Competence and Competency: A

Microscopic Analysis
Are the two terms 'competence' and 'competency the same? On the face of it,
these two terms sound like synonyms. However, that is a common
misinterpretation. Often these two terms are used interchangeably. Very often, managers
make erroneous evaluations because of the lack of conceptual understanding of these two
terms. So let us study these two terms with an example, say, an accounts manager.

Distinction between Competence and Competency

In a typical organization, an accounts manager needs the following skills: knowledge of
accounts and various taxation policies, numerical ability, financial acumen, and other
such. If we were to presume that any person with the above mentioned skills has the
competency to be an accounts manager, then we would be quite wrong. Merely job
related skills are not adequate for a person to do his job well. To be a competent accounts
manager, the person would need job related skills, and a disposition to be a good
accounts manager. In other words, he also needs behavioral aspects to make him capable.
For instance, the accounts manager would need to be methodical, organized, and
accurate. These behavioral dimensions would enhance his job skills to make him a
competent accounts manager. It therefore means that

• Competence would refer to skills that are required to do the job well.
• Competency refers to special attributes that enable a person to perform his job.

Using Competence and Competency in Employee Assessment

Competence is very essential for the purpose of doing the job. However, competence
alone is not enough. Competencies are also important to improve performance. These are
job related behaviors that enhance individual capability. Competency makes a person
unique to his job. In the study of employee assessment, competency analysts should focus
not just on the competences, but also on the competencies.

While doing competency analysis, the expert must take into account the various
behavioral dimensions that clearly demarcate the high performer from the others.
Competencies that correspond to superior performance should be isolated for assessment.
All other behaviors which mildly affect performance should be ignored to make the task
of assessment simpler. For example, in the case of a sales rep, competencies like
negotiation skills, and confidence, would qualify as important for the success of a
salesman.

Competency dimension analysis delves into the socio-psychological profile of personnel

behavior. If probed thoroughly, companies can save thousands of dollars that go in wrong
hiring decisions.]
http://www.hrprofessor.com/article36.html
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Competence is a standardized requirement for an individual to properly perform a
specific job. It encompasses a combination of knowledge, skills and behavior utilized to
improve performance. More generally, competence is the state or quality of being
adequately or well qualified, having the ability to perform a specific role.

For instance, management competency includes the traits of systems thinking and
emotional intelligence, and skills in influence and negotiation. A person possesses a
competence as long as the skills, abilities, and knowledge that constitute that competence
are a part of them, enabling the person to perform effective action within a certain
workplace environment. Therefore, one might not lose knowledge, a skill, or an ability,
but still lose a competence if what is needed to do a job well changes.

Competence is also used to work with more general descriptions of the requirements of
human beings in organizations and communities. Examples are educations and other
organizations who want to have a general language to tell what a graduate of an
education must be able to do in order to graduate or what a member of an organization is
required to be able to do in order to be considered competent. An important detail of this
approach is that all competences have to be action competences, which means you show
in action, that you are competent. In the military the training systems for this kind of
competence is called artificial experience, which is the basis for all simulators.

[edit] General definition

Competence is shown in action in a situation in a context that might be different the next
time you have to act. In emergency contexts, competent people will react to the situation
following behaviors they have previously found to succeed, hopefully to good effect. To
be competent you need to be able to interpret the situation in the context and to have a
repertoire of possible actions to take and have trained in the possible actions in the
repertoire, if this is relevant. Regardless of training, competence grows through
experience and the extent of an individual to learn and adapt. However, there has been
much discussion among academics about the issue of definitions. The concept of
competence has different meanings, and continues to remain one of the most diffuse
terms in the management development sector, and the organizational and occupational
literature (Collin, 1989).

[edit] General competence development

It is interesting to register competences, in HR it is much more important to have a policy
for developing competences especially the general competences described below.

Dreyfus and Dreyfus[citation needed] has introduced a language of the levels of competence in
competence development. The causative reasoning of such a language of levels of
competence may be seen in their paper on Calculative Rationality titled, "From Socrates
to Expert Systems: The Limits and Dangers of Calculative Rationality." The five levels
proposed by Dreyfus and Dreyfus were:

• Novice: Rule-based behaviour, strongly limited and inflexible

• Experienced Beginner: Incorporates aspects of the situation
• Practitioner: Acting consciously from long-term goals and plans
• Knowledgeable practitioner: Sees the situation as a whole and acts from personal
conviction
• Expert: Has an intuitive understanding of the situation and zooms in on the central
aspects

The process of competence development is a lifelong series of doing and reflecting. As

competencies apply to careers as well as jobs, lifelong competency development is linked
with personal development as a management concept. And it requires a special
environment, where the rules are necessary in order to introduce novices, but people at a
more advanced level of competence will systematically break the rules if the situations
requires it. This environment is synonymously described using terms such as learning
organization, knowledge creation, self-organizing and empowerment.