The trickiness of IT enhanced competence management
The Authors
Joyce E.H. McHenry, Oslo School of Management, Oslo, Norway
Fred H. Strønen, Oslo University College, Oslo, Norway
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to develop a critical understanding of IT enhanced competence management and its promise to bridge operational and strategic functions with the aim of revealing potential hidden challenges.
Design/methodology/approach – Empirical data were gathered through interviews and observations during a longitudinal field study over a two year period in a large Norwegian IT consulting firm that has adopted a competence IT tool throughout the entire organisation. The investigation was conducted from a practice-based approach to studying competence management.
Findings – It was found that IT enhanced competence management that aims to bridge the individual and organisational purposes, is mediated by a universal-stock versus contextualist approach to competence development. This results in four possible alternatives to IT enhanced competence management. In this study the contextual competence assessment for individual purposes has been objectified for organisational purposes, causing confusion about the value of IT enhanced competence management.
Research limitations/implications – This study has been conducted in only one large IT firm in Norway. Further research is needed to support the finding that it is beneficial to remain in either the contextual or the universal-stock orientation to competence development when using the same assessments for individual-operational and organisational-strategic purposes.
Practical implications – The trickiness of IT enhanced competence management lies in the four hidden belief structures about competence that influence both the design and use of IT enhanced competence tools. Insight gained from this paper may help managers to reflect on their assumptions about competence and may contribute to successful IT enhanced competence management.
Originality/value – The research clarifies possible pitfalls when aiming to satisfy multiple purposes in the design and use of a competence IT tool.
Article Type:
Research paper
Keyword(s):
Competences; Communication technologies; Assessment; Norway.
Journal:
Journal of Workplace Learning
Volume:
20
Number:
2
Year:
2008
pp:
114-132
Copyright ©
Emerald Group Publishing Limited
ISSN:
1366-5626
Introduction
In our present knowledge-society, it is now commonly recognised that competent employees with the right knowledge, skills and abilities not only determine productivity and customer satisfaction, but also the ability to compete in fast changing environments. This has resulted in a shift towards a competence focus with sophisticated human resource development and workplace learning strategies in organisations (Garavan and McQuire, 2001). The adoption of a competence approach to HRM has stimulated several discussions within strategic HRM on how to obtain the right match between current and strategically required competence in organisations. The response to this has been the development of a wide variety of competence models ranging from predominantly standardised universal approaches to attempts to design more context specific and organisational approaches (Garavan and McQuire, 2001).
Another debate arising from the increased focus on competence has been on how competence should be developed – in terms of informal workplace learning and formal training. The latest research indicates that in order to maximise opportunities and performance within the working environment, it is necessary to make a shift from traditional formal learning in educational settings, to accentuating participative practices (Billett, 2004) and informal learning in the workplace (Lave and Wenger, 1991; Gherardi, 2006) as well as to look for ways to integrate informal and formal learning (Svensson and Ellström, 2004). A challenge not resolved, however, is how organisations can benefit strategically from informal learning in the workplace. Fleury and Fleury (2005) indicate that to relate competence to strategy is a demanding task and mostly the emphasis is rather on aggregating value for the organisation than on the benefit for employees.
A response to this challenge can be observed in the recent interest in and experiments on the managing of competence through competence IT tools that promise to support both individual learning and strategic HRM decision making (Lindgren et al., 2003; McHenry, 2003; Hustad and Munkvold, 2005). These competence tools differ from knowledge management tools (Ruggles, 1997) in that these mainly store information about the employees' level of competence within different competence areas. This information is then used for identifying competence needs, competence sourcing and training (Baladi, 1999).
IT enhanced competence tools promise the benefit of aligning organisational level core competence with individual level job competence (Lindgren et al., 2004), that was not previously possible, due to the lack of the possibility to share vast amounts of data across the organisation. Through the tracking of informal learning, competence profiles and individual gap analysis between current and desired competence, it has become possible to identify individual learning needs and to ensure that competence development through formal and informal learning is connected to strategic business needs. In addition, the information can be used for competence sourcing and staffing of projects. Hence the output from IT enhanced competence tools can be linked to HRM strategy, individual learning strategies, salary and career advancement as well as to find experts for sharing of knowledge or staffing of projects (Hustad and Munkvold, 2005).
This is very promising, but recent research indicates that this bridging of organisational and individual level is not easy to realize in practice. According to Lindgren (2005), competence systems often fail when implemented in contemporary organisations due to a misfit between a rationalistic and universal view of competence that is embedded in most competence systems and the organic nature of organisations. This places emphasis on the need to understand the adoption of competence tools (Lindgren, 2005) with attention to meaning, involvement and the situated nature of competence (Capaldo et al., 2006; Håland and Tjora, 2006).
