Armstrongs

The notion that organisations need to find new ways to manage in a global and turbulent environment is now a well worn concept in the 1990s. In particular the importance of developing and managing human resources along humanistic lines has been an important theme in the management literature. However, it is interesting how many of our human resource development and management practices still stay the same, based on old paradigms of control and power. This paper describes the idea of developing and managing for individual and organisational capability, a concept originating in the UK and being progressed in Australia. Capable people, as defined in this paper, are more than competent. They are creative, know how to learn, have a high level of self-efficacy, can use competencies in novel as well as familiar situations and work well in teams. It is our contention that the idea of capability provides a framework for better human resource development and management that is easily understood, and may enable people to overcome resistance to change. The basis of this paper is a study of ten Australian organisations and how they have developed their capability in a rapidly changing world. A specific case study from the construction and mining industry is provided as an illustration of the concept.

… , M., Järvelin, AM. & Seppä, M. …, 2011

The competitiveness of a nation is mainly based on the success of companies. The human capital has been emphasised as one of the key success factors of a company. It can be assumed that most successful companies have organised or at least they should have organised their management of the human capital systematically. To improve the national competitiveness it is important to find out the best human capital management practices applied in the successful companies and disseminate those to other companies.

2007

Creating competence has become a major issue in both profit and not-for-profit organisations as has the concept of the learning organisation. Competence development systems are being perceived as instrumental tools to make the concept of the learning organisation practical and to add strategic value in terms of the organisational, human resource development, and training and learning functions of the organisation. This paper presents the results of a European online survey focused on collecting the experiences of those organisations working with competence instruments, or strategies to develop competence. After statistical analyses: Cronbach's alpha Coefficient, Chi-square Tests, Kendall's Tau, and Mann-Whitney Tests, the conclusions point to generally positive perceptions of working with instruments for competence development. By analysing the perceived effects of working with competence instruments and the relationships between these effects and various factors such as orientation towards training and development, experience organisations have with implementing the concept and the types of instruments used two approaches are evident regarding instrument use; for organisational development and for employee development; often mentioned as motivations for driving the implementation of learning organisation concepts. But the ambiguity regarding competence and competence instruments requires further clarification of definitions and evaluation of implementation.

2007

Creating competence has become a major issue in both profit and not-for-profit organisations as has the concept of the learning organisation. Competence development systems are being perceived as instrumental tools to make the concept of the learning organisation practical and to add strategic value in terms of the organisational, human resource development, and training and learning functions of the organisation. This paper presents the results of a European online survey focused on collecting the experiences of those organisations working with competence instruments, or strategies to develop competence. After statistical analyses: Cronbach's alpha Coefficient, Chi-square Tests, Kendall's Tau, and Mann-Whitney Tests, the conclusions point to generally positive perceptions of working with instruments for competence development. By analysing the perceived effects of working with competence instruments and the relationships between these effects and various factors such as orientation towards training and development, experience organisations have with implementing the concept and the types of instruments used two approaches are evident regarding instrument use; for organisational development and for employee development; often mentioned as motivations for driving the implementation of learning organisation concepts. But the ambiguity regarding competence and competence instruments requires further clarification of definitions and evaluation of implementation.

MANAGEMENT BY COMPETENCES AND ITS RELEVANCE FOR ORGANIZATIONAL IMPROVEMENT (Atena Editora), 2023

Today is characterized by complex human, social and economic relations, by the dynamism, competitiveness and fluidity of markets and by increasing technological advances. Companies need to improve their ability to adapt in order to offer products and services to increasingly diverse and demanding customers, as well as improve their management practices to obtain competitive advantages. Consistently knowing what they do, understanding the importance of employees, considering the need to develop internal institutional capabilities and develop strategies that allow them to meet their needs is an essential condition for organizations. In this context, competency-based management presents itself as a highly valuable instrument for companies to develop and combine knowledge, skills and attitudes (at a human/professional level and at an organizational level) in order to enable the achievement of their objectives. Through bibliographical research, comprising sources between the years 2001 and 2019, this work presents concepts and reflections on the current scenario of companies' operations, skills, management by skills, mapping of skills and the benefits that can be achieved through the appropriate use of competency management, which can effectively contribute to achieving organizational success. Finally, the importance of commitment and continuous institutional effort is highlighted so that competency-based management fulfills its purpose.

