Competency under the magnifying glass: Applications from the principle of problematization and multi-level theory

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Competency under the magnifying glass
Applications from the principleof
problematization and multi-level theory

• Vincent Cassar
• PhD(Lond)., CPsychol., CSci

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Coping in this organization means that I need to
be competent at my work. Unfortunately, too many
constraints exist to impede my progress and I am
seriously considering of leaving! I honestly
believe that a high level of competency is needed
to drive me forward and to ensure that I perform
as effectively as possible. I often ask how clear
my company is about this though I consider
myself very qualified in my job. However, part of
the merit goes also to my department who realise
that we need to complement what we are good at
and this leaves an impact round here Im
competent in my work but cannot understand how it
will make a difference to the companys
profits I hope that our style of managing will
remain adequate even after the change
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Argument line

• What is competency??
• What is the principle of problematization??
• What is multi-level theory?
• What have problematization and multi-level theory
  applications to do with competency?
• What are the applied implications??

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What is competency??

• Boyatzis (1982) an underlying characteristic of
  a person which results in effective and / or
  superior performance
• Jacobs (1989) an observable skills or ability
  to complete a managerial task successfully
• Woodruffe (1992) a competency is the set of
  behaviour patterns that the incumbent needs to
  bring to a position in order to perform its tasks
  and functions
• Bartram (2002) sets of behaviours that are
  instrumental in the delivery of desired results
• Bartram, Robertsons, Callinan (2002) sets of
  behaviours that are instrumental in the delivery
  of desired results or outcomes

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Job Competency Models

• Several exist
• Typical competency models will contain
• Competency factors
• Competency dimension
• Competency indicator

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Example from OPQ 32

• Leading Deciding
• Deciding and initiating action
• Place a very high emphasis on achieving difficult
  targets
• Has a slight tendency to go along with the group
  consensus
• Leading and supervising
• Is unlikely to trust, and thus empower, others

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A note on Theory

• Scientists versus practitioners
• Myth Theory is for academics applications are
  for practitioners
• A theory is nothing else but a rational
  explanation of a phenomenon and which is derived
  from systematic observations and tests in
  different conditions
• Bacharach (1989) a statement of relations among
  concepts within a boundary set of assumptions and
  constraints. It is no more than a linguistic
  devise used to organize a complex empirical
  worldthe purpose of a theoretical statement is
  twofold to organize (parsimoniously) and to
  communicate (clearly)
• Theory good and evidence-based practice

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Problematization

• Alvesson Sandberg (2011) an attempt to
  identify assumptions, evaluate them, develop
  alternative assumptions and test them.
• A way to progress in the organizational sciences
  and hence to advance in best practice
• A whole lot of assumptions have been recently
  challenged and re-tested

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Problematization

• E.g. stability versus change
• The normal way of reasoning is that both
  qualities must balance a company needs enough
  stability to maintain its position but enough
  change to enable its growth
• Too much stability and the organization will
  loose out on new opportunities too much change
  and the company will loose out on learning from
  past experiences.

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Problematization

• However, Farjoun (2010) writing in the Academy of
  Management Review does not think it this way!
• He views stability and change, while conceptually
  distinct, as no longer separate but rather
  interdependent and potentially compatible.

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Q2 Change enables stability
Q1 Stability
Oppositional
Complementary
Q4 Change
Q3 Stability enables change
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Problematization

• Q 1 Control reduces variation
• Q 4 Doubt stimulates discovery and change
• Q2 Doubt and mindfulness foster security and
  continuity
• Q3 Control enables design and invention

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Problematization

• By stressing stability and change as
  interrelated, mutually enabling and overlapping
  in space and time, such solutions enable
  organizations to retain some of the benefits of
  bureaucracy and anarchy without committing to all
  their liabilities and they foster renewal while
  limiting the pains of comprehensive change (p.
  219)

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Multi-level theory

• Klein Kozlowski (2000)
• Micro (psychological perspective) versus macro
  approaches (sociological perspectives)
• The macro perspective neglects the means by
  which individual behaviours, perceptions, affect
  and interactions give rise to higher-level
  phenomena In contrast, the micro perspective has
  been guilty of neglecting contextual factors that
  can significantly constrain the effects of
  individual differences that lead to collective
  responses (p. 7)
• Organizations as socio-technical systems

