American and British Approaches to Competencies
Identify and assess the differences between the American and British approaches to competencies.
Compare these approaches to those in your own country or in a culture with which you are familiar.
The following conditions must meet in the paper
1) I want a typical and a quality answer which should have about 550 words.
2) The answer must raise appropriate critical questions.
3) The answer must include examples from experience or the web with references from relevant
examples from real companies.
4) Do include all your references, as per the Harvard Referencing System,
5) Please don�t use Wikipedia web site.
6) I need examples from peer reviewed articles or researches only.
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American and British Approaches to Competencies
Workplace competence refers to having the relevant qualifications in terms of
knowledge, education, skills, and experience that a given job description entails. Organizations
are increasingly investing in human resource development to enhance competencies of the
employees to enable them respond promptly to the needs of business. In Britain efforts to embark
on competency approaches were witnessed as early as 1980. It was part and puzzle of the civil
service. The root of competency management in the UK was from the conservative government
elected in 1979 that brought radical reforms in the civil service (Lei & Hitt, 2006). The reforms
involved the use of new public management ideas that sought to achieve efficiency and
effectiveness of performance management and the economy as a whole. These ideas were from
literatures on management and from consultants that mostly referred to developments in the
United States (Farnham & Horton, 2012). The Public servants’ offices had to work with
consultants and government departments so as to identify the key competencies necessary for
civil servants. The office there on used candidate job profiling by looking into their qualities and
skills to select them in the relevant job in the civil service. The profiles were also of vital
importance in carrying out career development and training.
In the year 1987, the civil service college started a training program on competency
after it was introduced by the Management Charter Initiative in collaboration with its National
Vocational Qualification framework. The units in the courses offered in the training program
were fully on core competencies and roles of most job description that were mostly perfectly
blended with British and American approaches to competencies (Scheeper, Hondeghem &
Horton, 2005). The US is believed to be the pioneer of performance management and key core
competencies’ framework models, which were then adopted in the UK to drive learning
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initiatives at the workplace. The US models that date as early as 90s like any other competency
model in England and Australia are broader and more complex. The most popular models
developed in America are the Carnevale (1988) and SCANS (1991).
The SCANS (Secretary’s Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills) model is made
up of five key competencies that include: efficient use of resources, interpersonal skills, excellent
information dissemination, clear understanding of information and technologically savvy. The
other foundation skills in this model are: basic skills like arithmetic, writing, thinking skills and
personal queries like individual responsibility. We can see that this model encompasses a broad
approach that incorporates the many individual personnel attributes and skills. In comparison
with the US, Britain identifies various key competencies however not broad than those of the
pioneers (Thomson & Mabey, 2009). In the identification of the key competencies two motives
are relied on, these are the quality in education and the internalization which is defined as the
ability to differentiate the general education from the vocational skills. Other skills in the British
model are strong teamwork skills. Communication skills and problem solving skills.
Across the lines of division, both UK and US competency models face many
pragmatic criticisms. One is being lack of a coherent definition of key competencies at the
workplace. It is evident that there is a clear distinction between the two models. For example, the
US approach lays emphasis on input, that is, work-oriented model; the UK model, on the other
hand, focuses on output (worker-oriented model) (Mei‐I, Andrew & David, 2013). A general
presumption is that until there is a clear resolution of the measurement differences, the
competency models are subject to questions of their validity.
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References
Farnham, D. & Horton. S. (2012). The Competency Movement in Horton, S., Hondeghem, A. and
Farnham, D. Competency Management in the Public Sector. Amsterdam: IOS Press.
Lei, J. & Hitt, M.A. (2006). Dynamic core competencies through meta-learning and strategic
context. Journal of Management, 22(9), 12-13.
Mei‐I, C., Andrew, R., & David, R. (2013). The differing faces of managerial competency in
Britain and America. Journal of Management Development, 22(6), 527 – 537.
Scheeper, D., Hondeghem, A. & Horton, S. (2005). Key competence models in Europe. Journal
of Public Administration, 2(6), 27-37.
Thomson, R. & Mabey, C. (2009). Developing Human Resources, Oxford: Butterworth-
Heinemann.
