The changes that are sweeping across the world have made the organizations aware of the need for having competent employees. With the changing business scenario and new challenges emerging in the competitive world of liberalization, globalization and information technology, good performance in any job/task is necessary for organizational success. Hence, it has become imperative for the organizations to identify the characteristics of successful performance. These behaviors/characteristics are called ‘competencies’.
Competency is an underlying ‘characteristic’ causally related to superior job performance (McClelland, 1973; and Boyatzis, 1982). It was first popularized by Boyatzis and defined as “a capacity that exists in a person that leads to behaviors that meet the job demands within parameters of organizational environment, and that in turn brings about desired results.”
Despite the growing level of awareness, competency-based Human Resource (HR) still remains an unexplored process in many organizations. The underlying principle of competency mapping is not just about finding the right people for the right job, it is much more complex than it appears, and most HR departments have been struggling to formulate the right framework for their organizations (Naqvi, 2009). Considering the changing environment and the research gap which exists, there is a need to study the process of competency mapping, i.e., how the organizations go about implementing the process and how competency mapping process is used strategically by the organization to achieve results and fulfill commitments made by the employees.
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