Competency development in organizations: building an integrative model through a qualitative study

The prominent role of competency development in enhancing the success of employees and organizations has drawn the attention of practitioners leading them to introduce competency development as a central part of their human resource practices. Unfortunately, the strong managerial interest in competency development was not fully translated into the academic world, creating a gap between theory and practice. The main purpose of this study was to fill this gap by unraveling the process of competency development in organizations. To this end, we adopted a longitudinal multiple case study design, gathering information from 22 Belgian organizations through organizational records, semi-structured interviews with HR managers and focus groups. By using a grounded theory approach, a framework emerged mapping out the different steps of competency development in organizations. Hence, this study can be an important first step towards closing the existing gap between practice and theory concerning competency development in organizations.