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Xo
Yo
Yg
Xg
Yi
Xi
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Multi-level phenomena

• E.g. Turnover
• Allen, Bryant, Vardaman (2010) in the Academy
  of Management Perspectives
• Misconceptions
• People quit because of pay
• People quit because they are dissatisfied with
  their jobs
• There is little managers can do to directly
  influence turnover decisions
• A simple one-size-fits-all retention strategy is
  most effective

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Multi-level phenomena

• Meta-analytical relationships with turnover
• ON-Boarding
• Weighted application blanks .31
• Socialization tactics -.14
• Realistic job previews -.06
• Job characteristics
• Role clarity -.24
• Role conflict .22
• Promotion opportunities -.16
• Job scope -.14
• Role overload .12
• Routinization .11
• Pay -.11
• Pay satisfaction -.08
• Leadership and relationships
• Leader-member exchanges -.25
• Work-group cohesion -.13

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Multi-level phenomena

• Stress is often studied and assumed to be a
  micro-level phenomenon and most studies
  investigate it at the individual level.
• However, increasing number of researchers are
  appreciating its multi-level realities
• E.g. van VELDHOVEN et al (2002) studied the
  relationship between psychosocial job conditions
  and job-related stress

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This cross-sectional questionnaire study presents
a multi-level analysis on 2565 workers in 188
departments in 36 organizations in the
Netherlands. A three-level model is used in which
individual workers are nested within departments,
which in turn are nested within organizations.
Research questions concern (1) the amount and
distribution of variance in job-related stress
explained for the three levels in the study
(individuals, departments, organizations), and
(2) the specificity of relationships between
psychosocial job demands and job-related stress
in the three-level model. Well-being showed
slightly more raw variance to be explained at
supra-individual levels than strain. The full
regression model explained about 35 of the total
variance in both work-related strain and
well-being. Psychosocial job conditions did not
exceed the expected amount of 10 to 15
contribution to this explained variance. These
results do not differ from comparable studies
that do not use multi-level analysis. The
variance distribution in the full model, however,
showed unexplained variance to be located at the
individual level for both strain and well-being,
and at the departmental level only for
well-being. This last finding shows a direction
for possible improvement of work stress models.
Specificity of relationships was also shown
psychological job demands were more strongly
related to strain, whereas job content variables
(i.e. job variety, job control ) were more
strongly related to well-being. Results also
suggested that social support was more strongly
associated with well-being than with strain.
Well-being appeared to have a more widely varying
range of predictors than strain.
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Back to Competency-Revisiting definitions

• Boyatzis (1982) an underlying characteristic of
  a person which results in effective and / or
  superior performance
• Jacobs (1989) an observable skills or ability
  to complete a managerial task successfully
• Woodruffe (1992) a competency is the set of
  behaviour patterns that the incumbent needs to
  bring to a position in order to perform its tasks
  and functions
• Bartram (2002) sets of behaviours that are
  instrumental in the delivery of desired results
• Bartram, Robertsons, Callinan (2002) sets of
  behaviours that are instrumental in the delivery
  of desired results or outcomes

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Prediction

• People who lack competencies relevant to the job
  are unfit in their employment (job)
• People who are unfit in their job, are likely to
  be less fit within the larger organization but
  the misfit is likely to be much less as a
  consequence of the indirect impact
• Applying problematization principles and
  multi-level explanations, is this the case??

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Kristoff-Brown, A.L.Zimmerman, R.D. Johnson, E.
C. (2005). Consequences of individuals fit at
work A meta-analysis of PJ, PO, PG and PS fit.
Personnel Psychology, 58, 281-342.
JS Comm TO Perf
P-J .56 .47 -.46 .20
P-G .31 .19 -.22 .19
P-S(L) .44 .09 .09 (Ten) .07
P-O .44 .51 -.35 .07
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Competency A micro level construct?

