“There is nothing is so practical as a good theory.”
(Kurt Lewin)
Competence model
At MESH® RESEARCH, we have set ourselves the goal to prepare the results of current competence research resulting from management theory, psychology, sociology and pedagogy in an integrative perspective in such a way that this creates an effective and sustainable instrument both for HR departments and for organizational and corporate development.
Success-critical factors of competence. The requirement for the development of such a competence model is, on the one hand, to integrate several research disciplines. On the other hand, the competence model must also help to identify the factors of competence that are critical to success.
Whereas in German-speaking research area the understanding of competence is primarily dominated by psychology (“ability”), in Anglo-Saxon countries the behavioral aspects of competence (“skill”) are more in the foreground. This narrowing of research to the sphere of individual action is not convincing insofar as it leaves social and cultural factors out of the picture. You are competent not only by your personality, but firstly because of certain responsibilities in organizations and secondly because of a knowledge that cannot be limited to individuals but is culturally shared.
Multiple Job Model. We have developed a lean model of system-theoretically informed competence that takes into account not only individual skills and abilities but also the social and cultural dimensions of competence. On the one hand, it is able to identify the success-critical factors of competence in a scientifically well-founded way. On the other hand, it is a multiple job model that is suitable for a wide range of applications in organizations. It can be used both to precisely record relevant competencies for individual job profiles (“single job model”) and to create comparability between different job profiles (“one size fits all model”).
Practical additional effort due to theoretical deficit. Irrespective of their different focus, international competence research also lacks sufficient justification as to why, as is often the case, competence should be differentiated according to, of all things, technical, methodological, social, personal and leadership competence. Although such classifications are practically plausible, they usually lack sufficient justification.
The consequence of the general theoretical deficit in competence research are arbitrary competence factors with numerous competence dimensions. In combination, this leads to almost infinite lists of competencies, which are very difficult to maintain in practice. At MESH® RESEARCH we avoid such setup by a recourse to a systems theory of action.