UNIVERSALITY OF BEHAVIOURAL COMPETENCY MODELS.

• Author: Profiroiu, Alina-Georgina
• Position: Report

1. Introduction

   Cambridge Business English Dictionary directly links behavioral competencies with professional success and define them as "a personal quality or characteristic that influences how successful someone will be in their work." Competency models are more and more streamlining the organization culture for companies across the world. Company values are cascaded to employee level through behavioral competencies that are implemented in key human resources processes like recruitment, performance management, promotion, career development, succession planning and training.

   Rodriguez (2002: 309) considers that "competencies provide the foundation through which human resource professionals can contribute to the success of their organization." When companies decide to introduce competency frameworks, they must reflect the organizations' goals and match the culture they want to shape because competency frameworks that are implemented into HR processes become powerful tools in creating an organization culture that will support the strategy of the company. In current human resources practice, to ensure this, CIPD--The professional body for HR and people development in the UK recommends "first to check that the organization's aspirations are clear and agreed." If they are not clear, they need to be defined and agreed by the company senior management before the design of the framework (Whiddett and Hollyforde, 2007).

   To develop customized competency frameworks, companies go through a long, complex and expensive process that requires thorough job analysis and in-depth understanding of the company strategy and the industry. In the 21st century, considering all the developments in the world, globalization and the rapid changes in the job markets, companies have become more and more sophisticated in their approach and the behavior competencies implemented across HR processes are "generally characterized as being (a) transversal (relevant across different fields), (b) multidimensional (they include knowledge, skills and attitudes), and (c) associated with higher order skills and behaviors that represent the ability to cope with complex problems and unpredictable situations" (Voogt and Roblin, 2012).

   The purpose of this study is to demonstrate that even though companies invest a lot of effort in developing tailor made behavioral competency frameworks, there is a great degree of similarity between behavioral requirements for their employees to be successful in their job and in the company.

2. Method

   We conducted this research based on a literature review aiming to understand what the theoretical approaches are to developing behavioral competency frameworks. Also, the study analyzed the behavioral competency frameworks from two groups of companies across different geographical locations to highlight similarities and differences. The first group comprised of 12 companies from different industries and the...