So, while IT enhanced competence management can technically overcome the individual-organisational gap, there is still a need to investigate this promise even further and to disclose potential advantages and disadvantages of IT enhanced competence management. Accordingly, in this article we investigate the question of how assessment of competence gained through informal learning is used for individual-operational as well as organisational-strategic purposes with the aim of revealing potential hidden challenges.
We do this through a longitudinal study in a Norwegian IT consultancy that has adopted a competence IT tool throughout the entire organisation. The competence tool was designed in-house before the start of this study. It was based on the understanding that competence was contextual and cannot be managed through universal, predefined competence frameworks. In the following we will first present a theoretical review of competence management. Subsequently, we will introduce the methodology and the field study and finish with a discussion and conclusion.
Theoretical background – competence management
In this section we focus on how the theoretical field on competence management has developed from simple skill based approaches to advanced technology enhanced competence management. Competence management is not a new phenomenon. The interest in the concept of competence has been around since Taylor (1911) with a renewed focus during the 1950s when training of managers became popular (McClelland, 1973). Since then many studies have appeared that aim to clarify what competence is and how it can be managed (Boyatzis, 1982; Veres et al., 1990; Nordhaug, 1998; Nordhaug and Grønhaug, 1994; Sandberg, 2000; Sanchez and Heene, 2000; Robinson et al., 2007). One stream of the literature has focused on individual competences and has taken the worker's attributes as a starting point for discussing competence (McClelland, 1973; Boyatzis, 1982; Kolb, 1984). Competence is constituted by identifying attributes possessed by workers, typically represented as knowledge, skills, abilities (KSAs) and personal traits required for effective work performance (Veres et al., 1990). This has resulted in numerous competence models that are derived from job requisites and responsibilities (Sandberg, 2000) with direct connections to the concept of competence as a stock that can be developed through training and validated in “objective” rating schedules (McHenry, 2003).
The second group claims that looking at only individual competences is too limited to make informed strategic decisions. They prefer to conceptualise competence as a characteristic of organisations where human competences are seen as one of the resources available to organisations (Garavan and McQuire, 2001). With the introduction of Prahalad and Hamel's (1990) concept of core competence, the focus turned from the individual level to the organisational level. Core competence becomes the capability of the entire organisation to learn and to include all firm-specific assets, knowledge and skills and capabilities embedded in the organisation. It is based on structure, technology, processes, and interpersonal and inter group relations (Lado and Wilson, 1994, p. 702). Other attempts to categorise and operationalise work-related competencies in generic frameworks have been made by Nordhaug and Grønhaug (1994) who argue for a classification in task, firm and industry specific competences.
The literature also reveals a multitude of definitions due to differences in underlying assumptions about what competence is and how people learn and develop competence (Sandberg, 2000; Garavan and McQuire, 2001; McHenry, 2003; Capaldo et al., 2006). On the one hand, there are the so-called “traditional rationalists” who follow positivistic claims to competence. They proclaim clear demarcations between worker and work and desire to calculate competence needs in a scientific way through generic competence frameworks that have scientific rigor, are valid, reliable and have predictive value. They base their research on large-scale methods such as behavioural event interview-based studies of the characteristics of superior performers in a job, or extensive interviews and observations of workers on the job. It is the traditionalist approach that has dominated the debate on competence management, aiming to find one optimal competence framework that identifies the ideal combination of knowledge, skills and abilities. There is a strong belief that competence is an individual attribute that can be matched with strategic objectives and can be developed through effective training. However, as competence models are a “real world inquiry” in complex and messy field settings, it has been realised that they need to be developed in different, but controlled and scientifically rigorous ways.
On the other hand, there are the “contextualists” who take a more postmodern approach and view competence as contextual, as it is shaped by discourse and sociality (Sandberg, 2000). Schön (1987) emphasises that in professional practices, which he calls communities of practice, people rely on difficult to articulate knowledge that becomes visible in skilful and artistic performance. In order to become a skilful professional it is thus necessary to have access to the tacit knowledge that is in the practice of the masters of the profession. In this view the traditional dichotomy between knowledge (abstract conceptualisation) and skills (practical techniques) is disappearing in the understanding that knowledge cannot be separated from action. Furthermore, a contextual approach draws from situated learning theories (Lave and Wenger, 1991; Gherardi et al., 1998) and indicates that competence relates to “knowing how to be competent” in a usable environment (Gherardi and Nicolini, 2000). They summarise competence as situated in a system of ongoing practice; it is relational and mediated by artefacts; it is rooted in a context of interaction and is acquired through some form of participation in a community of practice; it is continually reproduced and negotiated and therefore it is dynamic and provisional. Therefore, to separate assessment of competence from how competence is created, and the unique way that people make sense of their jobs, is not acceptable.
