The purpose of this paper is to review the competence literature which has been published since the fifties of the last century. Key contributions in theory development and research regarding the concept have been given by McClelland (1973), Gilbert (1978), Boyatzis (1982), Prahalad & Hamel (1990), Blank (1992), and Eraut (1994). In the course of the nineties (in some places earlier), many national and international organizations and administrations embraced the concept of competence to redesign the curriculum or to develop national qualification frameworks and to stimulate life long learning. The psychological trail of the concept of competence in terms of personal characteristics continued as can be seen in the work of Bartram (2005). In the educational literature competence assessment also received much attention (Gulikers, Bastiaens & Kirschner, 2004; Baartman, 2008). Various reviews (e.g. Rothwell and Sandberg, 2000; Biemans et al, 2004; Winterton, Le Deist & Stringfellow, 2005; Weigel et al, 2007) have already been made, and the paper will elaborate them. The major finding is that the conceptualizations of the concept differ widely, whereas operational principles are more clear. Therefore focusing on operationalisation and measurement of competence fields may be more promising than further elaborations of the concept in general.