For effective Continuing Vocational Education and Training (CVET), a field of reference is needed. Thiscan either be established through the concept of occupation (CO) or the actual job role. The concept ofoccupation can sociologically be understood as a community of practice of specialized people with particularqualifications and competences and therefore perform subtasks of larger groups and communities. “Membersof this specialized community of practice gain knowledge about work processes, how to optimizeprocedures, and develop specific tools” [1]. Occupations are defined as social forms, whose members aresimilar to each other and different from others [2]. Organizational professions are understood as bundles ofskills. The Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs of the Länder in theFederal Republic of Germany (Kultusministerkonferenz, KMK) suggests a Concept of Capacity to Act(CCA) which can serve as an instruction for further vocational education. It is described as the individual'swillingness and ability to behave in professional and social situations in an appropriately thought-out andindividually and socially responsible manner [3] The CCA comprises the components of professional, socialand personal competence, linked by methodological, learning and communication competence. Thesecompetence dimensions denote a leitmotif for the professional learning activities and processes. Theoccupation serves as a frame of reference for further education and training activities in the case of theprofessional community of practice, which is based on a group of people working in the field, with identicalor very similar training and similar experiential process knowledge. These parameters can be used as a basisfor the instructional design of competence development. Many jobs – most commonly in the field ofacademic positions in companies and organizations – are not defined by the CO, but by the actual job role.In production companies, employees who need to be addressed by the job role tend to work in fields likeResearch and Development or product design, whereas jobs that are structured by the CO can be found inproduction or logistics. People who execute a certain job role have various courses of study, professional experience, and competences. In contrast to jobs referring to the concept of vocation, there is no referenceframework which can be used as a reference to design CVET. This has a direct impact on the didactics andinstructional design, the skill and competence development in CVET. Due to the variation of knowledge andprevious education, it is not possible in these cases to refer to a common training content. In these cases,CVET is not standardized in the same way as in the case of the occupations. Therefore, competencedevelopment goals cannot be structured in the same way. This raises the question on application of didacticand learning-theoretical basic categories to the conception of further training formats for this group ofemployees. However, it is still unclear if the job role as a category can be used as a frame of reference forCVET in a similar way as the CCA. The impact of the CCA and the job role on the learning theory andinstructional design of CVET programs and competence development is evaluated in this article.