Orig­i­nal source pub­li­ca­tion: de Moura, F. L. and F. de Sá-Soares (2020). A Generic Pro­posal for Com­pe­tence Map­ping: A Case Study from Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems Dis­ci­pline. Pro­ceed­ings of IBIMA2020—The 35^th Inter­na­tional Busi­ness Infor­ma­tion Man­age­ment Asso­ci­a­tion Con­fer­ence, Seville (Spain).
The final pub­li­ca­tion is avail­able here.

A Generic Pro­posal for Com­pe­tence Map­ping: A Case Study from Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems Dis­ci­pline

Fabio Longo de Moura and Fil­ipe de Sá-Soares

Cen­tro ALGO­RITMI, Uni­ver­sity of Minho, Por­tu­gal

Introduction

The cen­tral theme in this paper—com­pe­tence—has been the sub­ject of many sci­en­tific dis­cus­sions and inves­ti­ga­tions. How­ever, despite the num­ber of works that have been pub­lished (exceed­ing 8,000 in 2019 accord­ing to the Web Sci­ence and more than 14,000 based on Sco­pus), addi­tional research is required, as some con­cepts related to com­pe­tence are con­sid­ered syn­onyms by some authors or over­lap in their mean­ings in the view of oth­ers. The exist­ing mix of con­flict­ing views may raise doubts regard­ing the approaches adopted by works on pro­fes­sional com­pe­tences. To mit­i­gate the draw­backs of that sit­u­a­tion, this study pro­moted searches and analy­sis in sev­eral dic­tio­nar­ies and frame­works in order to bet­ter orga­nize con­cepts and, sub­se­quently, to iden­tify rela­tion­ships between them and influ­ences they exert on each other. The start­ing point of the study were sev­eral com­pe­tence frame­works, lately com­ple­mented by the analy­sis of addi­tional ref­er­ences and dic­tio­nar­ies.

The lit­er­a­ture review sug­gested an absence of cri­te­ria to make sense of the terms asso­ci­ated to com­pe­tence, hin­der­ing the devel­op­ment of a con­cep­tual struc­ture capa­ble of defin­ing a pro­fes­sion. This state of affairs was rec­og­nized in spite of the exis­tence of expla­na­tions for the mean­ings of career, func­tion, job, work, and even pro­fes­sion. The absence of cri­te­ria may also inter­fere with the design of train­ing pro­grams or grad­u­ate and post­grad­u­ate pro­grams, as these pro­grams need to focus on learn­ing objec­tives that take into account the pro­fes­sional pro­file required by the labour mar­ket. Hence, we argue for the need of con­duct­ing research stud­ies on com­pe­tence-related con­cepts and on their rela­tion­ships.

In order to pro­duce a struc­ture for the com­pe­tence con­struct, we com­pared, grouped and con­trasted the def­i­n­i­tions of related con­cepts found in the lit­er­a­ture reviewed. Then, we advanced revised def­i­n­i­tions for the con­cepts so there was no over­lap­ping and incom­pat­i­bil­ity in the pro­posed struc­ture for the com­pe­tence con­struct. This made pos­si­ble a visual dis­play to show how con­cepts relate and to trace the path an indi­vid­ual may take to evolve in his/her pro­fes­sional field.

Build­ing on the struc­ture for the com­pe­tence con­struct, in this paper we pro­pose a mech­a­nism for map­ping com­pe­tences. This mech­a­nism assists in diag­nos­ing exist­ing com­pe­tences, sug­gest­ing paths to develop indi­vid­ual com­pe­tences and defin­ing require­ments to meet orga­ni­za­tion’s com­pe­tence demands.

Fol­low­ing this intro­duc­tion, we briefly describe com­pe­tence frame­works. These frame­works include var­i­ous con­cepts present in the pro­posed mech­a­nism for com­pe­tence map­ping. In the sub­se­quent sec­tion we present def­i­n­i­tions for the con­cepts, based on com­pe­tence frame­works and other ref­er­ences, such as sci­en­tific arti­cles and dic­tio­nar­ies. The sec­tion includes a dis­play of how the con­cepts relate at an indi­vid­ual level of analy­sis. The next sec­tion presents a com­pe­tence mea­sure­ment mech­a­nism and shows how it can be used to map an orga­ni­za­tion’s com­pe­tences. After­wards, rep­re­sen­ta­tions are pro­vided to exem­plify some appli­ca­tions of the mech­a­nism, based on a sce­nario, for both mea­sure­ment and map­ping pur­poses. For the sake of illus­tra­tion, the exam­ple pro­vided uses a frame­work from the Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems and Tech­nol­ogy (IST) domain. The pro­posed mech­a­nism allows the use of other frame­works for the pur­pose of com­pe­tence mea­sure­ment that the user of the mech­a­nism (an indi­vid­ual, a group or an orga­ni­za­tion) con­sid­ers appro­pri­ate. In the final sec­tions of the paper, the authors draw con­clu­sions and pro­pose future work.

