A Critical Review of the Science and Practice of Competency Modeling

Abstract

As an alternative to traditional job analysis, the practice of competency modeling may be appealing to scholars and practitioners of human resource development (HRD) to serve as the foundation for many HRD activities. Among some of its advantages are a more explicit focus on performance and development that is aligned with organizational strategy, fuller integration with human resource systems, and a focus on broad work roles and functions instead of discrete jobs. Unfortunately, the use of competency models is often hindered as a result of conceptual ambiguity, a lack of methodological rigor in the development of such systems, and psychometric issues. The current integrative literature review seeks to clarify the practice of competency modeling within the context of HRD through a critical analysis of its foundations, conceptual and definitional issues, and potential barriers to use while providing the current state of the science and best practices.

Social Housing Competencies: Expertise for a New Era

“…Workplace competency, as a social phenomenon, is widely discussed in popular culture, business, and academia (Berdrow & Evers, 2014;Feser, Mayol, & Srinivasan, 2015;Kuchinke & Han, 2005;Stevens, 2012).…”

“…Finally, the idea of competency modelling, which has been useful in the development of training and assessment centres, employee and career development initiatives, leadership development, and organizational change (Stevens, 2012), is used. Understanding competency modelling as a process that aligns a competency model with the context in question fits nicely within this research's theoretical framing as it centralizes sectoral, temporal, and organizational variables.…”

“…Understanding competency modelling as a process that aligns a competency model with the context in question fits nicely within this research's theoretical framing as it centralizes sectoral, temporal, and organizational variables. In other words, it does not blindly promote the application of a monolithic model across settings (Stevens, 2012). Competency modelling suggests that competencies, as defined above, can be used within the social housing sector in a way that allows a comprehensive and responsive approach.…”

Comparing Competences on Academia and Occupational Contexts based on Similarity Measures

“…Mainly due to different interpretations that each actor has about the deflnition of competency (Fazel-Zarandi and Fox, 2009). For instance, the term competency appears to be used at times to refer to actions and their consequences and at others to refer to cognitive skills and personality characteristics (Stevens, 2013) , or the competencies of individuáis may be expressed in terms of qualiflcations and certiflcations, such as academic degrees (Malzahn et al, 2013) or as learning outcomes within educational processes (Paquette, 2007). Other aspect to consider is the degree of performance of competences in which the labor market related activities and functions (Bizer et al, 2005), whereas in academia is related to generic descriptions of occupational áreas (Dorn and Pichlmair, 2007 (Draganidis and Mentzas, 2006).…”

“…However, in reality it is almost impossible to compare competencies, mainly due a problems as: incompatible proflles (Fazel-Zarandi and Fox, 2013) (Stevens, 2013) and unstructured, ambiguous, and sometimes incomplete data (Fazel-Zarandi, 2013). Looking for a solution, models and platforms have been proposed in order to proflle standardization (Draganidis and Mentzas, 2006) and comparison through competency frameworks (e-CF 1 , SIOC 2 , 0*NET 3 ).…”