American and British Approaches to Competencies

American and British Approaches to Competencies

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I need an essay in the following subject:

Identify and assess the differences between the American and British approaches to competencies. Compare these approaches to those in your own country or in a culture with which you are familiar.

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1) I want a typical and a quality answer which should have about 1400 words.

2) The answer must raise appropriate critical questions.

3) The answer must include examples from experience or the web with references from relevant examples from real companies.

4) Do include all your references, as per the Harvard Referencing System,

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SAMPLE ANSWER

American and British Approaches to Competencies

Competences are characteristics of individuals that are the basic building blocks of behavior or performance at work.  Values, Work Style, Knowledge abilities, attitudes and personality are the job performances.  Competencies are valuable and significant to succession planning, staffing, career counseling, training, development and team building.  Competencies are problematic to implement and utilize in the work place.  The idea that the components of effective performance can be individually identified and isolated is one that has many cynics.  Acceptance of this idea would also mean accepting that employees must exhibit a set of particular competencies (Burgoyne, 1989: Collin, 1989; Jubb & Robotham, 1997).

A majority of frameworks from which competency is bases are not dynamic.  They are mechanistic, static and seek to prescribe a specific list of desirable competencies.  By missing the opportunity to incorporate flexibility and openness to change, the frameworks do not give the due value of non-task specific competencies.  To try and mitigate this, one must adopt an even wider point of view while understanding the competencies in three levels:

• General working competencies, which she defines as competencies required for different working situations and at different periods (Kuijpers, 2001).
• Learning competencies, which consists of a bundle of competencies which facilitate the development of working competencies (Kuijpers, 2001).
• Career related competencies, which are defined to manage working and learning competencies within a personal career path (Kuijpers, 2001).

Despite these challenges, competencies do not discriminate between management and lower level employees.  They are able to meet the needs of employees irrespective of their status differences.  When competencies are harnessed, they are able to assist organization increase productivity, conduct trainings that augment the organizations objectives, employees attain the knowledge of expectations, advance work performance and assist build the trust between managers and employees.

It is important to point out that the different approached between the American and British approach to competencies is not because of philosophical divergence but rather due to cultural societal differences – each takes a unique approach.  The initial difference is in the behavioral approach.   Whereas the one focuses on the input that enhances the successful performance achievement, the other focuses on the outcome of competencies.  The United Kingdom and some socialist countries aggressively seek out people with handicapped people and offer them empowerment.  This is considered as the standard approach (Orstenk, 1997; Oliveara-Rees, 1994).

The contrary is where individuals are encouraged to prove their competencies.  For the organization, it focuses on the outcome with the employee contributing the most being highly appreciated.  Most multinational organizations will hire a work force with all manner of competencies and cultures. With this work force, the organization wills endeavor to develop them through training and incentives for outcomes.

Differences in Definition of Competencies: British versus the America Approach

Generally, Americans view competencies as individual.  The focus is on the skill set and knowledge to best undertake a particular role or job.  On their part, the British take a broader focus.  It views competencies as encompassing the attributes of employees in addition to the whole plethora of personal effectiveness issues and guidelines necessary to get a job done.  The Americans view and define competences in line with the worker.  The worker oriented definitions view competencies as those generated by worker behavior, and clearly specify the qualities and skill the requisite person for the job must have.  These competencies will more often than not be   generic, making every effort to illustrate as concisely as possible the behaviors that high performers could possible display, even if in different proportions and according to level, function or context.

The British view competencies as standards for job functions and professions, while Americans seek out their excellent performers and from this develop tests to examine the relevant competencies.  Despite the difference, both the American and the British view competencies as being individual not group or community.  The Europeans have borrowed heavily from the British.  In mainland Europe, competencies are visualized mentally in terms of individual capacity to perform within a profession or function.  With this, the spotlight will thus be on the certification or qualification they receive.  Qualifications are viewed as representing an official certification of knowledge, skill and attitude.