Competence Frameworks

Dif­fer­ent com­pe­tence-based approaches have been devel­oped, serv­ing as guid­ance in diverse pro­fes­sional areas. A well-known frame­work is the Euro­pean Com­pe­tence Frame­work (ECF), which in 2016 was rec­og­nized as a Euro­pean Stan­dard, aim­ing to stan­dard­ize an approach to com­pe­tences, skills, knowl­edge and pro­fi­ciency lev­els [Euro­pean Union 2016], for the IST area, and pro­vid­ing descrip­tions for typ­i­cal pro­fes­sional role pro­files. Its archi­tec­ture divides com­pe­tence into four dimen­sions. Dimen­sion 1 refers to the pur­pose of the com­pe­tence. Dimen­sion 2 includes the name and a generic descrip­tion for the com­pe­tence. Dimen­sion 3 cov­ers pro­fi­ciency lev­els for the com­pe­tence and its equiv­a­lence with the Euro­pean Qual­i­fi­ca­tion Frame­work (EQF). Dimen­sion 4 cov­ers two fun­da­men­tal con­cepts for com­pe­tence, namely knowl­edge and skill. The frame­work includes exam­ples of skills and knowl­edge for each com­pe­tence, although rec­og­niz­ing that com­pe­tence is not lim­ited to the exam­ples pro­vided and may involve other skills and knowl­edge not men­tioned in the frame­work.

In addi­tion to the ECF, there are other frame­works that aim to stan­dard­ize the approach of com­pe­tences, such as the Skills Frame­work for the Infor­ma­tion Age (SFIA) [SFIA Foun­da­tion 2015, 2018] and the i-Com­pe­tency Dic­tio­nary (i-CD) [Hayashiguchi et al. 2018], both in the IST ares. SFIA divides Skills into cat­e­gories and sub­cat­e­gories, with each skill hav­ing spe­cific lev­els of respon­si­bil­ity, which include descrip­tions about the prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tion of the skill. Focus­ing on skills, i-CD pro­vides more than 2,200 task items and 10,000 knowl­edge items.

Other frame­works are trans­ver­sal to pro­fes­sional areas of activ­i­ties. The frame­work used in the United States of Amer­ica, O*NET [National Cen­ter for O*NET 2008], rep­re­sents an approach to com­pe­tences, in which the pro­fes­sional occu­pa­tions that an indi­vid­ual may have dur­ing his/her active pro­fes­sional life are the cen­tral theme. Another approach focus­ing atten­tion on the scope of job speci­fici­ties and pro­fi­cien­cies is ROME [ETA­LAB 2020], main­tained by the French gov­ern­ment. This frame­work cov­ers syn­onyms for jobs, i.e., occu­pa­tions that have dif­fer­ent names, but that in prac­tice are equiv­a­lent. Sim­i­lar approaches are found in other coun­tries. For exam­ple, the Brazil­ian Cat­a­logue of Occu­pa­tions (CBO) pro­vides an extremely sim­pli­fied struc­ture, tar­get­ing the pro­fes­sion/occu­pa­tion that an indi­vid­ual will per­form, clas­si­fied in a base group, which, per se, belongs to a sub­group. The CBO, as well as the Por­tuguese Cat­a­logue of Pro­fes­sions (CPP), pay atten­tion to the pro­fes­sion, offer­ing no sup­port that indi­cates the path an indi­vid­ual may fol­low to reach that posi­tion.

These frame­works, as well as sev­eral dic­tio­nar­ies, do not always attribute the same mean­ing to the con­cepts addressed and, although they do not enter into irre­me­di­a­ble dis­agree­ment, there is a need for more atten­tion in the appli­ca­tion of the con­cepts, at least to pre­vent an uncrit­i­cal and generic use. Hence, tak­ing into account the dif­fer­ent approaches adopted by each frame­work, it is advis­able to high­light the speci­fici­ties asso­ci­ated to each con­cept employed in this work–Com­pe­tence, Abil­ity, Pro­fi­ciency, Skill, Knowl­edge, Pos­ture, Dis­po­si­tion and Behav­iour–and to advance revised def­i­n­i­tions for each of them.

Main Concepts

The moti­va­tion for this paper resulted from the dif­fi­culty to depict ways for an indi­vid­ual to acquire pro­fes­sional com­pe­tences. The first phase of this study took advan­tage of a set of def­i­n­i­tions that made use of other con­cepts in a coher­ent way, allow­ing the authors to for­mu­late a com­pe­tence struc­ture. ECF, for exam­ple, por­trays com­pe­tence as “demon­strated abil­ity to apply knowl­edge, skills, and atti­tudes for achiev­ing observ­able results”.

Frame­works such as O*NET, ROME, CBO and CPP do not directly por­tray the term com­pe­tence, but refer, as a cen­tral theme, to occu­pa­tion or pro­fes­sion, con­tain­ing descrip­tions that com­ple­ment the ECF’s approach, hav­ing com­pe­tences as the cen­tral theme. SFIA places skill as a cen­tral theme and con­sid­ers the lev­els of respon­si­bil­ity as the specifics of the skill, which are grouped into cat­e­gories and sub­cat­e­gories.

