Competence Development in the Czech Republic

ABSTRACT Competence management is seen as one of the most important sources for comparative strategic advantages. Especially in transformation economies like the Czech Republic, human resources have to be regarded as a key factor for current and future success of the economy. Therefore this article focuses on the external and internal drivers of change, influencing competence management and development in this country. The analysis shows that management competences are still in a building phase. Roughly 20 years after the great reforms, competence management shows first trends to increase market- and employee-orientation. INTRODUCTION After the collapse of the Eastern Bloc in 1989, the Czech Republic, like many other Central and Eastern European states, faced the challenge of converting a centrally planned economic system into a market economy within a very short period of time. In general, this did not involve massive changes in personnel, but only a significant increase in the natural detachment process. This resulted in younger, clearly better educated managers moving into management positions whose most striking characteristic is that at the current level of education mainly technical experts joined the management. (Hartmann 2007) In line with this development, the following research question remains: Which management competences do these new managers have and how are these competences influenced by external and internal drivers of change? COMPETENCE MANAGEMENT Competence management represents a holistic field of research from strategic, organizational to individual competences, (for a more detailed overview see Elliot & Dweck 2005, Tidd 2006, Muhlbacher 2007) In the following we have to focus on the definition of individual competence and the historic development of competence classes - both needed to answer our research question. Due to the limited space we therefore have to leave out all other interesting aspects. Recent work on individual competence management (e.g. Probst et al. 2000; Sarges 2001; Erpenbeck & von Rosenstiel 2003) mainly emphasizes the fact that competences are strongly oriented towards the future. These enable a person to tackle upcoming challenges, whose nature cannot be predicted or determined, in a self-organized manner. Therefore, discussions regarding competences are of importance whenever strategic personnel planning and development in times of great uncertainty take centre stage. This requires a change in perspective within human resource management. Both the current requirements and the competences necessary in future have to become the focal point of the analysis and are to be seen as a strategic competitive advantage for the company. (McCaIl 1998, Nahapiet & Ghoshal 1998) From Ulis point of view the question in which specific competences a company should invest, in order to realize value added in the future - in the sense of return on investment -, at first remains unanswered. Only the answer to this question makes it possible to use further education as a strategic instrument of management development. Particularly regarding anticipated competences one should keep in mind that these data - fully in line with a Delphi study - are explorative prognoses. Apart from the comparison of the current distribution of competences, this study, therefore, can only serve the function of generating hypotheses. Definition of competence The term competence always depends on the theory, i.e. only within the specific construct of a theory on competence does it have a defined meaning. Competences in a narrow sense are dispositions of selforganized actions. As they are internal, unobservable dispositions, competences are always a form of association based on judgments of the beholder. Competences are attributed on the basis of problem and solution orientation, by informing a person of an objective - without a specific solution - and then measuring the degree to which the objective was achieved. …