The contextualists place question marks on the causal link between competence and performance and claim that these generalisable, simple and accurate frameworks are unattainable (Stuart et al., 1995). From this point of view competence needs to be looked at through organisation specific competence frameworks and context-based assessments (Poikela, 2004) that generate valid information through large qualitative field studies (Capaldo et al., 2006).
With the introduction of more advanced IT systems the area of competence management has again received attention (Lindgren and Stenmark, 2002). The aim of these IT enhanced competence systems is to overcome the challenge of managing employee competencies strategically by integrating both the individual and organisational purposes of competence management (Hagan, 1996; Nordhaug, 1998; Lindgren et al., 2004). This is also known under various names, such as strategic competence systems, competence appraisal systems, integrated skills development systems or competence and skill mapping systems.
A typical characteristic of these systems is that they organise the employee's level of expertise in a hierarchical tree structure based on a grading scale to specify the level of competence from a beginner to an expert. In such technical skill component models (Lindgren et al. 2004), the focus is on dividing the job into a list of discrete tasks or skills and then adding up the mastered tasks. The employee is assessed on each component and not on how they can combine the components of their skills in various situations. A critique against these competence systems is that they reduce competence to inactive repositories of formalised competences and people become a kind of toolbox. In order to overcome thinking that competence is a measurable and tangible unit, which can be controlled in a mechanical and rational way, several attempts have been made to design these competence systems from a contextual perspective. Given the importance of competence and the increasingly important role of IT (Alavi and Leidner, 2001) we need further research in order to understand how IT enhanced competence management can contribute to workplace learning, in the understanding that competence is contextual and practice based.
Methodology
The empirical data has been collected during a longitudinal field study (Lincoln and Guba, 1985; Kvale, 1995; Andersen et al., 1995; Alvesson and Sköldberg, 2000) lasting from 1999-2001. During this time semi-structured interviews, observations and active participation were used to understand how the competence IT tool was made sense of and used for individual and organisational purposes across the organisation.
Different people have been interviewed and observed during the three phases of the adoption process of the competence IT tool (see Table I). The CEO and division managers have been interviewed in a semi-structured interview during the planning and implementation phase with the aim to capture their operational and strategic interests in the competence IT tool. The HR manager, competence expert developers and project manager have been observed three days a week as well as interviewed three times in a semi-structured interview during the various phases with focus on how they talked about and shaped the use of the competence IT tool. During the pilot phase ten IT specialists and four managers from a technical division have been observed on a daily basis for nine months and interviewed one time with the am to learn more about their concerns. The other people involved during the implementation phase have been observed three days a week with focus on how they talked about and related to the competence tool.
According to Kvale (1995) validity becomes apparent in the craftsmanship during the research process through continually checking, questioning and theoretically interpreting the findings, instead of inspecting the quality at the end. In this research process the findings were continuously checked for credibility and plausibility through questioning the various meanings; following up surprises and getting feedback from informants, as well as through persistent observation and triangulation (Lincoln and Guba, 1985). Due to the longitudinal nature of the research it has been possible to become closely engaged in the practice of the organisation. Interview transcripts and handwritten field observations have been used as documentation and were analysed from several angles by two researchers. The description and interpretation were confirmed by taking preliminary drafts to selected informants for feedback on factual errors and interpretations. All these comments have later been incorporated into the final research report. Finally the insights were discussed with managers during a management forum as well as with the top management team. Persistent observation was achieved through long presence in the research context in order to build up trust and learn the local concepts. Triangulation was obtained through using various methods in order to investigate the issues from different angles.
Research setting
In the following sections, an overview is provided of the research context, a brief introduction to the major features of the competence IT tool and a discussion on how the IT tool was taken into use.
The Norwegian IT consultancy
The organisation investigated in the study was established in the seventies as a typical governmental agency. During the 1980s and 1990s the number of employees expanded from 100 to 2,000 mainly through mergers and acquisitions. The structure changed accordingly from a traditional functional structure into a divisional structure and into a holding company during the time of this study. During this growth period the organisation also changed from “machine” to “service” orientation, initiating new demands on competence needs. Due to the mergers, the organisation struggled with several subcultures that became even more isolated as they were spread out over several geographical locations. In order to increase coordination and to utilise employee competence more effectively, the management decided to bring all employees together in a new location, a building especially designed with open landscapes to facilitate knowledge sharing. In addition they decided to focus even stronger on competence management and to develop and implement a competence IT tool. Two competence expert developers were especially employed to develop the IT competence tool together with a competence project manager from the HR department.