• Kozlowski Klein use the term emergence and
  describe it as a phenomenon is emergent when it
  originates in the cognition, affect, behaviours,
  or other characteristics of individuals, is
  amplified by their interactions, and manifests as
  a higher-level collective phenomenon (p. 55)

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A multi-level Model of Human Capital Resource
Emergence

• Ployhart Moliterno (2011) in the Academy of
  Management Review
• Yet despite the prominence of the human capital
  construct in both micro level and macro level
  scholarship, and despite great theoretical and
  methodological sophistication within both
  disciplines and levels, there is little
  understanding about how human capital manifests
  across organizational levels. If one defines
  multilevel as theory that speaks to the
  connection that integrates two or more levels,
  then there is no fully articulated multilevel
  theory describing how the human capital resource
  is created and transformed across organizational
  levels (p. 127).

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Potential multi-level fallacies

• Cross-level fallacy assuming individual level
  findings generalize to the firm level
• Contextual fallacy ignoring macro findings
  showing that the value of human phenomena is
  context specific
• Misspecification fallacy neglecting to consider
  how individual level variables emerge to form a
  new unit-level phenomenon

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Unit-level human capital resource
Unit-level outcomes
Context generic ? Context specific
Sustainable competitive advantage
Emergence enabling process
Emergence enabling states
Simple
Complexity of task environment
Complex
Behavioral, cognitive, affective
Individual difference KSAO characteristics
Cognitive vs non-cognitive Context generic vs
context specific
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Propositions

• Prop 1 The origins of human capital resources
  exist in the full range of KSAOs of employees
  within the unit
• Prop 2 The content of human capital resources
  may be cognitive or non-cognitive and context
  generic or non-context generic
• Prop 3 Human capital resources and individual
  KSAOs are partially isomorphic because they have
  different antecedents
• Prop 4 Unit task complexity influences the types
  of behavioral emergence enabling states
  manifested in the unit. As task complexity
  increases, human capital resources are more
  likely to emerge if the unit manifests
  appropriate behavioral states
• Prop 5 Unit task complexity influences the types
  of cognitive emergence enabling states manifested
  in the unit. As task complexity increase, human
  capital resources are more likely to emerge if
  the unit manifests a shared climate and learning
  and memory structures appropriate for the task
  (either shared or distributed)

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Propositions

• Prop 6 Unit task complexity influences the types
  of affective emergence enabling states manifested
  in the unit. As task complexity increases, human
  capital resources are more likely to emerge if
  the unit manifests greater cohesion, trust, and
  more positive mood.
• Prop 7 As task complexity increases, the
  interrelationships among behavioral, cognitive,
  and affective emergence enabling states become
  stronger.
• Prop 8 Behavioral emergence enabling states
  influence the manifestation of cognitive and
  affective emergence enabling states.
• Prop 9 Context-generic KSAOs become context
  specific human capital resources as a function of
  a unit-specific emergence enabling process.
• Prop 10 Context-generic human capital resources
  lead to the development of context-specific human
  capital resources

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Implications using problematization and
multi-level reasoning

• Are current ways of selecting and measuring
  people at work adequate enough?
• Should we assume that individual level
  competencies will impact directly firm
  performance?
• How does this impact factor translate into
  unit-performance and firm performance?
• What impact factor does every individual in the
  organization have on his/her unit task
  performance?
• Should we assume to measure fit more than misfit?
  If no, what measures do we have to measure
  misfit?
• How do competencies complement each other /
  interrelate in a group?
• When are specific competencies desirable and when
  are they a liability?
• Should we construct competency models or
  understand how competency models emerge from the
  unit/ firm structure, climate and strategy?
• How is recruitment, selection and performance
  management systems impacted by a multi-level
  perspective of competency models
• In view that competency sets evolve, emerge a a
  function of the context etc, how should we
  structure HR policies and employment law
  regulation? Should we keep assuming that these
  are separate worlds?
• How often should we re-assess corporate
  competency sets?

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The bottom-line

• Practitioners should avoid making assumptions but
  should approach organizational phenomena with a
  critical eye and with an open mind
• Jonah Lehrer (The New Yorker Magazine December
  2010) stated Many results that are rigorously
  proved and accepted start shrinking in later
  studies (in the article The Truth Wears Off)
• Practitioners should consider organizational
  phenomena as part of a wider system and that
  components can have ripple effects on other macro
  level dynamics.
• Hence, competency development, training and
  evaluation should be embraced within the wider
  organizational realties!

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Thank you