Book Review
Competency-Based Human Resource Management

Sitamma Mikkilineni
Professor and Area Head - HR & OB IBS, Hyderabad, E-mail: sita@ibsindia.org

Over the years, Competency-based Human Resource Management has received increasing attention from HR practitioners and involves the use of competency models as the basis for various HRM practices. Despite this increasing popularity, published works in the area of competencies are meagre. Though the call to replace the traditional job-based approach to HRM with a competency-based approach in order to achieve maximum positive impact, came way back in the 1990s (Lawler, 1994; and Campion et al., 2011), the issues they raised continue to be pertinent in today's organizational environments - changing nature of work, global competition, rapidly changing environment leading to organizational change, and the trend towards flatter organizational structures. From the ontological and epistemological perspectives, the competency-based approach to HRM focuses on the world outside the individual and the gathering of evidence through observable human behaviors. The benefit of this approach is that adult human talent can be developed.

Introduction

As environments are changing and becoming more dynamic and volatile in most organizations, the need for aligning employee knowledge and behavior with the organizational adaptive strategy is essential. Competency mapping and assessment is critical for this alignment (Campion et al., 2020) and thus the book Competency-Based Human Resource Management by Anindya Basu Roy and Sumati Ray (Roy and Ray, 2019) assumes importance for both students and practitioners.

The book is an important contribution to the field of competency mapping and assessment for several reasons. It describes the design of competency models, takes us through the methods for assessment and discusses different applications using the competency framework. The authors are boundary spanners having worked both in industry and academia in this field. The way the content is organized and the examples and exercises given are testimony to the expertise and vast experience gained by the authors. Through this book, they aim to build an analytics-based approach to competency modeling and assessment.

The book is divided into three main parts: (I) About competency mapping and modeling; (II) About competency assessment; and (III) HRM applications using competency. Each part has several chapters ending with small case studies and exercises. These enable the development of a better understanding of the concepts elaborated in the chapter and also help the readers apply them to different industry domains.

Part I has three chapters. Chapter 1 begins with an introduction to the concept of competency and provides an understanding of the key terms used in this context. In chapter 2, the authors take us through the history of the concept beginning with John Flanagan's work on the Critical Incident Technique in 1954 and ending with Dave Ulrich's model showcasing the six competency domains of a HR professional. Chapter 3 elucidates the steps in developing a competency model. While the authors give several methods of collecting data for competencies, they present a comprehensive explanation of McClelland's (1998) structured Behavioral Event Interview (BEI) which is still the best and most often used technique in this field. A detailed case study for a generic competency model using the BEI with several excerpts from interview transcripts is also given.

Part II has two chapters focusing on competency assessment. Chapter 4 describes the important approaches to assessing competencies and is rich in terms of 360 degree assessment and assessment-center based evaluation of competencies. The steps needed to set up an assessment center are delineated along with a list of the popular tools and techniques, and the factors to be considered while making assessment centers more effective. Chapter 5 discusses how to design an instrument for measuring competencies and illustrates in detail the design of a psychometric instrument. A mention of the legal and ethical concerns in test design, and cross-cultural validity of competency frameworks would have added further value to the chapter.

Part III has five chapters which establish the use of competencies to develop human resource systems. Chapter 6 takes us briefly through the traditional processes of recruitment and selection, and then details the competency-based selection process ending with a case study. Chapter 7 focuses on competency-based training and development, citing specific development initiatives in Indian organizations. Chapter 8 discusses the main aspects of Performance Management (PM). They discuss trait-based, behavior-based, and result-based PM processes and shows how competency-based performance management can add maximum value to the process. Chapter 9 deals with competency-based career and succession planning and specifies the steps in setting up a competency-based succession plan. A few caselets and exercises help readers to critically apply these processes. The final chapter discusses the role of the HR department in setting up a competency-based HR system. The authors emphasize that HR professionals have tactical, strategic and operational roles to play in this process and specify their roles in the different phases while setting up the system.

The book comprehensively deals with the processes that are essential to implementing the competency approach and the authors have effortlessly combined the conceptual understanding with illustrations and examples to easily take us through the ideas which are often difficult to put into practice. Overall, this is a good book in the Indian context. The real-life examples and case studies are illustrative of the extensive training and consulting experience gained by the authors. Tables and figures are used appropriately and the chapters are well structured. Key terms at the end of each chapter provide a set of definitions that make it easy for the student. The inclusion of empirical research results concerning the practical functioning of different competency modeling or assessment processes would have added value to the book. This perhaps is simply because sufficient research has not yet been conducted in this area. However, this is an important issue. It is often not possible to understand the importance of competency-based HRM until the evidence base has been presented.

The book would greatly have benefitted with the inclusion of technologies and web-based applications that can be used to identify, model, validate and assess competencies. Given the range of human resource systems covered by the book, it would have been helpful if a chapter on Human Resource Planning were included. The importance of linking competency models directly to the organizational goals and objectives and examples to illustrate this would have provided readers the context for understanding how competencies can directly influence organizational goals for the competitive advantage.

I highly recommend this book for students of the competency approach, for scholars who teach the subject and for those who want to use this approach. However, while reading the book, critical views and different perspectives would help, so that these ideas can be challenged and built upon.

References

1. Campion M A, Fink A A, Ruggeberg B J et al. (2011), "Doing Competencies Well: Best Practices in Competency Modeling", Personnel Psychology, Vol. 64, No. 1, pp. 225-262.
2. Campion M C, Schepker D J, Campion M A and Sanchez J I (2020), "Competency Modeling: A Theoretical and Empirical Examination of the Strategy Dissemination Process", Human Resource Management, Vol. 59, No. 3, pp. 291-306.
3. Lawler E E (1994), "From Job-Based to Competency-Based Organizations", Journal of Organizational Behavior, Vol. 15, No. 1, pp. 3-15.
4. McClelland D C (1998), "Identifying Competencies with Behavioral Event Interviews", Psychological Science, Vol. 9, No. 5, pp. 331-339.
5. Roy A B and Ray S (2019), Competency Based Human Resource Management, Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA.