Competence (human resources)
Encyclopedia
Competence is the ability of an individual to perform a job
properly. A competency is a set of defined behaviors that provide a structured guide enabling the identification, evaluation and development of the behaviors in individual employees. As defined, the term "competence" first appeared in an article authored by Craig C. Lundberg in 1970 titled "Planning the Executive Development Program". The term gained traction when in 1973, David McClelland
, Ph.D. wrote a seminal paper entitled, "Testing for Competence Rather
Than for Intelligence". It has since been popularized by one-time fellow McBer & Company (Currently the "Hay Group") colleague Richard Boyatzis
and many others. Its use varies widely, which leads to considerable misunderstanding.
Some scholars see "competence" as a combination of knowledge
, skills and behavior
used to improve performance; or as the state or quality of being adequately or well qualified, having the ability
to perform a specific role
. For instance, management
competency might include systems thinking and emotional intelligence
, and skills in influence and negotiation
.
Competency is also used as a more general description of the requirements of human beings in organizations and communities.
Competency is sometimes thought of as being shown in action in a situation and context that might be different the next time a person has to act. In emergencies, competent people may react to a situation following behaviors they have previously found to succeed. To be competent a person would need to be able to interpret the situation in the context and to have a repertoire of possible actions to take and have trained in the possible actions in the repertoire, if this is relevant. Regardless of training, competency would grow through experience and the extent of an individual to learn and adapt.
Competency has different meanings, and continues to remain one of the most diffuse terms in the management development sector, and the organizational and occupational literature.
The process of competency development is a lifelong series of doing and reflecting. As competencies apply to careers as well as jobs, lifelong competency development is linked with personal development
as a management concept. And it requires a special environment, where the rules are necessary in order to introduce novices, but people at a more advanced level of competency will systematically break the rules if the situations requires it. This environment is synonymously described using terms such as learning organization, knowledge creation, self-organizing and empowerment.
Within a specific organization or professional community, professional competency, is frequently valued. They are usually the same competencies that must be demonstrated in a job interview. But today there is another way of looking at it: that there are general areas of occupational competency required to retain a post, or earn a promotion. For all organizations and communities there is a set of primary tasks that competent people have to contribute to all the time. For a university student, for example, the primary tasks could be:
The four general areas of competency are:
in the 1960s with a view to moving away from traditional attempts to describe competency in terms of knowledge
, skills and attitudes
and to focus instead on the specific self-image, values, traits, and motive dispositions (i.e. relatively enduring characteristics of people) that are found to consistently distinguish outstanding from typical performance in a given job or role. It should be noted that different competencies predict outstanding performance in different roles, and that there is a limited number of competencies that predict outstanding performance in any given job or role. Thus, a trait that is a "competency" for one job might not predict outstanding performance in a different role.
Nevertheless, as can be seen from Raven and Stephenson, there have been important developments in research relating to the nature, development, and assessment of high-level competencies in homes, schools, and workplaces.
or task analysis
, using techniques such as the critical incident technique
, work diaries, and work sampling
. A future focus is recommended for strategic reasons.
Employment
Employment is a contract between two parties, one being the employer and the other being the employee. An employee may be defined as:- Employee :...
properly. A competency is a set of defined behaviors that provide a structured guide enabling the identification, evaluation and development of the behaviors in individual employees. As defined, the term "competence" first appeared in an article authored by Craig C. Lundberg in 1970 titled "Planning the Executive Development Program". The term gained traction when in 1973, David McClelland
David McClelland
David C. McClelland was an American psychological theorist. Noted for his work on need theory, he published a number of works from the 1950s until the 1990s and developed new scoring systems for the Thematic Apperception Test and its descendants...
, Ph.D. wrote a seminal paper entitled, "Testing for Competence Rather
Than for Intelligence". It has since been popularized by one-time fellow McBer & Company (Currently the "Hay Group") colleague Richard Boyatzis
Richard Boyatzis
Richard Boyatzis is a professor of Organizational Behavior at Case Western Reserve University and an expert in the field of emotional intelligence. He has published numerous books and articles in the vein of emotional intelligence, behavior change, competencies and leadership...
and many others. Its use varies widely, which leads to considerable misunderstanding.
Some scholars see "competence" as a combination of knowledge
Knowledge
Knowledge is a familiarity with someone or something unknown, which can include information, facts, descriptions, or skills acquired through experience or education. It can refer to the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject...
