Personnel development for dissolving jobs: towards a competency-based approach?

Abstract

The traditional HRM system has been job-based and has reflected a bureaucratic model of organizing work. Such job-based personnel management systems have shown a tendency to break down when jobs are dissolving under more flexible work organization. Many writers have called for a competency approach to replace the traditional job-based approach under these new conditions, and we have seen a growing literature on competency modelling. The study reported here suggests that jobs are structured along two independent lines: formal control and complexity of work tasks. Each combination of formalization and complexity (high and low) gives rise to a different approach to align work and competencies. The job-based approach and the competency approach are only two of these, and an occupational and a professional approach are also identified. While formal company-internal training is related to job approach and competency approach, training for skilled tradesmen and professionals is a combination of company-external professional training prior to the work career and informal on-the-job and self-managed training.

Keywords:

• Dissolving jobs
• flexibility
• competency
• competency approach
• competency modelling

Acknowledgements

The study was financed by the Norwegian Research Council (NFR), grant no 130652/520 as part of the 1996–2002 research programme Competence, Education and Value Creation (KUV). The objective of the programme was to foster knowledge about the relationship between education and training in working life.

The author gratefully acknowledges the constructive and helpful suggestions offered by Kjell Grønhaug (Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration) and Lennart Rosenlund, Thorvald Øgaard and Karina Aase of Stavanger University College.

Notes

Geir Nybø, Stavanger University College, PO Box 2557, Ullandhaug, N-4004 Stavanger, Norway (tel:[phone]; fax:[phone]; email:[email protected]).

1 There is a difference in conceptualization between the HRM-oriented literature and Marsden. While Lawler, Sparrow, Schippmann and others are contrasting ‘job-based’ with ‘competency-based’ approaches, Marsden uses the concepts ‘production-based’ and ‘training-based’. While Marsden's ‘training approach’ refers to competencies as ‘occupations’ in an external labour market, the HRM theorists use the term ‘competency approach’ in a more general sense including competencies that are ‘modelled’ and developed within companies in internal labour markets.

2 The items taken from Karasek's study had a four-graded scale.

3 The presentations are very similar to those normally found in correspondence analysis; see, for example, Bourdieu (1984).

4 When production work is removed from the medium-sized high-tech firm, the mean location in the structural space of jobs of this firm moves much closer to the other two (moves up in the diagram).