Today's world is undoubtedly the world of competition.
Taking as reference any of its meanings, it is as much about the need to be competent, in the sense of being fit, empowered, trained for a successful performance, as the need to be competitive, that is, be prepared to get ahead, prevail over others, emulate with others, win and lead.
This last notion of competing, not always accepted by everyone in our context, I think should not be discarded in our day, since it is distinguished from the fierce competition of the capitalist world by the fact of starting from very different ethical principles inherent in our social project. However, especially in the world of employment, in our environment there is competition.
The most enterprising, dedicated, innovative, committed, capable, triumphs on a fair basis for their results in the face of the opportunities that may arise in their job performance.
Some companies succeed by using collective intelligence in a good way, strengthening their strengths and achieving everyone's effort. There is no doubt that being more competent makes us more competitive.
However, it is not about taking naive positions. It is globally recognized that "Latin America and the Caribbean is currently considered the least equitable region in the world."
The gap between developed and developing countries means that we are not in very advantageous positions to "compete" in the business world in international settings.
However, an important way to contribute to our economic and social development is precisely to become increasingly competent. To do this, it is necessary to reflect on the aforementioned competences: Why are competencies being talked about today?
What exactly are these skills? What implications does working with a skills approach have for our companies? Even without wishing to theorize too much, thinking about these aspects helps us with the choice of:
- take the skills approach as the “latest fad” in the business world, not accept change and stick to proven work traditions, albeit for some obsolete ones, or incorporate this approach into our practices for their convenience, understanding it and therefore reworking it appropriately based on our contexts.
In which sociohistorical environment does the competency approach emerge?
The contemporary era is marked by what is called the “modern paradigm”.
Modernity is the period of civilization that emerged at the end of the medieval period characterized by its obscurantism, with the transcendental transformations produced from the 17th century on in science and technology, which are accompanied by all the transit from feudal society to industrial capitalist society.
In PF Drucker's words: "in just 150 years, more or less between 1750 and 1900, capitalism and technology conquered the planet".
Modern society has advanced at different rates depending on the specific conditions of each nation, giving rise today to a world panorama in which highly developed societies coexist in which we speak of the post-industrial information age, with others in which hardly a minimum industrialization of the productive processes has been achieved.
In the face of this world that we had already anticipated as very unequal, the interesting thing is to understand that this modern society is based on a world view characterized by rationality and mechanism derived from the dynamics of new modes of production and the ideas of some great thinkers. that impacted at this time, like Isaac Newton and René Descartes.
It is based on the assumption that science and technology constitute infinite potential and that from it nature can be mastered (without understanding the limits of its conservation) and industrial production can be increased, which contributes to the enjoyment of goods. and with it the happiness of man.
It brings with it, in summary, "a conception of social progress from an economistic, consumerist and de-ideological perspective", which obviates the differences in opportunities and access to all these things and generates an individualistic ethic of having, of power. It is accompanied by a positivist science model, of an elitist nature, that favors empirical-analytical approaches and highlights the importance of extreme objectivity. It offers a rational, empiricist, mechanistic and fragmented vision of reality; a free knowledge of values and subjectivity. (Castellanos, B. 1998)
It is within this framework that the concept of competition arises. As the industry develops and the need for more productive, prepared men increases, and as new jobs appear, in the world of work, competencies begin to be thought of as tangible, concrete, and measurable components of professional behavior.
In this way, marked by this positivist vision, the competencies were initially conceived as concrete actions that could be credited by employers.
What changes in the business world are associated with the skills approach?
Among the transformations that were taking place in this social environment, some approaches directly linked to the business world that bring us closer to competencies will be mentioned.
In the 1960s, Organizational Development (McGregor, Schein, among others) emerged as a tool for business management and consulting. Inspired by humanistic and socio-technical approaches, it is proposed to increase the benefits of the company through the empowerment of people, emerging as an alternative to the rational-economic and bureaucratic-formal organization product of the time to which we have already referred (Díaz-Armesto and Fernández, 2005). This approach emphasizes the ability to learn from the company and the importance of moving from a culture oriented to the control of people to another oriented to their development.
A few years later, in the 1970s, the skills approach began to gain strength with the work of David C. McClelland in the United States. From then on, competency management became the way of managing human resources in the business world, becoming a key factor in the transformation of organizations in the late 1990s.