The competence IT tool
The competence IT tool was designed in-house by two competence developers before this study started. The design was web based and was controlled by the competence project manager. The tool was built on a competence framework consisting of two parts: competence areas and roles (see Figure 1) and resulted in a description of the four levels of competence from a beginner to an expert for each role.
The competence areas cover 11 areas divided into a hierarchical tree structure with sublevels:
- Marketing with sub areas: marketing strategy, sales, relations, user support, sales techniques, information handling and agreements.
- Market with sub areas: trends, cooperation partners, competition, market segment and clients.
- Internal culture and routines with sub-areas: business plans, organisation processes, products and services, internal support systems, quality systems, internal services.
- Administration with sub-areas: personnel administration, finance, document administration, property administration and internal services.
- General management with sub-areas: management principles, planning, implementation, personnel management.
- Project management with sub-areas: project establishment, project management, project quality, project administration, project method/tool.
- Services and products with sub-areas: consulting, education, financial control, management, salary and personnel systems, document management, electronic reporting, electronic trade, electronic information distribution, security in electronic chains, system development, IT operations, data warehouse, data analyses methods and statistics, logistics.
- System development tools/software tools with sub-areas: analyses tools, design tools, programming tools, test tools, database tools, middleware tools, programming tools, documentation tools, web-design tools.
- Product with sub-areas: applications, IT operation services, electronical services, consultant and consultation services, MS office support, groupware/distance work, operative system/infrastructure, client specific – application systems, telephone system.
- IT technology with sub-areas: hardware, operative system, data communication/technology, operation support tools, database systems, transaction-processing systems, replication systems, security, version control.
Every competence sub-area is described four times, each time reflecting another competence level: Level 1 means that one possesses the level of a beginner: basic understanding about, know the guidelines and main elements. Level 2 means advanced beginner: be able to work under supervision, good understanding, can explain, calculate, and demonstrate. Level 3 means an experienced person: has good knowledge or understanding, explores, relates, organises. Level 4 means an expert: has deep knowledge or understanding, criticises, concludes, and decides.
The other part of the competence framework is the job roles. The seven roles are:
- management;
- consultancy;
- sales/marketing;
- administration;
- operation;
- system development; and
- product development.
Job roles are believed to be the different hats people wear in different situations and one person can hold more than one role. The roles are described in terms of responsibilities and activities. To each role a set of competence requirements rated from 1 (beginner) to 4 (expert) are attached. These requirements represent the ideal competence state for each role.
The idea was once it was known what level of competences the job role required (ideal state), each employee could assess and visualise how their existing competences matched with the job role requirements. The gap could be filled with appropriate informal and formal learning activities such as on the job training, courses, apprenticeships and teamwork. The challenge was to create learning activities so that people could move from one level to the other, as well as maintaining their competence at existing level.
The adoption of the competence IT tool
The competence IT tool was introduced in three phases. In the first phase, a project handbook and the competence framework were developed by the competence expert developers and the project manager. The competence project manual stated the following objectives for developing the competence IT tool: competence development should contribute to an improved competitive advantage and an improved image in the market in the short and long term. It should also improve individual influence over own development in relation to own wishes and ambitions as well as the division's needs.
It was proposed that the functionality of the competence IT tool needed to cover: a measurement of competence gaps on individual as well as on aggregated organisation level; a management tool to identify critical resources with special competencies; and a place where each individual could find and understand which competence requirements she/he needed to meet as well as a place where s/he could register and follow up on his/her own development.
During the first phase, a team of IT experts and managers worked several months to finalise the categorisation and descriptions of the competence areas and roles. Categorising was an on-going activity and after a year of discussions the competence project manager decided to move into the second phase and test the tool in a pilot division. After the testing, the senior managers decided that the competence tool kept its promise and initiated the third phase: implementation of the competence tool in the entire organisation. A large scale implementation activity was launched and the competence IT tool was introduced in all divisions. After two years of intense working, the competence project manager generated a competence gap for each division and for the whole organisation that was published in the annual report. Shortly after the publication, the competence project manager left the organisation. At the end of this study the competence IT tool was in use; nevertheless there were few signs that it actually was used for enhancing the management of competence for both individual and organisational purposes.
