You can create competency structures in an org unit and share them to child org units beneath it. A child org unit's Competencies tool displays the 
Shared Competency icon beside each shared competency, and the 
Shared Learning Objective icon beside each learning objective nested in a shared competency. In a child org unit you can associate its learning objectives and activities with shared competency structures. You cannot share activity elements between org units.
The only elements shared to you by the parent org unit that you can modify are Make competency and its children visible to users property and learning objectives' Ready for evaluation property. If you have never modified these properties within a child org unit, they will always contain the same settings as the original elements in the parent org unit. If you change these properties in a child org unit, the property setting in the shared element becomes independent of the property settings set in the parent org unit.