowerment. Through in-depth interviews, we illustrate how the engineers' presumptions for individual competence development are often at odds with the requirements of performing in the context of their organization.This is while, the agile management processes have famously accommodated the engineers with high levels of freedom to engage in their personal interest areas and to continue learning in that direction. Towards the end, we argue that, although closely entangled, employees' 'competence' and 'performance' refer to distinct grounds.By distinguishing the two terminologies, we aim at voicing both the employees' concerns with developing their competence, as well as the managerial consideration to obtain "competent" performance. Our study contributes to both the management literature on competence at work, as well as studies of workplace learning.