The British and by extension the Europeans view competencies from a predominantly input-based, worker-oriented approach, with the focus on person-related variables that each individual brings to an assignment.  To them, competencies in addition to being output-based or work-oriented take into account the outputs connected with effective performance.  Though the British and the Europeans view competencies from a similar view, the British focus is more on organizations and the performance requirements of the specific job position as opposed to the individual holding the job.  The Europeans on their part advocate a work-oriented approach with organizations uncompromisingly pursuing indicators that will show conformance.  The indicators the organization will be glad to experience since they indicate achievement are enterprise, adaptability and flexibility.

The British – by extension the European view on competence is assumed that to have the all the underlying characteristics.  Research has shown that the American and British approaches diverge at the point of their pedagogical perspective and on the assumptions about the learning process.  For the Americans, the emphasis is squarely on a cognitive perspective of learning.  The British and by extension the Europeans place the greatest emphasis on constructivist view of learning.  Both approaches offer alternative explanations of the context of competencies, their interaction with work and their measurement. Cognitive approaches place a lot of emphasis on objective measurement whereas constructivist approaches give emphasis to the subjective and motivational dimensions of competency.

Despite the vagueness that surrounds the definition of competencies, the discourse on this topic has been tremendous.  Whereas one would expect the indistinctness to hinder discourse, it has been posited that the strength of the concepts could be in their underlying complexity, working towards incorporating labor and educational organizations, external and internal organization gurus and employees, and management interests concurrently.

Research has shown that assessment and identification of competencies is a controversial issues.  Different methods of assessment focus on specific approaches.  Work-oriented approach advocates methods such as job element method.  Worker-oriented approach advocates personal profiling.  On their part, multidimensional approaches do not advocate any particular method but instead suggest the use of multiple methods.  The critical incident method asks employees of high and average performance to describe critical situations that have occurred at work and how they reacted to these situations (New, 1996; Thomson & Mabey, 1994).  The job function method is used to identify the task functions which are used to infer the knowledge and skills for job performance (Spencer & Signe, 1993; McClelland, 1973).

In conclusion, it is evident that competence models do not consider the development of competence in terms of any set programme of learning.  The focus is not on the training of the employee but on the capability to do what is required by the function, role, profession, or job.  Given the lack of a clear and coherent definition, the US approach identifies itself with an input, worker-oriented model.  The UK model focuses more on an output, worker-oriented model.  A third school exists that calls for a multidimensional approach.

References

Burgoyne, J. (1989): “Creating the Management Portfolio: Building on Competency Approaches to Management Development”, Management Education & Development, Vol. 20, No. 1, p. 56 – 61.

Collin, A. (1989): “Managers’ Competence: Rhetoric, Reality & Research”, Personnel Review, Vol. 28, No. 6, p. 20 – 25.

Jubb, R. & Robotham D. (1997): “Competences in Management Development: Challenging the Myths”, Journal of European Industrial Training, Vol. 2 1, No. 4-5, p. 171 – 177.

Kuijpers, M. (2000): “Career Development Competencies”, Proceedings of the Second Conference of HRD Research & Practice Across Europe, 309 – 314. University of Twente.

McClelland, D.C. (1973): “ Testing for Competence, rather than Intelligence”, American Psychologist, Vol. 28, p. 1 – 14.

Oliveara-Rees, F. (1994): “Qualification versus Competence: A Discussion on the Meaning of Words: A Change in Concepts of a Political Issue”, Beroepsopleiding, Vol. 1, p. 74 – 79.

Orstenk, J. (1997): Learning to Learn at Work, Delft: Eburon. New, G.E. (1996): “Reflections: A three-tier model of organisational competencies”, Journal of Managerial Psychology, Vol. 11, No. 8, p. 44 – 52.

Spencer, L.M. & Spencer, S. (1993): Competence at Work: Models for Superior Performance, New York: Wiley. https://doi.org/10.1002/hrdq.3920050411

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