Formalizing Employee Competencies through Document Analysis (part 2)

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Formalizing Employee Competencies through
Document Analysis (part 2)
Planning of Study 1 and 2

• Tobias Ley
• 02 December 2002

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Overview

• Introduction Competency Management in dynamic
  settings
• Theoretical Basis
• Method for Study 1
• Data Collection
• Data Analysis
• Preview on Study 2

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Aim of the research

• Supporting Competency Mangagement within dynamic
  settings

Intro
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What is "Competency Management"?

• Assessing, Visualizing, Using and Developing
• Human Competencies at work
• Knowledge, Skills, Abilities
• For support in organisational processes
• Human Resource (e.g. Selection, Development)
• Knowledge Management (e.g. Expert Search)
• Strategic Management (e.g. Core Competency
  Management)

Intro
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What are "dynamic settings"?
Stable Settings
Tasks can be planned long time in advance
Job roles stay fairly stable over time
Competency requirements remain stable and can be planned for each job role
Organisation is based on hierarchy of job roles
Formal training can accommodate competency needs
Dynamic Settings
Tasks change fast, employees define their own tasks
Job roles are only defined in general terms
Only very general competency requirements can be defined for a job role
Organization is often project-based
Training on the job and Coaching become more important
Intro
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Application in a stable setting
Ley Albert(to appear)
Intro
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Application in a dynamic setting

• Challenges
• Reflect dynamic task assignments
• Provide means for continuous updating of the
  structures
• Answers
• Involve employees in the assessment process
• Use Documents and work results created by
  employees as Performance
• Use competencies needed for creating documents
  as Competence
• Provide algorithms for updating structures
  connected with document management

Intro
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The Pros and Cons of using documents

• Pros
• Documents are easily available no extra effort
  to define performance
• Documents reflect dynamic tasks better than
  formal job analysis
• Documents are main work results in dynamic
  knowledge-based firm
• Employees competencies can be analysed on the
  job
• Cons
• Documents are focused on the past
• There are potentially too many documents
• Do documents really reflect most critical
  employee competencies?
• Employees have a "personal" view on the
  competencies they used

Intro
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Aims of Study 1

• Assess competencies in a dynamic setting
• Visualize available competencies for management
  purposes
• Visualize available competencies and documents
  for employees
• Show learning paths
• Compare individual views of competency
  definitions and structures

Intro
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Theoretical Basis

• Competency-based Human Resource Management
• Competence-Performance Theory
• Personal Construct Psychology

Theory
Green (1999)
Korossy (1997)
Kelly (1955)
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"The Psychology of Personal Constructs" (1)

• Fundamental Postulate
• A person's processes are psychologically
  channelized by the ways in which he anticipates
  events
• Construction
• A person anticipates events by construing their
  replications
• Individuality
• Persons differ from each other in theior
  construction of events
• Organization
• Each person characteristically evolves, for his
  convenience of anticipating events, a
  construction system embracing ordinal
  relationships between constructs
• Dichotomy
• A person's construction system is composed of a
  finite number of dichotomous constructs

Theory
Kelly (1955)
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"The Psychology of Personal Constructs" (2)

• "Man as scientist"
• Idiographic approach
• Alternative Constructivism
• Constructs Bipolar dimensions that construct the
  world as similarities and differences
• Repertory Grid A method to elicit a person's
  construct system

Theory
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The Repertory Grid Technique

• Elements Objects which are construed
• Within range of convenience
• Representative of the domain
• E.g. Persons, Situations, Products, ...
• Constructs Dimensions which are used for
  construction of the elements
• Elicitation Technique
• Triadic construct elicitation
• The Grid
• Rating of elements on constructs

Theory
Bannister Fransella (1977)
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Business Applications of Repertory Grid

• Market Research
• Quality Control
• Job Analysis and Design
• Decision Making
• Knowledge Elicitation for Expert Systems

Theory
Stewart Stewart (1982)
Jankowicz (2001)
Preiss (2000)
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Study 1 Creation of the structures

• Data Collection
• Selection of employees
• Selection of documents
• Repertory Grid type interviews
• Data Analysis
• Idiographic Analysis
• Nomothetic Analysis

Method
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Data Collection

• 10 employees with similar job profiles

• Selection of 7-9 characteristic documents created
  as work results

• Structured Interviews Repertory Grid Technique
• "In terms of the competencies you used in
  creating these three documents, what does
  differentiate two of them from the third one?"

• Consolidation of Competencies

• Rating of documents on the competency dimensions

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A Grid
Documents Documents Documents
Software Evaluation Study Case Study Documentation Scientific Publication
Competencies Structuring Processes and describing them X X X
Competencies Analysing the demands of a customer X X
Competencies Knowledge about Human Resource Processes in Companies X
Competencies Knowledge about Intellectual Capital Models X
Method
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A Competence-Performance (C-P-)Structure
Method
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Data Analysis

• Idiographic Analysis
• One Grid per person
• One C-P-Structure per person
• Comparing individual Grids
• Content Analysis
• Indices Frame differentiation, frame complexity,
  construct centrality,...
• Comparing individual C-P-Structures?
• Nomothetic Analysis
• Combining grids and structures
• Methods for combining grids Factor Analysis and
  orthogonal target rotation (Bell, 1985)
• Methods for combining C-P-Structures?

Method
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Study 2 Updating the structures

• Follow-up interviews with same and new employees
  in 6 months
• Introduce new documents into the structure
• Introduce new competencies into the structure
• Aim Find and test adaptive algorithms

Preview