The i-CD uses the con­cept of com­pe­tence as a cen­tral theme and con­sid­ers that its ori­gin is placed in the human resource, which is the source of the orga­ni­za­tion’s capa­bil­ity since it pro­vides the needed com­pe­tence for the busi­ness exe­cu­tion. Fleury and Fleury [2001] cor­rob­o­rate this view, indi­cat­ing that com­pe­tence refers to the stock of resources that the indi­vid­ual holds. How­ever, McClel­land [1973] draws atten­tion to the fact that com­pe­tence can be observed in the per­for­mance of a posi­tion exer­cised by the indi­vid­ual, pro­vided that the indi­vid­ual has skills, knowl­edge, behav­iors, atti­tude, abil­ity and nec­es­sary dis­po­si­tions cor­re­spond­ing to the indi­vid­ual’s pro­fes­sional occu­pa­tion. Nord­haug and Gr⊘nhaug [1994] advo­cate that the ele­ments that make up com­pe­tence are knowl­edge, skill, and abil­ity related to the work per­formed by the per­son. The work of these authors pro­vides impor­tant sup­port for the def­i­n­i­tion pro­posed in this study for the con­cept of com­pe­tence.

Look­ing to the ECF frame­work, it makes sense to say that com­pe­tence relates to a pro­fes­sional area where indi­vid­u­als employ their abil­i­ties, such as Pro­gram­ming and Soft­ware Devel­op­ment, Net­work Sys­tems, Qual­ity Assur­ance, among oth­ers. The pro­posed def­i­n­i­tion of abil­ity by the Cam­bridge Dic­tio­nary [Cam­bridge 2020a] indi­cates abil­ity as an occur­rence that enables some­one to be able to do some­thing, sup­ported by the Oxford Dic­tio­nary that com­ple­ments the expla­na­tion of the con­cept, refer­ring to abil­ity as the capac­ity to do some­thing, phys­i­cally, men­tally, legally, morally, etc. [Oxford 2020a].

Tak­ing into account these delin­eations, we define com­pe­tence as a com­bi­na­tion of the indi­vid­ual’s abil­i­ties and pos­tures to attend to a cer­tain task at a spe­cific moment. The def­i­n­i­tion empha­sizes the tem­po­ral­ity of the occur­rence of the com­pe­tence, as it is not some­thing per­ma­nent or sta­tic, but an event that occurs at the right time and involv­ing appro­pri­ate peo­ple to accom­plish a task.

Among the cited frame­works, only O*NET men­tions the con­cept of abil­i­ties. How­ever, its con­text of use does not match the one addressed in this paper. This is jus­ti­fied by the fact that the authors of the present work con­sider that com­pe­tences have dif­fer­ent speci­fici­ties. For exam­ple, in a par­tic­u­lar area of pro­fes­sional activ­ity it is pos­si­ble for dif­fer­ent pro­fes­sion­als to work together and col­lab­o­rate in a project, with the speci­fici­ties of com­pe­tence being respon­si­ble for dif­fer­ent groups of tasks. In the case of ECF, which artic­u­lates skills, knowl­edge, and atti­tudes as ele­ments of com­pe­tence, the speci­ficity of com­pe­tences is taken into account and reflected in the level of abil­i­ties. ECF estab­lishes a rela­tion­ship between the con­cepts of knowl­edge and skills, so that dif­fer­ent com­bi­na­tions of knowl­edge and skills imply vary­ing lev­els of pro­fi­ciency related to abil­ity in the con­text of a com­pe­tence.

In what con­cerns abil­i­ties in O*NET, the frame­work treats it as the nat­ural resources of the indi­vid­ual. How­ever, the authors of this paper con­sider the need to sep­a­rate what is nat­ural from what is acquired. Abil­i­ties have a broader view and include nat­ural resources, which are defined as apti­tude, being a fac­tor that influ­ences pos­i­tively or neg­a­tively on the vari­ables that indi­cate the level of abil­i­ties of the indi­vid­ual, cor­re­spond­ing to the nat­ural tal­ent pos­sessed by the pro­fes­sional. The APA Dic­tio­nary [APA 2018] defines apti­tude as a poten­tial in a par­tic­u­lar area, while the Cam­bridge Dic­tio­nary [Cam­bridge 2020b] refers to a nat­ural skill or abil­ity. In addi­tion to the facil­ity in some apti­tude or some abil­ity, the Busi­ness Dic­tio­nary [Busi­ness Dic­tio­nary 2020] com­ple­ments by indi­cat­ing that the indi­vid­ual’s inter­est in some task or respon­si­bil­ity is also a fac­tor that will influ­ence pro­fes­sional per­for­mance when putting his/her abil­ity into prac­tice, which will also enable the occur­rence of fit­ness improve­ments resul­tant from prac­tice. There­fore, prac­tice is one of the ways to improve com­pe­tence, that is, it refers to the pos­si­bil­ity of some­one doing a task in a more effi­cient way than he/she already does, through expe­ri­ence. The other way to improve com­pe­tence is to look for train­ing or qual­i­fi­ca­tions that pro­mote pro­fes­sional devel­op­ment, whether through the acqui­si­tion of knowl­edge or the prac­tice of new skills.

