Management and Competencies Free Essay Example

Competency, defined by Bobstays (1982: 21) Is known as “the behavioral characteristic of a person which is casually related to effective or superior performance in a job” Competencies act as a signal from the organization which indicate to an individual behaviors and actions that will be valued, recognized and In some organizations rewarded. Each individual competency consists of a number of observable behaviors (I. E. Behavioral indicators) that are relevant to the performance of the role.

Lets use an aerospace manufacturing organization such as Paternal to understand what key competencies it requires for its employees to be successful; People management is crucial; it demonstrates competencies of planning, guiding developing human resources.

It Incorporates using prior knowledge of Individual’s strengths, interests, development needs to delegate tasks; provides accurate regular dieback; identifies where support is needed and provides it.

Team work; working effectively with all members of the team to achieve shared objectives. Contributes to sense of camaraderie and strengthens collaboration across departments. Production and efficient management skills problem solving; an employee deals quickly and effectively In a calm manor to difficult or unforeseen situations.

Communication is vital in order to achieve results and maintain and encourage motivation. Listen attentively to what people have to say In order to gain an accurate understanding of their wants and needs.

Innovation In understanding these competencies lets now build a competency framework. Blame and Corbelled (2006) suggest that a competency framework Is both a list of these competencies and a tool by which they are expressed, assessed and measured.

This framework can either emphasize behavioral competencies, technical competencies or both FIGURE 1- Competency Framework for Patagonia focusing on the Team Work cluster One of the major causes of failure of large-scale organizational change efforts is poor communication (Cotter, 1996).

Competencies are proven to be a strong and powerful LOL used by HER managers that help communicate to staff change objectives and expectations of management when alterations are made regarding Job roles and the delivery of these roles, competencies also lead to a significantly Improved understanding throughout companies regarding the desirable actions and behaviors for reaching the goals set etc. Hat competencies clarify where the company wants to go and how it should operate in order to successfully reach these strategic destinations. The Global Commercial Director Dave Faucet with long experience within the industry said: “Competencies ill help people understand Patron’s vision. Many times in the past we heard about changes in what the bank will do in the future but until now, it was never very clear how such changes would affect us or what we would need to do in order to follow these plans. Through the competencies framework, with well defined and expressed competencies anchored in strategy, Jobholders felt they gained a better understanding of what was expected, what was rewarded, what was desirable and what behaviors and abilities would be needed in the short-, mid- and more long- run. As mentioned above, the top management of Patagonia decided to redefine their HER methods and systems starting from a focus on individual Job-related competencies.

The competency model should focus not only on behaviors, knowledge and skills necessary, but should also facilitate communication about strategy and articulate how people could expect to be selected, trained, evaluated, and rewarded after implementation of the new strategy. Moreover, competencies related to the ability to change, learn and take initiatives should explicitly be integrated.

The competency framework Patagonia are adopting should also take into inconsideration not only Job descriptions, but also best practices and recent trends in the aerospace industry as well as the organization’s own strategy (Marten, 2003), so as to guarantee a direct and dynamic link between strategy and competencies and the relevance and “survival” of the framework throughout and beyond the implementation of the change program.

Second, the competency framework should consist of a set of “generic” competency areas, with each competency area to be composed of a limited number of competencies that would be relevant, to different degrees, for every concerned Job position (Lucia and Lifelines, 1999). Criticisms Difficulties with the operation and implementation of competency management systems are mostly related to the complex and lengthy process required for identifying the appropriate competencies for an organization and for building the appropriate competency model They and Roth (1999).

Another issue of concern is that the competencies defined most often end up as being backward-looking rather than future-oriented with respect to strategy and organizational change (Darlington et al. , 2002). Competency models tend to focus on what managers currently do rather Han what is needed to perform effectively in the future (Antipollution and Fitzgerald, 1996), something that Jeopardizes the potential of competencies to act as levers for implementing change (Marten, 2003).

If HER managers fail to adapt continuously and reengineering periodically their organization’s competency framework, it will at best become outdated and fall into oblivion, and at worst drag the organization into stagnation and loss of competitive momentum. Now that I have drawn together and critically discussed a range of principles and approaches using vast ranges of literature, my conclusions are as followed.

Hoffmann and Flood (2000) outline two approaches to competencies, first the US approach and second the UK approach. The predominant US approach portrayed by Botanists, Lurch and others defines competency as the underlying attributes of a person. It is largely an input-based approach, defining the inputs needed to demonstrate competent performance. In contrast, the I-J approach sees competency as a set of performances and standards.

Boom and Sparrow 1992), among others, are part of a group of mostly English authors who proposed that competency was best used as a measure of output learning. Training and assessment of performance was the thrust of this approach. Stuart and Lindsay 1997) suggest ‘each model is incomplete and therefore lacking as a comprehensive frame for understanding and working with managerial competence.

Neither approach adequately defines managerial competence in terms of the context of the organization, its culture, marketplace and business environment”. Into this potential By using Competency frameworks it will help and allow a company such as Patagonia in Institutionalizing any changes HER management wish to enforce, The shift to a impotency-based performance management system allows HER management to start this change through better goal setting, clarification of expectations, reward of behaviors that support new strategic objectives.