, skills and behavior
Behavior
Behavior or behaviour refers to the actions and mannerisms made by organisms, systems, or artificial entities in conjunction with its environment, which includes the other systems or organisms around as well as the physical environment...
used to improve performance; or as the state or quality of being adequately or well qualified, having the ability
Skill
A skill is the learned capacity to carry out pre-determined results often with the minimum outlay of time, energy, or both. Skills can often be divided into domain-general and domain-specific skills...
to perform a specific role
Role
A role or a social role is a set of connected behaviours, rights and obligations as conceptualised by actors in a social situation. It is an expected or free or continuously changing behaviour and may have a given individual social status or social position...
. For instance, management
Management
Management in all business and organizational activities is the act of getting people together to accomplish desired goals and objectives using available resources efficiently and effectively...
competency might include systems thinking and emotional intelligence
Emotional intelligence
Emotional intelligence is a skill or ability in the case of the trait EI model, a self-perceived ability to identify, assess, and control the emotions of oneself, of others, and of groups. Various models and definitions have been proposed of which the ability and trait EI models are the most...
, and skills in influence and negotiation
Negotiation
Negotiation is a dialogue between two or more people or parties, intended to reach an understanding, resolve point of difference, or gain advantage in outcome of dialogue, to produce an agreement upon courses of action, to bargain for individual or collective advantage, to craft outcomes to satisfy...
.
Competency is also used as a more general description of the requirements of human beings in organizations and communities.
Competency is sometimes thought of as being shown in action in a situation and context that might be different the next time a person has to act. In emergencies, competent people may react to a situation following behaviors they have previously found to succeed. To be competent a person would need to be able to interpret the situation in the context and to have a repertoire of possible actions to take and have trained in the possible actions in the repertoire, if this is relevant. Regardless of training, competency would grow through experience and the extent of an individual to learn and adapt.
Competency has different meanings, and continues to remain one of the most diffuse terms in the management development sector, and the organizational and occupational literature.
Dreyfus and Dreyfus on competency development
Dreyfus and Dreyfus introduced nomenclature for the levels of competence in competency development. The causative reasoning of such a language of levels of competency may be seen in their paper on Calculative Rationality titled, "From Socrates to Expert Systems: The Limits and Dangers of Calculative Rationality". The five levels proposed by Dreyfus and Dreyfus were:- Novice: Rule-based behaviour, strongly limited and inflexible
- Experienced Beginner: Incorporates aspects of the situation
- Practitioner: Acting consciously from long-term goals and plans
- Knowledgeable practitioner: Sees the situation as a whole and acts from personal conviction
- Expert: Has an intuitive understanding of the situation and zooms in on the central aspects
The process of competency development is a lifelong series of doing and reflecting. As competencies apply to careers as well as jobs, lifelong competency development is linked with personal development
Personal development
Personal development includes activities that improve awareness and identity, develop talents and potential, build human capital and facilitates employability, enhance quality of life and contribute to the realization of dreams and aspirations...
as a management concept. And it requires a special environment, where the rules are necessary in order to introduce novices, but people at a more advanced level of competency will systematically break the rules if the situations requires it. This environment is synonymously described using terms such as learning organization, knowledge creation, self-organizing and empowerment.
Within a specific organization or professional community, professional competency, is frequently valued. They are usually the same competencies that must be demonstrated in a job interview. But today there is another way of looking at it: that there are general areas of occupational competency required to retain a post, or earn a promotion. For all organizations and communities there is a set of primary tasks that competent people have to contribute to all the time. For a university student, for example, the primary tasks could be:
- Handling theory
- Handling methods
- Handling the information of the assignment
The four general areas of competency are:
- Meaning Competency: The person assessed must be able to identify with the purpose of the organization or community and act from the preferred future in accordance with the values of the organization or community.
- Relation Competency: The ability to create and nurture connections to the stakeholders of the primary tasks must be shown.
- Learning Competency: The person assessed must be able to create and look for situations that make it possible to experiment with the set of solutions that make it possible to complete the primary tasks and reflect on the experience.
- Change Competency: The person assessed must be able to act in new ways when it will promote the purpose of the organization or community and make the preferred future come to life.