Knowl­edge, con­sid­ered here as one of the ways that leads to obtain­ing abil­i­ties, is what can be acquired through train­ing courses and edu­ca­tion, which, accord­ing to IT2017 [IT2017 2017], must appear in the offi­cial doc­u­ments of the train­ing pro­grams. In the con­text of EQF [Euro­pean Com­mu­ni­ties 2008], knowl­edge is referred to as the result of the assim­i­la­tion of infor­ma­tion through learn­ing, which may come from facts, prin­ci­ples, the­o­ries, and prac­tices that are related to a field of work or study. Grant [1996] empha­sizes that the cre­ation of knowl­edge is an indi­vid­ual activ­ity and that knowl­edge is the pri­mary source of value and may be the fac­tor that will dif­fer­en­ti­ate one orga­ni­za­tion from another, due to the amount of knowl­edge it might have. Takeuchi and Shi­bata [2006] empha­size the divi­sion of knowl­edge into two cat­e­gories, cor­re­spond­ing to tacit and explicit. They refer to the knowl­edge that can be expressed in words or num­bers and that can be shared as explicit knowl­edge. How­ever, the authors refer to the exis­tence of knowl­edge that can­not be eas­ily per­ceived and expressed, called tacit knowl­edge. This cat­e­gory of knowl­edge is deeply rooted in an indi­vid­ual’s actions and expe­ri­ences, as well as in its ideals, beliefs, val­ues or emo­tions.

Another way to sup­port and acquire the abil­ity at the indi­vid­ual level is the skill of the indi­vid­ual. The skill is the knowl­edge put into prac­tice, con­sid­er­ing the pos­ses­sion of the means for such an occur­rence. The EQF refers to the skill as the pos­ses­sion of the means to apply knowl­edge and use know-how to com­plete tasks and solve prob­lems [Euro­pean Com­mu­ni­ties 2008].

There is a close rela­tion­ship between the con­cepts of knowl­edge and skill since some skills are depen­dent on the exis­tence of knowl­edge for their real­iza­tion. In this rela­tion­ship, some skills refer to the appli­ca­tion of one or more acquired knowl­edge or nat­ural knowl­edge. Regard­ing skill, the fact of “think­ing ana­lyt­i­cally”, for exam­ple, sup­ports the exe­cu­tion of skills acquired through expe­ri­ence, which can also refer to the exe­cu­tion of skills that reflect the appli­ca­tion of knowl­edge acquired through train­ing courses. The “think­ing ana­lyt­i­cally” skill may be under­stood as a nat­ural skill, once it is not acquired from grad­u­ate or under­grad­u­ate courses.

How­ever, the pos­ses­sion of knowl­edge and skills, which form the abil­ity, is not a unique con­di­tion for com­pe­tence, since the abil­ity holder needs to put it into prac­tice in the ser­vice of some­thing. The abil­i­ties are fun­da­men­tal for the exe­cu­tion of tasks inher­ent to the pro­fes­sional; how­ever, the prac­tice of the abil­i­ties implies the main­te­nance of an ade­quate pos­ture, sup­ported by dis­po­si­tions, which will lead him/her to have appro­pri­ate and expected behav­iors. Per­sonal fac­tors have great rel­e­vance to make the skills hold by the pro­fes­sional gen­er­ate con­crete results. The rela­tion­ship between the con­cepts, on a per­sonal level, orig­i­nates from the observed pro­fes­sional pos­ture, which includes dis­po­si­tions for cer­tain behav­iors to be per­formed [Collins Dic­tio­nary 2020]. Thus, pos­ture is defined as a clas­si­fier of recur­rent behav­ior in the indi­vid­ual, that is, the moment when the indi­vid­ual responds to a received stim­u­lus. It is nec­es­sary to men­tion that the answer may sim­ply be “non-action”.

What sus­tains the rela­tion­ship between stim­u­lus and response is the dis­po­si­tion of the pro­fes­sional, con­sid­ered as an exclu­sive incli­na­tion or ten­dency of the indi­vid­ual [Oxford 2020b] to choose an alter­na­tive over oth­ers, basi­cally sup­ported by indi­vid­ual pref­er­ences [Strick­land 2001]. The result, there­fore, is the behav­iour, con­di­tioned to the envi­ron­ment in which it is located. Accord­ing to Fon­seca [2016], the behav­iour is directly influ­enced by expe­ri­ence, and Pep­pard and Ward [2004] note that the behav­iour of the indi­vid­ual is the result of orga­ni­za­tional demands, social demands, and per­sonal demands.

