Читать реферат по английскому: "Competence Building For High Performance Essay Research" Страница 1

(Назад) (Cкачать работу)

Competence Building For High Performance Essay, Research Paper

Competence Building for High Performance

Shailendra Singh, Ph.D.

Indian institute of Management Lucknow

Introduction:

Global competitive pressures, liberalized economic policies, ever-changing customer expectations and technological advancement have put excessive demands on business organizations. In order to survive and thrive business organizations need to prepare themselves in such a way that they can anticipate future changes and pro-act to deal with them. In the endeavour of forecasting change in the environment, human capital of organizations will play very critical role. A central component of human capital is competence. Competence is one of the key elements of performance. People must have knowledge and abilities to perform their tasks. People or organizations should not commit to accomplish something if they have neither the skills nor the resources to do the same. Individual competence interacting with organizational, technological and process facets generates organizational performance. Realizing the importance of the construct of competence in individual and organizational performance, we have tried to examine the conceptualization of competence. We have also provided critical review of various classification schemes of competencies. Finally we have suggested strategies for fostering and nurturing competence.

What is Competence?

The term originates from the latin verb ‘competere’ which means ‘to be suitable’. The concept was originally developed in psychology characterizing individuals ability to respond to demands placed on them by their environment (White,1959). More recently, work related competence has been defined as underlying characteristics of a person that results in efficient work performance. (Woodruffe, 1992).

In literature, work related competence and skills are often used synonymously. Thus the definition of two terms analyzed here. Nelson and Winter (1982) define skills as capabilities for smooth sequence of coordinated behaviour that is ordinarily effective relative to its objective, given the context in which it normally occurs. Skills are described as programmatic involving a sequence of steps with each successive steps triggered by and following closely on the completion of proceeding one. Skillful performance is largely tacit knowledge. Here performer is not aware the details of performance. If he/she is asked to give full account of performance process, the performer finds it difficult if not impossible to articulate the account of performance. Thus differentiate between knowledge and skill and propose that knowledge is pre-requisite of skills.

Woolliams (1999) defines competence as what is needed to be effective in a particular job.

Skandia (1998) conceptualized competence as knowledge, will, and skill. Views it as a ‘capacity’ an activity in interaction rather than as an object.

Losey (1999) defined competency as a function of intelligence, education, experience, ethics, and interest. He has given his conceptualization in term of a equation:

Competency = Intelligence + Education + Experience

+ Ethics + Interest.

According to Losey, to be competent in any trade or profession a person needs brain, study, and real world training. To be effective in the long run one must be ethical in practice and passion for the job.

Ulrich (1998) defined competence as knowledge, skill or ability of employees relevant for organizational performance.

Fletcher (1997) talks about organizational led framework of competencies. This framework defines competence on the basis of ‘what does organization need for future success? It is business led, measurable and fiat for purpose. His model of competence includes skills, knowledge, behaviour, task management, environment, and customers.

If we analyze various conceptualizations of competence, we find that one category infers existence of competence from level of efficient performance (i.e., Woodruffe 1992; Wooliams, 1999). The other category assesses competence from input indicators such as intelligence, education, ability experience etc. (Nelson & Winter, 1982; Skandia, 1998; Losey, 1999; Ulrich, 1998; Fletcher, 1997). If we analyze unit of analysis used in conceptualizing competence, Fletcher has included more contextual variables while defining competence but even he has used competence of person, i.e. individual level of analysis. Rest of conceptualizations has taken more generic view of competence relevant to work performance of the individual.

In this paper we want take the view that ‘competence’ as an independent variable in individual and organizational performance. Keeping this objective mind we find Nordhaug’s (1993) and Losey’s (1999) conceptualization quite handy. In Losey’s (1999) formulation of competence, ethics and interest are also included. We prefer to retain ethics in competence formula because any ability, skill, experience that is not based on social responsibility may not be very useful for organizations in the long run. We want to exclude interest from competency formula as we feel that interest and passion for a particular job, profession, or organization should be taken as a component of affective motivational process. Thus, we define that work related competence as composite of human knowledge, skills, aptitude, directed towards attaining specified goal following the ethical norms of organization and society as a whole. This model suggests that aptitude is very important variable in determining competence. Persons with right aptitude will pickup knowledge and skill faster. This model also suggest, if persons with right aptitude are not available internally, it is better to look from outside. Some amount of knowledge is essential to pickup necessary skills.

Похожие работы