The advent of this new 21st century was preceded by changes that had a great impact on the business world. The rapid development of science and technology, and especially the development of new information and communication technologies, gave rise to the knowledge that began to be considered as the basic resource. The most valuable assets for companies begin to be intangible assets, which have their origin in the knowledge, skills, values and attitudes of the people who form the stable core of the company. These assets are called Intellectual Capital, where all the implicit or explicit knowledge that generates economic value for the company is understood (Joyanes Aguilar, 1998)
The value that knowledge gained made the conception of man within organizations change. Knowledge is the generator of wealth and this resides in people, which is why they also begin to be recognized as their Human Capital, as the only living and dynamic resource that decides how others manage themselves. Organizations go from considering their personnel as a cost to analyzing how each one contributes to the generation of value, managing their skills and considering them as an investment.
In the world of work, two types of workers begin to be clearly distinguished: the so-called generic workers, who perform tasks effectively, but without initiative, of a more reactive nature, and the so-called self-programmable workers, who are self-employed, who learn, adapt to changes. The former begin to be considered easily replaceable, while the latter become increasingly necessary to the organization.
The market begins to give great value to the innovation capacity of companies, for which it is necessary to evaluate which competencies are present in their workers, which of them represent competitive advantages, which should be developed to invest in actions directed at them such like other financial investments.
The management of competencies begins to be strengthened to optimize the value of the organization's human capital. Human resource management is increasingly aligned with the organization's strategy, trying to respond, from the best use of these intangible values, to market demands.
How can competencies be explained from psychology?
Psychology has an important role in the study of competences, since these are expressions of human behavior. As it is an inherent quality of man, it is important to understand it from the psychological point of view and distinguish it from other categories, since sometimes we find ourselves under the name of competencies and treated interchangeably as such abilities, capacities, attitudes and other forms of human performance. If we do not distinguish them clearly, we run the risk of using them under the traditional approach of the set of underlying traits that a person must have to occupy a job, unaware that the competence approach has been developed precisely as an alternative to it. (Artidiello and Conrado, 2005)
The evolution of the models with which human cognition has been studied was also contributing to the emergence of the notion of competition. Within this we can highlight the historical-cultural approach and especially the work of LS Vygotsky who identified as "psychological tools" those instruments, signs, operations that allow us to know and work intellectually and how these "tools" have a cultural origin.
Thus, differences in cognition are more located in the psychological tools used by men, formed in the setting of sociocultural experience, which highlights the importance of learning and appropriation of the experience accumulated by others in the development of everything. our arsenal of skills and abilities.
This theoretical scaffolding bequeathed to us by materialist dialectical-oriented psychology clearly explains from the concept of capabilities the successful execution of man's activity. Without ignoring skills as their natural premises, social context and learning play an important role in their development. They make it possible to clarify the cause of some having better results than others in the performance of their tasks, since they are defined as "properties or qualities of man that make him apt to carry out some types of socially useful activity successfully".
However, even Psychology itself recognizes a certain contradiction existing in real life between capabilities and efficiency in productive activity. In this direction, SL Rubinstein himself considered the real dilemma of people who due to their abilities should be very productive and are not. Quoting Rubinstein:
“… But when we look at people in real life we cannot get rid of the impression that people who seem to be generally talented, sometimes are not very productive and do not give as much as they promised, while on the contrary, people who Seemingly less talented they are more productive than previously thought. ”
Among the efforts that are taking place in science to answer these questions, the development of Cognitive Psychology is also important. In it the traditional conception of intelligence is transformed, conceived as capacity-disposition by a conception of information processing. Cognition begins to be understood not as a capacity but as a "set of procedures to unfold the mind" linked to a functional problem. It is understood that it is not so much what we possess as capacity, but how we proceed with our intellectual resources.
Cognitive theories have representation as a core concept, understood as organized knowledge that is updated in mental activity, in performance. This gives rise to the competence model, initially introduced by N. Chomsky (1965) when studying linguistic competence, understood by the author as a knowledge of rules. In the same way, the logical structures proposed by J. Piaget's theory of cognitive development were considered a model of competition.
Although these first competition models were attributed an innate character, conceived as endowment of the species, this more functional-oriented approach undoubtedly constituted another approach to the study of performance.
The performance (linguistic or cognitive, in each case of those indicated by these first authors) was studied as the actual use that the subject makes of that organized knowledge or competition and it can be affected by contextual situations, factors of the subject, etc.