Fig­ure 1 rep­re­sents the rela­tion­ships between con­cepts related to the con­struct indi­vid­ual com­pe­tence.

Fig­ure 1: Rela­tion­ship between Con­cepts related to Indi­vid­ual Knowl­edge

Through Fig­ure 1, it is pos­si­ble to see that the com­pe­tence con­struct, at the indi­vid­ual level, is sup­ported by two main con­cepts, which are the prac­ti­tioner’s abil­ity [E6] and pos­ture [E3]. The for­ma­tion of the abil­ity occurs through the com­bi­na­tion of knowl­edge [E1] and skill [E2], and this for­ma­tion allows even greater pos­si­bil­ity to mea­sure the abil­ity and indi­cate their dif­fer­ent lev­els of pro­fi­ciency. The pos­ture is depen­dent on the exis­tence of dis­po­si­tion [E4], which will lead the per­son to per­form dif­fer­ent behav­iors [E5]. Pro­fes­sional abil­ity can be more eas­ily prac­ticed or improved when there is an indi­vid­ual’s apti­tude, which is con­sid­ered a nat­ural abil­ity for an area of pro­fes­sional activ­ity. The arrows in the pic­ture indi­cate the points where there is a rela­tion­ship between the con­cepts, when one con­sid­ers the depen­den­cies between them, being:

D1: Depen­dence of skills related to the acqui­si­tion of knowl­edge;

D2: After the pos­ses­sion of the means to per­form an action, there is a depen­dence on the pro­fes­sional pos­ture to effec­tive action;

D3: Depen­dence on the dis­po­si­tion so that the pos­ture is main­tained by the pro­fes­sional;

D4: Behav­iors that will result from the dis­po­si­tion;

D5: The behav­ior of the indi­vid­ual leads to the acqui­si­tion of new abil­i­ties or leads to the appli­ca­tion of abil­i­ties already pos­sessed;

D6: Con­sid­er­ing knowl­edge as the basis of skills, there is the pos­si­bil­ity of being improved pre­cisely through pro­fes­sional pos­ture and behav­ior aris­ing from the pos­ture. The fact that occurred at this moment is the acqui­si­tion of expe­ri­ence, which influ­ences the atti­tude of the pro­fes­sional.

Although the rela­tion­ship between the con­cepts is clar­i­fied in Fig­ure 1, it must be acknowl­edge that an orga­ni­za­tion is formed by dif­fer­ent peo­ple with dif­fer­ent back­grounds and expe­ri­ences. In the next sec­tion, it will be dis­cussed the pro­posal of a generic mech­a­nism that enables the map­ping and iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of com­pe­tences and the indi­ca­tion of a path for improve­ment, accord­ing to mea­sures defined by the orga­ni­za­tion itself.

Proposal of a Measurement Mechanism

An orga­ni­za­tion is made up of peo­ple, who, at their dif­fer­ent hier­ar­chi­cal lev­els, will have dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ences, although the pro­fes­sional path fol­lowed by some indi­vid­u­als may be equiv­a­lent. The train­ing may be sim­i­lar, as well as the pro­fes­sional expe­ri­ences, but the way of inter­pret­ing them will be unique, refer­ring to the beliefs and incli­na­tions hold by the pro­fes­sional, which influ­ence its behav­ior for the appli­ca­tion of its abil­ity.

Con­sid­er­ing the dif­fer­ent pro­fes­sional pro­files present in the orga­ni­za­tional envi­ron­ment, it is rel­e­vant to mon­i­tor the resources that the orga­ni­za­tion has, which may pro­vide sup­port to iden­tify pos­si­bil­i­ties for improve­ment and sit­u­a­tions in which the orga­ni­za­tion’s poten­tial is being under­uti­lized. It is also pos­si­ble to define inter­nal action plans, like offer of sem­i­nars, work­shops, train­ing, refor­mu­la­tion of the team regard­ing the projects in exe­cu­tion, to meet gaps related to the iden­ti­fied needs.

Fig­ure 2 is a rep­re­sen­ta­tion that has eight dif­fer­ent points of analy­sis, related to the con­cepts cov­ered in the pre­vi­ous sec­tion. It is arranged in a way that makes it pos­si­ble to posi­tion the orga­ni­za­tion at a spe­cific point that cor­re­sponds to the rela­tion­ship pro­posed, con­tem­plat­ing the train­ing of pro­fes­sion­als and their expe­ri­ence in their area of pro­fes­sional activ­ity. This rela­tion­ship is a pro­posal that addresses two para­me­ters but that does not define mea­sure­ment scales. The def­i­n­i­tion of mea­sures for the para­me­ters should be defined by the orga­ni­za­tion, even­tu­ally by mak­ing use of exter­nal ref­er­ences, such as widely used com­pe­tence frame­works or spe­cific ref­er­ences for some area of knowl­edge. In any case, a doc­u­ment that can assist in the def­i­n­i­tion of the mea­sure­ment scale can be the plan of the orga­ni­za­tion, con­sid­er­ing that it con­tem­plates the area of human resources and is in com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the other sec­tors of the orga­ni­za­tion, which will present the demands related to the pro­fes­sion­als nec­es­sary for the con­ti­nu­ity of the orga­ni­za­tion.

