Abstract:
The importance of specific competencies in staff to achieve desired outcomes in newlinean organization is gaining acceptance. Methods to identify such competencies newlinethat set apart outstanding performers in achieving organizational success have newlinealso been fairly well evolved. newlineThe rationalistic approach for imbibing these competencies is to transfer the set newlineof knowledge, skills and attributes identified with the competencies, to those newlineemployees who seem to lack them, through a training and development newlineintervention as efficiently as possible. Some management literatures allude to newlineknowledge transfer at the workplace being in the nature of a socio-political newlineprocess. Social sciences point out that individuals are trained through newlinesocialization process to adopt normative standards of culture. Workplace being a newlinecommunity in its own right albeit smaller, similar dynamics would be prevalent. newlineDevelopment of the individual, therefore, is a much more complex process than a newlinemere transfer of knowledge, skills and attributes through a training and newlinedevelopment program. newlineInterpretative approach believes that competency on the job is not about the newlineknowledge, skills and attributes alone but also has to do with the way the newlineemployee understands the work and its demands. Effective methods of bringing newlineabout the desired changes in the individual s understanding of the work and its environment for developing competencies are therefore seen as an essential step. newlineApproach adopted for the present research is rooted in the interpretative approach to competency development and acknowledges that competencies are context dependent. In addition, it is based on the premise that some of the competencies can be transferred to the individual through deliberately designed on the job assignments and off the job training and development initiatives, with the support of relevant others at the workplace.
