Organizational competency
Contents
Definition
Organizational competency is Ability of an organization to meet its objectives effectively and efficiently through the interaction of: people having the appropriate explicit, implicit and tacit knowledge and skills, behaviours and culture, processes, procedures, systems and technology and organizational structure in its given environment. Combination of human capital, organizational capital and technical capital that it must possess.
Summary
One paragraph which summarises the main ideas of the article.
Description
Organisational competency and intellectual capital
Organizational competency can be described in terms of intellectual capital. The model described in Fig 2 is based on the model presented in Reference [9]. As depicted in Fig 2, organisational competency consists of can be seen as consisting of human, structural and relational capital.
Human capital is often described as the capital that the individuals take with them when they leave the organisation, i.e. it is the knowledge embedded in people and groups. The relational capital consists of the external relationships the organisation has with other organisations and individuals. This can include e.g. the relationships between an operating organisation and the vendor or the relationship the organisation has with its retired experts. The relational capital is essential especially in maintaining the design bases information and transferring it from design organisations to the operating organisation.
In the model presented in Figure 2, the structural capital consists of a formal and an informal part. The formal structural capital includes policies, explicitly described processes, working methods etc. The undocumented aspects of interaction in the organisation belong to the informal structural capital. The informal structural capital reflects the idea that the organisation is more than the sum of the individual people. Also, the organisational competencies are more than the sum of the competencies of the individuals. The organisational culture, working group dynamics, networks and collaboration generate something more than the individuals are capable of doing separately. The structural capital and human capital are not independent of each other. As discussed in the introduction, much of the knowledge in the organisation is embedded in the people. The informal structural capital depends on and is influenced by the individuals in the groups and thus by the human capital. On the other hand, knowledge creation and knowledge sharing, which contribute to human capital, are social processes. These processes are enabled by the structural capital and especially the informal structural capital. Thus the informal structural capital contributes to the human capital.
The interaction between the human and structural capital takes place in networks. Organisations typically include both designed and emergent networks. The former belongs to formal structural capital and the latter to informal structural capital. The communities of practice are a typical application of networks [10].
Core, collective and individual competencies
Following Reference [11], the organisational competencies are here called strategic core competencies, collective competencies and competencies of the individuals. They are depicted in Figure 3. The two upper levels are a part of the structural capital discussed in the previous section while the lowest level is the human capital and knowledge embedded in people.
The upper most level in Figure 3 is the strategic core competencies which are shared by the organisation. They are the organisation’s underlying key success factors. They include competencies on the organisational level that enable the organisation’s good performance, e.g. the processes through which the organisation learns, coordinates its tasks and utilizes its collective and individual competencies. In terms of intellectual capital, strategic core competencies can be relational, human or structural capital or a combination of them. The second competency level, the collective competencies, is the team level competencies. These competencies include the technical competency related to team’s tasks, the interpersonal competency related to collaboration connected to the tasks and the knowledge sharing culture which is the interaction that has no direct connection to tasks but enables e.g. building trust in the team and between teams. Collective competencies can be e.g. the combination of the task related technical competencies in the team, the way work is coordinated, the way the team utilises its individual competencies or the way team communicates within the team and with the other organisation. Collective competencies also enable task related technical collaboration, e.g. via overlapping individual competencies, and building trust between the team members and with other teams. The collective competencies can be relational, structural or human competencies.
The third competency level is the individual or role-based competencies. Developing core competencies and collective competencies often requires developing individual competencies. This document does not, however, deal with managing individual competencies. They are dealt with in other IAEA documents [3,4,5]
The competency levels are not independent of each other. The upper levels affect the lower levels and vice versa. Developing the strategic core competencies will set needs for developing collective or individual competencies. The requirement for individual competencies should follow from the tasks of the working group or the organisation and thus from the collective competencies or the core competency. The group or individual level competencies can also affect the upper level competencies. For example, the individual competency of a person with a wide experience from NPP processes can be the bases of a collective competency (people who act as connectors between different groups), or in an R&D-organisation, the special individual competencies can be the bases for the success factors of the whole organisation.
References
[3] INTERNATIONAL ATOMIC ENERGY AGENCY, Workforce Planning for New Nuclear Power Programs, IAEA Nuclear Energy Series no NG-T-3.10 IAEA Vienna (2011).
[4] INTERNATIONAL ATOMIC ENERGY AGENCY, Managing Human Resources in the Field of Nuclear Energy, IAEA Nuclear Energy Series no NG-G-2.1 IAEA Vienna (2009).
[5] INTERNATIONAL ATOMIC ENERGY AGENCY, Analysis Phase of Systematic Approach to Training (SAT) for Nuclear Plant Personnel, IAEA-TECDOC-1170 IAEA Vienna (2000).
[9] Carson, E., Ranzijn, R., Winefield, A., Marsden, H., Intellectual capital – Mapping employee and work group attributes, Intellectual Capital, Vol. 5, No. 3, pp. 443-463 (2004).
[10] Wenger E, Snyder, W., Communities of Practice – The organisational frontier, Harvard Business Review, Jan.-Feb., pp. 139-144, (2000).