Analysis – the trickiness of IT enhanced competence management
According to the competence project manual the competence IT tool was meant to satisfy both individual-operational and organisational-strategic purposes at the same time. It was both an individual learning support tool, a strategic HRM planning tool, a career-planning tool, a search and find tool and an accountability tool. Our focus in this analysis is on the main promise of the competence IT tool, namely that the same competence assessment data can be used for individual competence development, as well as organisational-strategic ends. According to our observations, when these two purposes were exercised at the same time, IT enhanced competence management became tricky. In the next section, the trickiness is illustrated through discussions of the employees around how competence is assessed and how competence is developed in the workplace through informal learning.
Competence assessment for individual purpose
The individual purpose was at the centre of attention during the development of the competence IT tool:
Division manager: the most important learning happens on the job, learning through experience. This has to be made visible in the tool.
Section manager: We work a lot with short-term projects, we just have to take people who are available and train them when we need them. This I would call our short-term need. But there is also a long-term need. Some people need to work themselves away from a certain competence area and into another area.
Competence developer: It is exactly what this competence tool can contribute with. It helps you to make the learning in the workplace visible. Therefore we have not included the registering of formal education. The idea behind the tool is the long-term, especially as a support for career development for people with a lot of experience. For the short term, you could use the tool for seeing who has what competence in the organisation.
One of the aims of the IT enhanced competence tool was to support everyday workplace learning by making competence visible. There was a widespread opinion that competence development took place when the different employees worked on various assignments and projects, rather then in formal courses. The competence IT tool was supposed to support and make the workplace learning visible for each individual in his/her situation. We believe that this resembles a contextual approach to learning where learning from experience is seen as a continuous process. As we will see later, this is very different from other stakeholders in the organisation who want to measure individual competence.
Yet another more difficult question is how to recognise what are the right competences for the future and who decides what is right? This raises the question of what is the strategic value in the tool.
Competence assessment for organisational and strategic purpose
During the first interview the HR manager and CEO convey that as a knowledge organisation the competence of the employees is one of the most critical factors for survival. Managing competence across organisational boundaries is therefore believed to be essential.
Senior manager: Through the competence system as a governance tool that computes what and how many competencies there are in stock, we can visualise the gap between the desired-and current competencies and make superior strategic decisions.
The strategic purpose is mainly related to discussions about how to create a gap-analysis between desired and current competences and aggregate the gap for strategic use.
Division manager: In order to do a competence gap analysis, you need to know where the organisation wants to develop. You need a vision. Luckily we have a vision, we know into which areas we want to develop. If you don't have a vision you cannot make a gap analysis.
Section manager: We, the managers, place people in a role; this is not completely open for everybody to choose. We as leaders have to steer it. Otherwise it becomes chaos.
Competence developer: Yes that is correct, the steering is open to you, and at least it will be open for conversation. We shall engage everybody, but we should not forget that the leaders decide. That is the strategic in the tool.
The developers and managers in the competence expert forum set the required competence level per role, yet they struggled with the strategic element in the competence tool.
Expert forum member: I can't see anything strategic in the IT enhanced competence management system. I mean it is not in the descriptions that you gain inside into what direction we are turning. Neither do you get any strategic hints from the required role competences play. We only get an idea from the strategic plan and from the discussions with the other managers in the division. Yet the information on the strategic important focus areas is only available to the manager and I wish more accessibility for all employees.
The issue around the ideal competence requirement is a recognised problem as revealed in the many discussions in the forum on the required (norm) levels:
Project manager: We need to get feedback if the required level is not right, then we have to adjust it. The expert forum members need to be alert on this and come with suggestions. Of course this means that suddenly people find their gap analyses changed, but that is part of the flexible system.
Yet, although the competence team members have set the required norm competence level per role in the assumption of matching the market requirement, they also realise that this is a guess. They cannot set the required levels in such a way that they will be right across the multiple contexts. It needs to be adjusted all the time. But how to communicate this “never being right” feeling without losing face?
So, not only are the users wondering about the “value” of the ideal competence level in their role, the people that set the ideal competence level also wonder about how to make “correct” ideal states. This is creating puzzlement on the norm as being a minimum threshold or an optimum to be attained.
Manager: Is this required profile a real goal or are we taking it as an indication to be used to help the dialogue on development?
Project manager: You have to use your intuition and apply it when appropriate. We can never make the required profile 100 per cent right, but we try to update it continuously.
These statements indicate that it is a concrete goal, but that the issue is in the hands of the manager to decide if it is appropriate or not. This has created different options for acting: Those that strictly adhere to the rightness of the required competence level and take the central requirement as a law, may find that they are not developing or developing based on an “old” requirement and might have to stop or increase the development the next time they are discussing the development plan. On the other hand people that overrule the requirement ignore the law and take the development in their own hands.