Other references to point out as elements that intervened in the conception of competencies that are handled today was the general recognition within psychological science of the importance of the unity of the intellectual, cognitive, affective, emotional aspects to explain behavior. human. Reason and passion, "brain and heart" regulate our actions in life, so to explain successful behavior a more integrative approach to the human psyche is needed.
Finally, all the ideas unleashed from the concept of emotional intelligence (Goleman, 1995) where emotions are placed at the center of an expanded model of what it means to “be smart”, also contributed to the fact of rethinking how to explain the fact. to achieve optimum levels of performance at work and in life in general.
Although it is possible that they are not always defined exactly the same in all sources, there is consensus today in considering competencies as complex psychological formations, which integrate resources from different areas of the personality (skills, abilities, attitudes, motivations, among others) that allow for self-regulating behavior (independent, flexible, creative, reflective). As a complex formation, it produces a synergistic effect that manifests itself in high-quality performances. Another generally accepted idea is its possibility of training and development through learning.
This understanding from the Psychology of what the competences are translates in the labor world into a more dynamic vision of the worker regarding his job. It also conditions a transformation in organizations, which are made more flexible by having as expectations having more autonomous human resources, more prepared for changes, which makes it possible to gain shared responsibility and participation.
And in the end, what are the competitions?
As previously mentioned, in the beginning, competencies were understood as what a person who works in a specific work area is capable of doing, dealing with concrete actions, behaviors or results that could be evaluated from observation.. This notion, of a positivist and pragmatic nature, was changing since the 1980s and is now obsolete. The change began by including within the elements of competence not only the mastery of the routines of the profession but also "intelligent technical knowledge", which involves the exercise of discernment, intelligent action in unstructured situations that require creativity and the search of alternatives to decision-making, among other things. Change the concept of quality in performance,not as a tangible end product matching only functional standards, but also with complex capabilities and intelligent behaviors.
The literature currently reports numerous works on competencies where various definitions of them appear, always under an integrative approach that includes the axiological and that exceeds the model that gave rise to them. Some interesting ideas found in this diversity allow us to outline our understanding of what competencies are:
Job competence is not a probability of success in performing the job, it is a real and proven ability.
Professional competencies define the effective exercise of skills that allow the performance of an occupation with respect to the levels required in employment. It is something more than technical knowledge that refers to “knowing and knowing-how”.
The concept of competence encompasses not only the skills required for the exercise of a professional activity, but also a set of behaviors, powers of analysis, decision making, transmission of information, etc., considered necessary for the full performance of the occupation.
Competence is conceived as a complex combination of attributes (knowledge, attitudes, values and abilities) and tasks to be carried out in certain situations. Take into account the context and culture of the workplace. It allows ethics and values to be incorporated as elements of competent performance.
Competition involves reasoned knowledge. There is no competence if the theoretical knowledge is not accompanied by the qualities and capacity that allows executing those decisions that said competence suggests.
Competency comes not just from passing a formal school curriculum, it is a mix of prior technological knowledge and concrete experience that comes primarily from working in the real world.
The competent person is one who has capabilities and has the conditions to put them at the service of excellent performance, who mobilizes all his resources for it. Reflect on your own execution. It has a tight view of its possibilities and limits in it, as well as the mechanisms it uses, allowing it to make transfers to new situations and to have a more autonomous behavior. It brings together knowing, knowing how to do, wanting to do and also knowing how to be, since it implies that having assumed some qualities and values necessary for that performance. Some authors point out that situational conditions also determine whether or not competent behavior is displayed, so they add to this the power to do.
What does working with this notion of competencies imply for our companies?
Competency management is closely linked to those key activities of human resource management in an organization. There is no point in incorporating the terms into our discourse without changing our business practices. It is not, as the popular proverb says, "the same dog with a different collar", it is truly a change of conception.
A Competency Management model must allow:
Link the personal and team capacity to add value in work processes.
Align Human Resources Management to the business strategy, as they increase their ability to respond to new market demands.
Properly manage the assets of the competencies, ensuring the power to maintain the competitive advantages of the company.
In order to manage competencies, it is necessary to be able to account for all these intangible assets, so it is necessary to start with the preparation of a competency profile.
The design of the jobs must be made from the integration of those elements of diverse nature, as we have explained (knowledge, skills, attitudes, values, etc.) that make up the so-called secondary or complex competences, which are expressed in the job performance and are what define its content.
