Meta-competences in complex environments: An interdisciplinary perspective

In today’s increasingly complex, uncertain environments, disciplinary knowledge alone is no longer sufficient to cope with new societal challenges and real-world problems. Meta-competences, which include advanced thinking skills and creativity, go beyond these domain-specific competences. Along those lines, a methodological question arises regarding how such a complex phenomenon can be investigated and adequately described. In our research, we applied proposition-based expert round tables, a method developed to analyze complex real-world problems. In a two-year project, eight experts from the University for Continuing Education Krems collaborated in an interdisciplinary approach including system and innovation research, management science, engineering, the arts and humanities, and higher education. Each expert proposed what meta-competences entail from their own perspective, and the different knowledge was subsequently reviewed, analyzed, and integrated following a collaborative approach over the course of several iterative discourses. As a result, the experts produced an integrative model with four interdependent factors of readiness: (1) iterative learning to continuously expand one’s competences, (2) resilient improvisation to deal with unexpected events, (3) dynamic viability to cope effectively with volatile environments, and (4) sustainable innovation to co-creatively innovate. Those factors interact and reinforce each other and should ultimately enhance one’s readiness to continually apply knowledge gained in new contexts and communicate that application accordingly. Meta-competences have, thus far, been discussed only in certain scientific disciplines. In our study we conducted expert round tables to continuously generate in-depth interdisciplinary knowledge that can be applied to other complex, real-world phenomena. The result is an initial.

Thinking Skills and Creativity

Elsevier Ltd.