McClelland and Occupational Competency
The Occupational Competency movement was initiated by David McClellandDavid McClelland
David C. McClelland was an American psychological theorist. Noted for his work on need theory, he published a number of works from the 1950s until the 1990s and developed new scoring systems for the Thematic Apperception Test and its descendants...
in the 1960s with a view to moving away from traditional attempts to describe competency in terms of knowledge
Knowledge
Knowledge is a familiarity with someone or something unknown, which can include information, facts, descriptions, or skills acquired through experience or education. It can refer to the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject...
, skills and attitudes
Attitude (psychology)
An attitude is a hypothetical construct that represents an individual's degree of like or dislike for something. Attitudes are generally positive or negative views of a person, place, thing, or event— this is often referred to as the attitude object...
and to focus instead on the specific self-image, values, traits, and motive dispositions (i.e. relatively enduring characteristics of people) that are found to consistently distinguish outstanding from typical performance in a given job or role. It should be noted that different competencies predict outstanding performance in different roles, and that there is a limited number of competencies that predict outstanding performance in any given job or role. Thus, a trait that is a "competency" for one job might not predict outstanding performance in a different role.
Nevertheless, as can be seen from Raven and Stephenson, there have been important developments in research relating to the nature, development, and assessment of high-level competencies in homes, schools, and workplaces.
Competency identification
Competencies are identified through job analysisJob analysis
Job analysis is the process of describing and recording aspects of jobs and specifying the skills and other requirements necessary to perform the job.-Purpose:...
or task analysis
Task analysis
Task analysis is the analysis of how a task is accomplished, including a detailed description of both manual and mental activities, task and element durations, task frequency, task allocation, task complexity, environmental conditions, necessary clothing and equipment, and any other unique factors...
, using techniques such as the critical incident technique
Critical Incident Technique
The Critical Incident Technique is a set of procedures used for collecting direct observations of human behavior that have critical significance and meet methodically defined criteria. These observations are then kept track of as incidents, which are then used to solve practical problems and...
, work diaries, and work sampling
Work sampling
Work Sampling is the statistical technique for determining the proportion of time spent by workers in various defined categories of activity...
. A future focus is recommended for strategic reasons.
See also
- Competency-based managementCompetency-based managementCompetency-based human resources planning should serve as a link between human resources management and the overall strategic plan of an organization...
- Dunning–Kruger effect, the tendency for incompetent people to grossly overestimate their skills
- List of management topics
- Management effectivenessManagement effectivenessIn the management, the ultimate measure of management's performance is the metric of management effectiveness which includes:* Conflict management, or how well management is able to utilize confrontation and collaboration skills; management's ability to be flexible and appeal to common interests.*...
- Performance appraisalPerformance appraisalA performance appraisal, employee appraisal, performance review, or development discussion is a method by which the job performance of an employee is evaluated typically by the corresponding manager or supervisor. A performance appraisal is a part of guiding and managing career development...
- Performance improvementPerformance improvementPerformance improvement is the concept of measuring the output of a particular process or procedure, then modifying the process or procedure to increase the output, increase efficiency, or increase the effectiveness of the process or procedure...
- Personal developmentPersonal developmentPersonal development includes activities that improve awareness and identity, develop talents and potential, build human capital and facilitates employability, enhance quality of life and contribute to the realization of dreams and aspirations...
- Peter principlePeter PrincipleThe Peter Principle states that "in a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence", meaning that employees tend to be promoted until they reach a position at which they cannot work competently. It was formulated by Dr. Laurence J...
, the tendency for competent workers to be promoted just beyond the level of their competence - Professional developmentProfessional developmentProfessional development refers to skills and knowledge attained for both personal development and career advancement. Professional development encompasses all types of facilitated learning opportunities, ranging from college degrees to formal coursework, conferences and informal learning...
- Seagull managerSeagull managerSeagull Manager is a term used to describe a management style of interacting with employees only when a problem arises, making hasty decisions about things they have little understanding of, then leaving others to deal with the mess they leave behind...
, management style
Further reading
- Shippmann, J. S., Ash, R. A., Battista, M., Carr, L., Eyde, L. D., Hesketh, B., Kehoe, J., Pearlman, K., and Sanchez, J. I. (2000). The practice of competency modeling, Personnel Psychology, 53, 703-740.
- Spencer Jr., L. M., McClelland, D. C., Spencer, S. M., (1994). Competency Assessment Methods: History and State of the Art