Fig­ure 2: Evo­lu­tion of Com­pe­tence

To facil­i­tate the under­stand­ing of the rep­re­sen­ta­tion in Fig­ure 2, Table 1 pro­vides a leg­end for the sym­bols used in the pic­ture.

Table 1: Rep­re­sen­ta­tions about Com­pe­tence Evo­lu­tion

The first sign, cor­re­spond­ing to (1), rep­re­sents how com­pe­tence should evolve. Accord­ing to the exam­ple, the evo­lu­tion of a pro­fes­sional is mea­sured in terms of expe­ri­ence and capac­ity, cor­re­spond­ing to the train­ing of the orga­ni­za­tion’s pro­fes­sion­als. The sec­ond sign (2) is the influ­ence of the nat­ural tal­ent, which serves as a facil­i­ta­tor for the evo­lu­tion of the level of abil­ity. In the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of phases, the evo­lu­tion of com­pe­tence is based on two vari­ables, one ver­ti­cally and the other hor­i­zon­tally. The ver­ti­cal ren­ders the moment when knowl­edge and skills are acquired (3), either through inter­nal train­ing, hir­ing employ­ees, etc., while the hor­i­zon­tal reflects the moment when the acquired knowl­edge and skill are placed in prac­tice (4) and expe­ri­ence is gained, serv­ing as an influ­ence on the evo­lu­tion of abil­ity. The sign equiv­a­lent to (5) rep­re­sents the moments when there is an expan­sion of the abil­ity, moti­vated by par­tic­i­pa­tion in train­ing or qual­i­fi­ca­tions that meet the met­rics defined by the orga­ni­za­tion. In the sequence, (6) cor­re­sponds to the improve­ment of the results in the con­text of pro­fes­sional prac­tice, that is, what the pro­fes­sional can do con­sid­er­ing his/her abil­ity. The evo­lu­tion of abil­ity occurs through the pos­ture of the pro­fes­sional, which leads to the acqui­si­tion of knowl­edge and skill, as well as when faced with a spe­cific sce­nario, he/she sees the oppor­tu­nity to apply the abil­ity he/she pos­sesses, being rep­re­sented by (7), which is the line that is directly related to all the ele­ments of the rep­re­sen­ta­tion. The (8) cor­re­sponds to the lim­i­ta­tions that a pro­fes­sional may have when exer­cis­ing his pro­fes­sion, depend­ing on the level of pro­fi­ciency of his abil­ity.

The Mechanism in Practice

In order to illus­trate the appli­ca­tion of the mech­a­nism, the fol­low­ing sce­nario is con­sid­ered: An orga­ni­za­tion has 100 employ­ees, 80 of which have an under­grad­u­ate degree, 15 have a mas­ter’s degree and 5 have a PhD degree. The aver­age time of expe­ri­ence of the Bach­e­lors is 1 year and 8 months, while the Mas­ters have 5 years and 7 months of expe­ri­ence and the PhDs have an aver­age of 5 years of expe­ri­ence. Using the pro­posed mech­a­nism to per­form the orga­ni­za­tion’s com­pe­tences map­ping, the result would be as shown in Fig­ure 3. Fig­ure 4 also uses the pro­posed mech­a­nism; how­ever, it presents greater refine­ment, refer­ring to the exis­tence of groups of pro­fes­sion­als with equiv­a­lent val­ues. This rep­re­sen­ta­tion indi­cates the exis­tence of dif­fer­ent pro­files in the staff. To this end, the pro­posal allows the def­i­n­i­tion of action plans, to meet the orga­ni­za­tion’s objec­tives of seek­ing to level the abil­i­ties and expe­ri­ences of its employ­ees.

Fig­ure 3: Com­pe­tence Map­ping

Thus, using the con­cept related to the evo­lu­tion­ary line of com­pe­tence, pro­posed in this work, it is sup­posed that the orga­ni­za­tion seeks pro­fes­sion­als who have more expe­ri­ence in their area of exper­tise, mak­ing pos­si­ble the lever­ag­ing of its employ­ees’ com­pe­tence.

Fig­ure 4: Group of Com­pe­tences

The scope of the pro­posed mech­a­nism is illus­trated in Fig­ure 5. This rep­re­sen­ta­tion involves the appli­ca­tion of the Busi­ness Process Matu­rity Model (BPMM), pro­posed by the Object Man­age­ment Group (OMG) (Object Man­age­ment Group 2008]. The OMG con­sid­ers that the adop­tion of a matu­rity model pro­vides a way to imple­ment vital prac­tices in one or more domains of the orga­ni­za­tional process. This model con­sists of five lev­els, which evolve from an orga­ni­za­tion that has no matu­rity in the process, with an incon­sis­tent or ad hoc process and results that are dif­fi­cult to pre­dict, to an inno­v­a­tive, proac­tive orga­ni­za­tion.