Section manager: If people don't know what the strategic areas are it will be difficult for them to develop in that direction. So in the IT enhanced competence management system I translate and discuss this intuitive and oral strategic information and together we look at the individual wishes and so we translate it into the IT enhanced competence management system. In doing so, we ignore the required competence norms for each role.
This confusion about the strategic value resulted in managers starting to relate to the competence assessments in a more situated way, thereby ignoring the demand for objectivity and working through gap-analysis
Contextual versus universal-stock approach
The developers, the managers as well as the employees, noticed that it was quite impossible to claim that the competence profiles were objective, as they were coloured by individual interpretations. It was common to express that the assessment of competence is an intuitive and subjective action and that “you must not take the data too literally”. It was however not common to say that you consequently cannot aggregate these subjective and contextual interpretations of competence.
Division manager: Other people are also experts, without having the title. You know, whether you are good or not is quickly revealed. You can see it, it is the way in which they communicate, and rumours spread that they are good. Most important is that good people get the freedom to develop; they have to be involved, feel they are involved and be allowed to set the future guidelines. All people have a kind of “competence profile”. If we adopt a mathematical equation it looks like: competence profile=(n1, n2, n3, n4, …n). Each representing an area of competence, e.g.: technical skills, database, project management etc. Of course this equation is a simplification; in reality it is quite complex. Yet, we need it in order to know how we are developing as an organisation.
It was also recognised that the tool has to be used during the individual appraisal interview. In this interview the employees could discuss their present and ideal competence state and make a “learning plan”. This learning plan had to reflect their own wishes, but also be in alignment with the needs of the organisation. The individual gaps could then be aggregated to divisional and organisational levels and this could become the basis for a strategic competence gap analysis for the division and organisation.
The senior managers, HR manager and project manager accepted the contextuality and at the same time emphasised the importance of an objective competence report for HRM planning and a signal to the employees, owners or external market. This is illustrated in the following statement:
Division manager: All assessment is difficult and utilising a competence IT tool does not provide precise assessment. We have never meant it to be accurate. But the reports are important for top management, as we do not know all the employees. People move and new people come in. We are a network organisation. The reports give a good impression of the basic skills that exist in the organisation. Of course the data has to be updated. The system falls or stands with the engagement that is put in maintaining and changing the descriptions in line with the competence requirements around us.
The strategic oriented community has been leaning towards recognition of contextual complexity. At the same time they needed an easy tool that could give them valid information for strategic HRM decision making. The focus of the competence IT tool has thereby turned from that of being a tool for dialogue to focus on standardised competence descriptions that can give valid well-founded information about the person assessed. These “precise” descriptions are looked on as important as they provide assessments that conform to the requirements in the elements of competence and their performance criteria. In this way it is believed that they will be automatically valid and being valid will necessarily be comparable and thus reliable. However this idea of precision, consistency and validity proves to be illusive in the competence tool.
IT specialist: One point is to add up all levels 3 of one knowledge domain in my section, but it is not difficult to imagine that summating all level 3 assessments across the organisation will give a wrong impression. After all, the levels are open to interpretation. And as they are self-assessments, all sorts of complications arise.
Expert forum member: It is unclear to me how the measurement works. I mean, when we count the gap in one domain is then everybody taken into account or only those that work more than 30% or 50%? The result will be quite different. But maybe more important, what do we calculate and what do the numbers tell us? And who are we that we can set the required level? How do we know what is the right norm level for other divisions? The required norm level is supposedly to be the market requirement, but how do we know that without having asked the market? And does the market know?
The competence tool has not been designed with the traditional objectivity and validity claims in mind. Although questions of validity and reliability have never been a topic of discussion, implicitly the competence developers have been pointing to the importance of a more pragmatic understanding of learning and competence concepts in that they emphasise that dialogue and involvement is an important part of the creation of the competence descriptions and the assessment. In other words, they have been leaning towards contextual understanding of competence assessment, as well as the importance of a formative purpose, i.e. the assessments have to contribute to further learning. The competence tool is designed for self assessment and there has been confusion regarding how to interpret the competence descriptions that are supposedly to guide the assessor. Informants find themselves assessing themselves on the basis of descriptions that they do not fully recognise and of which they question the validity:
IT expert: How do I assess myself? I believe I am an expert in this field; however I am not involved in all the areas described in the text. If I take this literally, then according to the text I am not an expert; however in my job only half the described activities are present. Maybe in other parts of the organisation they work with them all, but not here. So I have a dilemma, what to do, where to draw the line?
