Competency Framework for the Fourth Industrial Revolution

Introduction

Competency as a concept was first introduced by White (1959) in the United States of America to describe attributes leading to high performance and motivation of employees. According to the researcher, competency is interaction of an individual with the work environment. By supporting the researcher with empirical studies, McClelland (1973, 1998) developed competency measurement model still in use. Inadequacy of psychometric scales to measure individual performance and that of using job descriptions to manage performance result in employing competency models (PAHRODF, 2017). Nonetheless, as Barrett and Depinet (1991) state, there is not enough evidence that McClelland’s model produces useful results. On the other hand, the model became more common by 1990s after the efforts of Boyatzis (Rothwell & Lindholm, 1999; Cardy & Selvarajan, 2006). To this end, competencies are considered untrivial factor for sustainable competitive advantage of the organizations (Campbell & Sommers Luchs, 1997; Nadler & Tushman, 1999). Thus, we may describe competence as a concept introducing a holistic approach to use workforce, knowledge, and technology effectively and interactively. Likewise, job-based learning urges organizations to analyse, plan, and conduct human capital of the organizations with a better understanding of competencies. In short, competency may be defined as everything to achieve better results in efficiency, effectiveness, and productivity. So, competency is the total of the factors that distinguish the best from the rest at a given work environment (Monk, 2001, p. 47). However, there are some studies identifying competency as a skill or an ability (for instance; Boyatzis & Sala, 2004). To this end, we may contend that competency comprises behaviours, attitudes, and knowledge providing reliable high performance. And we may widely describe competency as a guiding tool including knowledge, abilities, personal attributes, and behaviours contributing to achieving strategic goals of the company (Gangani et al., 2006; Dessler, 2007; Petersen et al., 2011).

Accordingly, competency based human resources management is fed by individual differences, industrial psychology, leadership researches, and job analyses. Besides, contemporary work environment is much more different than the past and is ever changing faster than expected. The fourth industrial revolution is organization of life cycle of a product from customer requirements through recycling following delivery to the end user (Prifti et al., 2017). The aim of the fourth industrial revolution is efficient, flexible, and customized production by means of digitally decentralized controls, self-organized supply chains, and fully automated factories by real-time and sensor technologies (Kagermann et al., 2013; Gebhardt et al., 2015). Therefore, the workforce is anticipated to comprehend the processes, connection along the networks, digitalization, and data collection and utilisation (Ras et al., 2017). By digital transformation and technological development, business environment is continuously changing leading to changes in competencies business world would like to employ. As Longo and his colleagues (2017) state, employees are required to be more flexible and to display adaptive capabilities in this dynamic working environment. The tasks they work on are getting less routine and ask for continuous knowledge and skills development (Ras et al., 2017).