ABSTRACT The competence construct comes gaining space in the academic discussion due to its importance for the management of people and, in consequence, for the performance of the organizations, including in those companies called small. This present work, characterized as exploratory and descriptive, has a purpose to analyze the understanding of managers/administrators performing at local productive arrangement (APL) of caps of Apucarana's city (PR) in relation to the management by competencies. In this intention, beyond a revision of literature on competence construct, was done a research at the APL. The gotten results shown that the knowledge of advantages of the management based on competencies by the managers/administrators envolved in this study, however it was proven that it's far to be understood as philosophy business-oriented, the management based on competencies has been only used as managemental too aiming at the results in short term.
People management; Management by competencies; Core competence; Local productive arrangement; Caps