The self-assessor ends up in a dilemma between the text and the self-interpretation of the meaning of his or her work as an expert. Either the self-assessor has to ignore the intuitive understanding and follow the detailed description, i.e. assess to be on a less experienced level, or the self assessor has to take the decision that the text is an incorrect description for the specific context, i.e. overrules the text. The self-assessor is placed in this dilemma because the question of the validity of the competence tool has been assumed, but not discussed. The face validity, content validity, predictive and criterion-related validity have not been explicitly debated. It has basically been assumed that the measurement tool is valid, as the competence descriptions have been made in house and therefore everybody could be expected to accept and understand them. The question is then raised as to how to interpret a gap when both parameters i.e. the individual assessment as well as the required norm can be wrong.
The case analysis shows that there is a strong desire to use the competence assessments for both individual and organisational purposes. Yet, for some, the competence profiles have had the value of a rigid law and a certification and they look for validity and objectivity. For others, the competence profiles are merely a dialogue tool and they look for a way to contextualise the assessment. Nonetheless, each way brought in new requirements and questions. This effected technical requirements, the design of the framework and the conversations during the employee assessment dialogues. The competence IT tool, neither adheres to traditional meanings for validity and reliability, nor did it allow dialogue and reflection on own competence development and learning activities in order for it to come to the forefront.
Discussion
The aim of this article has been to develop a critical understanding of the prospect of IT enhanced competence management intended to satisfy individual-operational as well as organisational-strategic purposes. The case describes how the employees and management in an IT consultancy have experienced the use of a competence IT tool. The presented competence tool is in-house designed before the start of this study and allows for an integration of operational-individual learning and strategic HRM planning use. On the operational level, the management and employees have received an instrument to determine the current individual competence and to track how individual competence develops in relation to the strategically desired competence level. On the strategic level, the senior management has obtained an overview of the total gap between current and desired competence for the entire organisation. As such, we can conclude that the competence IT tool has delivered what it promised to the top management: individual competence profiles that can be used for initiating learning activities and organisational gap analysis reports at organisational level that can be used for more precise strategic human resource planning.
By looking more closely at the case material, it becomes apparent that the competence IT tool has initiated however several debates among the users of the tool. These debates have evolved around two forces. The first debate is about why do we assess competence: is it for individual competence development or organisational HRM planning purposes? The second debate is about how do we believe competence is developed: through measuring competence as a stock (in the belief that competence is something you possess) or through dialogue in context (in the belief that competence is something you do in practice)?
These conversations are related to deeper held beliefs about what competence is and how people learn and develop their competence in the workplace (Garavan and McQuire, 2001; Bramming and Holt Larsen, 2000). Even though the competence IT tool technically allows for bridging the individual and organisational purposes, the case study shows that the second debate is making IT enhanced management more challenging.
The first debate is created due to the dual aim of the top managers and the competence project manager to use the same individual assessments for the calculation of individual competence profiles as well as for the generation of aggregated competence gap analysis for the whole organisation. It is grounded in a summative purpose of competence assessments and a cause-effect relationship that can be described as follows: through the aggregated calculations of the individual gap analysis that are stored in the competence tool, it is possible to estimate the gap between the desired and the existing stock of competence of the entire organisation. The gap analysis will form the basis to make better-informed strategic HRM decisions and to centrally control the learning of the workforce.
Nonetheless, complication arises because the second debate interferes with the wish to bridge individual and organisational purposes. The framework of the competence IT tool is designed from a contextual approach to learning and competence development and based on a formative purpose of competence assessments. This is apparent in relatively limited descriptions of assessment criteria as it is believed that they that need to be made sense of in context. Also the self-assessment of competence is meant as a dialogue tool with the direct line manager and not as an objective measurement. Therefore it is a daring move to promote that the organisational competence gap analysis reports are trustworthy as the basis for strategic HRM decisions.
In a critical light, the competence IT tool is neither oriented by capabilities nor is it increasing the strategic capacity. The outcome may have been very different if the ambition of the management had been to optimize development, learning and to facilitate dynamic capabilities by more collective means in the understanding that competence is contextual. The case thus highlights the importance of becoming aware of the necessity to make choices not only about why we assess competence, but also about how do we believe competence is developed.
The two debates influencing IT enhanced competence management can be visualised in a four field model where the vertical axis represents the individual-organisational purpose and the horizontal axis represents the universal stock-contextual development approach to competence development (see Figure 2).