International Journal of Learning and Intellectual Capital, 2007

The paper intends to analyse the links between competence management and Knowledge Management (KM), adopting the Knowing Organisation Model as the main framework. A web-based survey was conducted with 168 KM leaders and HR managers from Brazilian and Portuguese middle and large size organisations. The results have given evidences that competence management is a significant antecedent of KM. A diagnosis of the sense making, knowledge creation and decision making practices in the analysed organisations is presented. The strategic role of the HR department in the KM initiative is emphasised. The paper also recommendations to KM leaders that may help them in increasing the maturity level of their KM projects.

2000

Previous research by the author and colleagues has shown a recognition by organisations that they need to pay more attention to developing employee capability in order to adapt to a rapidly changing and highly turbulent world. Specifically human resource development and training methods need to be designed so that they to build on competence and find ways to enable people to learn, be creative, use competencies in novel as well as familiar circumstances, develop self-efficacy and to work well in teams. In addition human resource management needs to involve helping people use these dimensions of capability through effective systems and management behaviours. There are several lines of evidence that suggest that there is a need to move beyond training to harnessing ecological learning in order to develop human capability, as well as competence. The research described here involved the development of a diagnostic instrument to measure organisational capability that can be used to redesign training and management practice. The methodology involved a two step process; a qualitative approach first to develop a theory followed by a quantitative method to develop the instrument. The implications of this instrument, the research findings and capability for vocational education and training are discussed.

The Learning Organization, 2000

Today, there seems to be near total agreement with the assertion that the notion of``core competences'' is paramount to explaining competitiveness of the firm. Since Prahalad and Hamel's seminal paper on the subject (Prahalad and Hamel, 1990) there has been a surge of interest in competences and competence-based strategy followed by a stream of conferences, books and, now, an international association for competencebased strategy (Sanchez, 2000). The literature on core competences and competence-based strategy has many virtues, but being specific with regard to the structural characteristics of competences is not one of them. In a previous publication, Drejer and Riis (1999) have argued that most competence definitions in the literature are based on functional characteristics, i.e. what are the effects caused by a competence? This works for those who are mainly interested in the strategic implications of a competence, as an effect could be value delivered to customers, and hence the creation of competitive advantage. In other words, if our game is competitive strategy alone, these are the kinds of definitions you would want to look for. However, this only explains part of the truth about competences. Competence is one among other concepts Incidentally,``competences'' is merely the latest ± but perhaps greatest ± of a number of conceptions aimed at explaining the competitiveness of a firm, i.e. why some firms achieve better performance than others with similar functional characteristics in terms of, for instance, product-market strategy, and so on. This issue has been discussed for as long as we have had the notion of strategic management in the vocabulary. Right back to Penrose's idea of the firm as a collection of resources (Penrose, 1959) and its later comeback as``the resource-based view of the firm'' (e.g. Wernerfelt, 1984; Barney, 1991) and the classic SWOT analysis, generally attributed to Kenneth Andrews (1960), researchers have attempted to explain to managers what internal, structural issues of the firm needed attention in the process of strategic management (Drejer, 1996). Please note that the author also includes``soft'' aspects such as human knowledge and corporate culture in The author

2011

The prominent role of competency development in enhancing the success of employees and organizations has drawn the attention of practitioners leading them to introduce competency development as a central part of their human resource practices. Unfortunately, the strong managerial interest in competency development was not fully translated into the academic world, creating a gap between theory and practice. The main purpose of this study was to fill this gap by unraveling the process of competency development in organizations. To this end, we adopted a longitudinal multiple case study design, gathering information from 22 Belgian organizations through organizational records, semi-structured interviews with HR managers and focus groups. By using a grounded theory approach, a framework emerged mapping out the different steps of competency development in organizations. Hence, this study can be an important first step towards closing the existing gap between practice and theory concerning competency development in organizations.

2007

Creating competence has become a major issue in both profit and not-for-profit organisations as has the concept of the learning organisation. Competence development systems are being perceived as instrumental tools to make the concept of the learning organisation practical and to add strategic value in terms of the organisational, human resource development, and training and learning functions of the organisation. This paper presents the results of a European online survey focused on collecting the experiences of those organisations working with competence instruments. By performing statistical analyses (Cronbach's alpha Coefficient, Chisquare Tests, Kendall's Tau, and Mann-Whitney Tests), the conclusions point to generally positive perceptions of working with instruments for competence development. By analysing the perceived effects of working with competence instruments and the relationships between these effects and orientation towards training and development, experience organisations have with implementing the concept and the types of instruments used, two approaches are evident regarding instrument use: for organisational development and for employee development. But the ambiguity regarding competence and competence instruments requires further clarification of real implementation and effects of using the instruments.