Fig­ure 5: Com­pe­tence Map­ping for Matu­rity Lev­els—BPMM

Table 2 rep­re­sents the matu­rity lev­els of the model pro­posed by OMG, with the respec­tive descrip­tion of the sce­nario and Table 3 con­tains the Knowl­edge and Skills cor­re­spond­ing to each matu­rity level.

Table 2: Matu­rity Lev­els—BPMM [Object Man­age­ment Group 2008]

Table 3: Knowl­edge & Skills for each Matu­rity Level of BPMM

Through this rep­re­sen­ta­tion, fol­low­ing the exam­ple of using a matu­rity model with a rel­e­vant con­tri­bu­tion for pro­fes­sion­als in the IST area, it is pos­si­ble to align it with man­agers in deci­sion-mak­ing processes that involve the con­text of avail­able human resources.

In a punc­tual analy­sis, the pro­fes­sional can also make use of this mech­a­nism by him/her­self. Con­sid­er­ing that the pro­fes­sional holds a set of knowl­edge and skills, these can be put to the test at some point of its pro­fes­sional career, for exam­ple, to get a cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. To this end, the mech­a­nism pro­posed for the map­ping of com­pe­tences may define, in the ver­ti­cal axis of atti­tude (7), the val­ues cor­re­spond­ing to the met­rics that will be required for get­ting the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, as well as depict­ing, in the hor­i­zon­tal axis of atti­tude (7), the length of pro­fes­sional expe­ri­ence work­ing in a given posi­tion.

The scope of the pro­posed mech­a­nism, based on the rela­tion­ship between the con­cepts related to com­pe­tence, allows its appli­ca­tion in dif­fer­ent sce­nar­ios since the mea­sures can be defined by the user of the mech­a­nism who, after map­ping, may resort to the guid­ance pro­vided by the con­cepts cov­ered in this work.

Conclusions

Dur­ing the study of the con­cepts coved in this work, it was found that mea­sur­ing com­pe­tences was also noted as being dif­fi­cult. Thus, the search for a mech­a­nism that would assist in the map­ping of com­pe­tences began to be defined, empha­siz­ing the impor­tance of meet­ing dif­fer­ent demands, be at an indi­vid­ual or orga­ni­za­tional level. Para­me­ters used to mea­sure will cer­tainly be dif­fer­ent from one orga­ni­za­tion to another, as demands are dif­fer­ent, as well as the specifics of any given envi­ron­ment. At the indi­vid­ual level, the pro­posed mech­a­nism also makes it pos­si­ble to define mea­sures in a generic way, since a pro­fes­sional should be able to iden­tify the appro­pri­ate mea­sure­ment units by using some ref­er­ence or bench­mark in its pro­fes­sional field.

Although the aim of this study is com­pre­hen­sive and not restricted to par­tic­u­lar con­texts, exhaus­tive appli­ca­tion of the mech­a­nism is nec­es­sary, both as a diag­no­sis tool and as a tool for mon­i­tor­ing and fol­low­ing up com­pe­tences and to prove its effec­tive­ness in sup­port­ing deci­sions related to com­pe­tences.

Future Work

In addi­tion to the def­i­n­i­tion of a mech­a­nism for man­ag­ing and mon­i­tor­ing com­pe­tences, the cen­tral theme of this study requires greater atten­tion in sit­u­a­tions involv­ing the rela­tion­ship among com­pe­tences at dif­fer­ent lev­els of the orga­ni­za­tional hier­ar­chy, such as on the indi­vid­ual, group, and orga­ni­za­tion level. Fur­ther stud­ies could focus on por­tray­ing the inter­ac­tion among those lev­els and find­ing out how to achieve mutual ben­e­fits for improv­ing global com­pe­tences of orga­ni­za­tion. In view of the exis­tence of incon­gru­ences between the frame­works that used the con­cepts related to com­pe­tences, we sug­gest car­ry­ing out work aim­ing at spec­i­fy­ing the com­po­nents of com­pe­tences in spe­cific con­texts of pro­fes­sional prac­tice and thus con­tribut­ing to min­i­mize cer­tain mis­un­der­stand­ings, per­haps caused by the lack of cri­te­ria for defin­ing those con­cepts.

Con­sid­er­ing the con­cepts cov­ered in this paper and their rela­tion­ships, an addi­tional research goal is to develop a set of rules for clas­si­fy­ing items related to the com­pe­tence con­struct that are cur­rently being used in an ad hoc man­ner, strength­en­ing the sci­en­tific research on com­pe­tences. The pur­pose of this planned work is to make it pos­si­ble to pay atten­tion to prob­lems instead of, for exam­ple, pay­ing atten­tion to the frame­work of a pro­fes­sion and the com­po­si­tion of its ele­ments. It is our belief that com­mu­ni­ca­tion between prac­ti­tion­ers and aca­d­e­mics will facil­i­tate the struc­tur­ing of pro­fes­sional careers. Aca­d­e­mic insti­tu­tions would also ben­e­fit, inso­far as they can bet­ter under­stand the rela­tion­ship between com­pa­nies’ needs for pro­fes­sion­als and train­ing require­ments.