In this case, the developers' main intentions behind the design of the competence IT tool were within the individual contextual approach to competence with a belief that through dialogues the assessment results could contribute to making better strategic HRM decisions. This is visualised in the arrow between individual-contextual approach and organisational-contextual approach to competence management. The IT experts however wished only to use the competence IT tool for making their own learning in the workplace visible and to achieve acceptance for more learning activities. They were mainly interested in the individual purpose, and switch between the wish for objectivity and contextuality dependent on what was believed to be more beneficial. Finally, the black arrow in the middle of the model illustrates how the direction of the output, generated through the competence IT tool was changed by senior management. They wanted to be able to trust the competence reports for making more informed strategic HRM decisions. The meanings of the competence IT tool went across from individual-contextual to organisational-universal approach to IT enhanced competence management. This created the largest challenge pointed out in this study and causing confusion about the value of IT enhanced competence management.
When bridging the individual and organisational purpose, the question that needs to be answered is whether the organisation's competence is more than the sum of each individual's competence. When the answer is no, IT enhanced competence management can be achieved through independent assessment centres, by using valid and reliable methods for generalisation. These will guarantee that the data can be used for strategic decision making independent of the employees and managers involved. However, when the answer is yes, the attention within IT enhanced competence management needs to be placed on the people developing competence in context. This means a much stronger focus on dialogue and shared meaning about how the existing competence of individuals is perceived by themselves and their superiors. The middle managers then remain in the position of being in charge of employee development, discussing the strategic challenges in competence meetings with the senior managers. Of course the latter demands that management need to possess the skills to assess and understand the competence development needs of individual's in relation to strategic plans.
Implications
In terms of normative implications we will argue that it is demanding to cross the horizontal and vertical axis at the same time. Mixing an individual-contextual development approach and an organisational-universal approach to competence management is confusing. Merely operating from a contextual approach to learning and competence development is valuable and has meaning for the employees and managers involved. It enables a rich dialogue about competence and learning needs both for the individual employee and the management. Only operating from a universal-stock approach to learning and competence development is also possible, yet it requires an assessment system that is objective, valid and reliable. The critical elements become how the data could be trusted and that everybody has been assessed in the same way with the same criteria and the same assessor. Conversely, using contextual assessments for universal purposes, like career and salary enhancement and reorganisations, will create mistrust as there is little validity and reliability in the assessment outcomes. What's more, using universal and objective assessments for contextual development purposes will distort the dialogue as the numbers take the focal point.
The case also points towards several potential dangers when applying competence IT tools for managing competence that may not be so obvious. It should be realised that a registration system is only open to competences that are easily described and calculated, like technical competences, certifications etc. The focus will only be on competences easily measured and objectified, and not on other valuable collective or relational competences that are essential to the value creation in the organisation. Also competence registration can reduce development, due to the fact that the categories of competence and levels are defined in the system and not open for natural development in collective or individual learning patterns. This can lead to alienation and commodification.
It should also be realised that IT enhanced competence system can lead to stigmatising, as the people who develop competence, individually and collectively are not involved in the evaluation process of what are good standards for learning and development. Furthermore, the alternative cost of deploying and using resources is high as the time employees use on measuring competence internally could be used to generate income from customers instead. Finally, as the competence framework is based on individual technical competences, the issue of scale needs to be attended to. When assuming that the organisation is more than the sum of its parts, the competence of the organisation is greater than the sum of the technical competences of each individual.
Conclusion
In this article we have investigated how the assessment of competence, gained through informal learning is used for individual-operational and organisational-strategic purposes with the aim to reveal potential challenges related to IT enhanced competence management.
We found that there may be a large potential in competence IT tools which aim to bridge individual and organisational purposes. Nonetheless, the main challenge in IT enhanced competence management arises when trying to bridge the two levels without understanding the universal-contextual dimension and its constraints for competence management. Subsequently we introduced a model with four positions or belief structures to competence management. The trickiness becomes apparent as these four belief structures about competence influence both the design and use of IT enhanced competence tools. Based on this study we maintain that it is beneficial to remain in either the contextual or the universal orientation to competence development when using the same assessments for individual-operational and organisational-strategic purposes.
The findings reveal that the competence IT tool was designed from an individual contextualist approach. Nonetheless, the outcomes were treated as an objective measurement and used to visualise the universal stock of the organisation competence with the aim to support strategic HRM decisions. It may be argued that the competence tool has created more new questions than that it has solved. From this discussion we can conclude that the impact of competence IT tools on workplace learning is challenging. Reflecting and understanding the demands of each of the four positions to competence management may facilitate the management of workplace learning in more beneficial ways. Yet, further studies are needed to capture how IT enhanced competence management can bridge the individual and organisational purposes, while remaining in either a universal or a contextual approach to competence development.
Figure 1Role – competence area framework
Figure 2IT enhanced competence management
Table IOverview of people observed and interviewed
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Corresponding author
Joyce E.H. McHenry can be contacted at: joyce.mchenry@omh.no