The competency profile is somewhat different from the usual job profiles or profesiograms, focused more on the cognitive level and on the functions. (Cuesta A. 2002)
The profile of competences will depend fundamentally on the role of the job in question, but also on the strategy and culture of each individual company. Said profile works as a “model” and is developed from a core of competencies that are broken down into more specific subcompetencies and these in turn are expressed in indicators that indicate different levels that serve to characterize the performance of each individual.
Some authors distinguish in the competency profiles a “hard” profile, in which knowledge and skills are concentrated, and a “soft” profile, which brings together those behaviors required for optimal performance. Both show competencies. Those referred to "soft" are always more difficult to evaluate. The works of D. Mc. In this direction, Clelland from Harvard University have systematized 20 competitions of this type that are grouped into 6 groups: Achievement and Action Competencies; Aid and service skills; Influence competitions; Management skills; Cognitive Competencies and Personal Efficacy Competencies.
In our country, interesting experiences are already reported in the elaboration of competency profiles (Artidiello and Conrado, 2005; Cuesta 2002) who, without ignoring these experiences reported in the international literature, assume different positions, more integrative and adjusted to our contexts. SIME is currently working on this same line.
Within the GESTA training programs, topics on competencies are included, the so-called competency matrices, with the aim of gradually incorporating this concept into our business culture. There is also a team of researchers from our organization at GESTA studying the subject and working to shape the competency profile of the top level managers of the SIME.
In this direction, it is important to point out that the selection process itself must be rethought from the competency-based approach.
Without renouncing the traditional psychometric techniques, emphasis should be placed on those that allow the candidate to reveal himself in an approach to performance, such as the so-called professional tests, which in many cases must be designed, or the simulation exercises and role plays typical of " Assessment Center ”. Interviews continue to be of paramount value, since due to their communicative nature they make the applicant reveal her personality, as well as the possibility they offer to integrate information. The so-called Critical Incident interviews are added, through which information is obtained about what the person thought, felt, said and did in certain work situations.
Training is one of the aspects that suggests a new reflection when working on a competency-based approach. Working life today is characterized by flexibility, rapid changes, new occupational trajectories, versatility and rotation. The necessary skills training, due to its characteristics, requires close collaboration between the world of formal education and the world of work.
There are more primary competencies that are formed in systematic education where insistence is placed on forms of learning that contribute, rather than accumulation of knowledge, transversal knowledge that can be updated in everyday life. Secondary competencies are formed on them, which require other types of training and can be formed by alternating periods of work and teaching, as well as in more informal systems of organizational learning, so that actions designed within own work dynamics (tutoring, consulting, teamwork, rotation, etc.)
All these changes logically affect performance evaluation and its consequent remuneration and stimulation system. The competency profiles must be accompanied by instruments for the evaluation of the worker with indicators that are consistent with the competencies required in said profile.
The assessment of professional success must incorporate this holistic notion of competence. The consequent difficulties involved in evaluating human behavior, due to its multifactorial nature and subjective nature, should not lead us to easy, mechanistic and rigid solutions, typical of already expired work cultures. Viable solutions that allow for comprehensive assessment and flexibility must be sought, in which the competences are considered among its indicators.
Given its direct involvement in Human Resources Management, Competency Management is closely linked to business management and organizational change processes. The strategic objectives to be achieved, its Mission, its culture, define the necessary competences to be achieved and its management methods.
Some final ideas
After all these dizzying changes in science, technology and production in the modern world, serious problems of humanity such as hunger, unemployment, environmental degradation, social injustice, have been left without solution, just to name a few. "Modern society" has failed in this regard, despite all its progress. From this derives the need to find new models, which some call the postmodern paradigm, which tends to integration, to holistic and non-atomistic, organic and non-mechanical visions, as well as to the rescue from the axiological point of being, of solidarity, equity. I think the most important thing is that this new paradigm brings with it the opportunity for this better world that some of us work for, although others oppose.
The business world is an important scenario in this context of change. A great responsibility in social development is attributed to it, both for the production of goods, knowledge, technologies derived from it, and for what it represents for human well-being and quality of life, job success, satisfaction in job. Although it does not mean the solution to all problems, the competencies describe an autonomous and developer work behavior. Perhaps it is part of our own competences to be able to implement this approach in a correct and viable way in our contexts.
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