Acknowledgments

This work has been sup­ported by FCT—Fun­dação para a Ciên­cia e Tec­nolo­gia within the R&D Units Pro­ject Scope: UIDB/00319/2020

References

• APA (2020). Atti­tude. [Online], [Retrieved Jan­u­ary 27, 2020]. Avail­able: https://dic­tio­nary.apa.org/atti­tude

  Busi­ness Dic­tio­nary (2020). Apti­tude. [Online], [Retrieved Jan­u­ary 27, 2020]. Avail­able: https://www.busi­ness­dic­tionary.com/def­i­n­i­tion/apti­tude.html

  Cam­bridge (2020a). Abil­ity. [Online], [Retrieved Jan­u­ary 27, 2020]. Avail­able: https://dic­tio­nary.cam­bridge.org/pt/dicionario/ingles-por­tugues/abil­ity

  Cam­bridge (2020b). Apti­tude. [Online], [Retrieved Jan­u­ary 27, 2020]. Avail­able: https://dic­tio­nary.cam­bridge.org/ptdi­cionario/ingles-por­tugues/apti­tude

  Collins Dic­tio­nary (2020). Atti­tude. [Online], [Retrieved Jan­u­ary 27, 2020]. Avail­able: https://www.collins­dic­tionary.com/dic­tio­nary/eng­lish/atti­tude

  Euro­pean Com­mu­ni­ties (2008). The Euro­pean Qual­i­fi­ca­tions Frame­work for Life­long Learn­ing (EQF). Euro­pean Com­mu­ni­ties, Brus­sels.

  Fleury, M. T. K. and A. Fleury (2001). Con­stru­indo o con­ceito de com­petên­cia. Revista de Admin­is­tração Con­tem­porânea 5(spe), 183–196.

  Grant, R. M. (1996). Toward a knowl­edge-based the­ory of the firm. Strate­gic Man­age­ment Jour­nal 17(2), 109–122.

  Hayashiguchi, E., O. Endou and J. Impagli­azzo (2018). The “i Com­pe­tency Dic­tio­nary” Frame­work for IT Engi­neer­ing Edu­ca­tion. Pro­ceed­ings of EDU­NINE 2018—2^nd IEEE World Engi­neer­ing Edu­ca­tion Con­fer­ence: The Role of Pro­fes­sional Asso­ci­a­tions in Con­tem­po­ra­ne­ous Engi­neer Careers, 1–6.

  IT2017 (2017). Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­ogy Cur­ric­ula 2017: Cur­ricu­lum Guide­lines for Bac­calau­re­ate Degree Pro­grams in Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­ogy/ Asso­ci­a­tion for Com­put­ing Machin­ery.

  McClel­land, D. C. (1973). Test­ing for com­pe­tence rather than for “intel­li­gence”. Amer­i­can Psy­chol­o­gist 28(1), 1–14.

  National Cen­ter for O*NET (2008). The O*NET Con­tent Model, Detailed out­line with descrip­tion.

  Nord­haug, O and K. Gr⊘nhaug (1994). Com­pe­tences as resources in firms. The Inter­na­tional Jour­nal of Human Resource Man­age­ment 5(1), 89–106.

  Object Man­age­ment Group (2008). Busi­ness Process Matu­rity Model (BPMM).

  Oxford (2020a). Abil­ity. [Online], [Retrieved Jan­u­ary 27, 2020]. Avail­able: http://www.lex­ico.com/def­i­n­i­tions/abil­ity

  Oxford (2020b). Dis­po­si­tion. [Online], [Retrieved Jan­u­ary 27, 2020]. Avail­able: http://www.lex­ico.com/def­i­n­i­tions/dis­po­si­tion

  Pep­pard, J. and J. Ward (2004). Beyond strate­gic infor­ma­tion sys­tems: towards an IS capa­bil­ity. The Jour­nal of Strate­gic Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems 13(2), 167–194.

  SFIA Foun­da­tion (2015). Skills Frame­work for the Infor­ma­tion Age 6 (SFIA 6)—The com­plete ref­er­ence guide.

  SFIA Foun­da­tion (2018). Skills Frame­work for the Infor­ma­tion Age (SFIA 7)—The com­plete ref­er­ence.

  Strick­land, B. (2001). The GALE Ency­clo­pe­dia of Psy­chol­ogy, sec­ond edi­tion. Gale Group, Farm­ing­ton Hills.

  Takeuchi, H. and T. Shi­bata (2006). Japan: Mov­ing Toward a More Advanced Knowl­edge Econ­omy. The World Bank, Wash­ing­ton D. C.