Organizational Psychology

The article discusses the relationship between the English concept of «competence» and Russian concepts «kompetentsiya», «kompetentnost'» and «professionally important quality» of man. Translation of the word «competence» as «kompetentsiya» does not correspond to the value of Russian word, which refers to a set of tasks and responsibilitiesof the employee. «Kompetentnost'» — as a person's ability to effectivelysolve professional problems are not completely coincide with the concept of «competence» and does not translate it quite accurately. To overcome these difficulties was introducedmore general concept — «professionally important component of human activity» which is defined as any component which is necessary or useful for the rapid vocational training, as well as for the effective implementation of professional activities. These components of human activity are not only his competences, but also professionally important qualities and kompetentsiya. Some diagnostic methods of professionally important qualities are also discussed in the article. On the example of the development of the concept of «psychological resource» of professional activity have been illustrated some general scientific rules of the constructive definition of psychological concepts, the content of which should include empirically evaluated characteristics of diagnosable objects.

In the present article the factors having impact on the decision of a recruiter at personnel selection are considered. These factors were allocated on the basis of the analysis of scientific literature and expert opinion. They are as follows: education, experience, appearance, knowledge, abilities, skills, knowledge of English, competence, coincidence of values, existence of recommendations, a sex, age, motivation for work in the company, recruiter. The special attention is paid to coincidence (congruence) of values of the candidate and the company as to a factor which is considered in practice of the large companies. The article generalizes the results of the research, carried out in the Russian division of the international company at the beginning of 2014. Data were collected during competence-based interviews with candidates for vacancies of professionals without managerial responsibilities. In total 127 interviews were collected. On the basis of the data analysis the model of recruiter’s decision making was constructed, taking into account the statistical significance of factors. The hypothesis that candidates with the values corresponding to shared values of the company, are more successful when passing interview, than those candidates which values don’t correspond to shared values of the company was confirmed. The research findings had practical implication. They promoted the decisionto a practical problem in the investigated company — creation of the training program for recruiters taking into account the significant factors defining successful passing of selection process in the company. The scientific originality of results consists in checking the influence of such ill-studied factor, as congruence of values.

Characterization of competencies as key to assessing staff have been actively used since the mid-1990s. Of course, the organization’s staff was evaluated and selected before. If we talk about formal staff appraisal system, they first appeared in the US companies in the early 20 century. In the 1960s. were used scheme taking into account the strategic objectives of the business, which formed the basis of modern methods of evaluating-staff. Traditional industrial-organizational psychology began with a separate analysis of the job and of the worker and attempts to combine them. This approach has been very successful in predicting academic performance based on tests of academic type, but was completely inadequate for predicting the performance of the work at the senior level, which is very important in today’s business. An approach based on competencies, allows to link into a whole human resource management in recruitment, career planning, performance assessment and development in the coming years. However, with the introduction of competency in the practice of staff managementin organizations has not been without difficulties, including a purely terminological. In this article we offer our readers two possible technology to build competency/competencies models. One of them developed in the paradigm MIKRIS (A.K. Yerofeev), another one — more than 20 years used by consultants of Center for Personnel Technologies – 21st Century (T.Yu. Bazarov). Both technologies use different approaches to building models, however, they have in common is that the authors areconvinced of the need in each case to create exactly the model of competencies/competences, whichis relevant to the conditions of a particular organization. Technology MIKRIS (Methods of extractionand recognition criteria for comparison) is described as a sequence of seven stages: analysis of the work; the allocation of the four groups of criteria; extracting behavioral examples; development of rating scales; stepwise selection methods of evaluation; validation (pilot) study; users training. Methods of creating competencies model according to the “CKT – 21” includes four stages: collection of documents; analysis of the collected documents; formation model for the position; verification of themodel qualitative methods.

This article proves need to develop a theoretical model of subjective criteria to control the effectiveness of professional activity. Methods and approaches, which will then be developed, will forma managerial competence “effective control of professional activities”. Both in the context of psychology and economics subjective criteria for the control of managerial performance as the problem agenda are considered. Control enables identify the extent to which real activity and standard setting. The authors consider the subjective criteria of effectiveness of control as the constructs that are used by managersto check job results and compare them with standards. The main methods are method of modeling situations, written interviews and content analysis. The article presents the results of three stages of the study. The main findings of the first phase of the study are the follow. Performance measures represent only 17% of the total criteria used by managers; managers substitute performance criteriaby criteria of organizational effectiveness; hard measurable criteria presented significantly. The mainfindings of the second phase of the study are the follow. Middle managers often use hard measurable criteria than top managers. Instead of the requirements and standards managers use the descriptions of the process and condition. These descriptions have emerged in their professional experiences. Themain findings of the third phase of the study are the follow. At the system of subjective criteria the only control of results related to the standard of work. To control of the process and condition managersuse not standard, but hard measurable criteria created thanks to their professional experience. Basedon the results of their previous research authors propose the idea of the future research aimed at working out a model of subjective criteria for control and monitoring the efficiency of the managerial performance.

The author shows the role and practical benefits of working with over-professional competences that determines to 80% of success in professional work of managers and specialists. In the modern organization of a number of invaluable competitive advantage can be realized through competent management, well-built sales and increase skill working professionals. A key condition in this process is the ability to control over-professional competences with today’s technology competenceand psychometric tests to identify of potential. Possession of these technologies to developing core competencies at the level of organization and reinforce the benefits of its positioning in the market, attracting and retaining valuable employees. The author offers an illustration of the over-professional competencies as a meta-competency examination using three types of sellers: “hunters”, “collectors”and “farmers”. This approach is used by the author in the projects in the leading Russian and European companies. At the end of the article the author to share his vision of the current situation in the workwith competence and makes several recommendations.

The article considers the problem of revealing and evaluation of features and qualities of the subject of professional activities, influencing the process of its performance and results; in this article are discussed traditions, formed in the national and foreign industrial psychology in this area. It represents the essence of the competency building approach, in the modern psychology, the meaning of such notions as competence, competency, professionally important feature of the organizational behavior, professionally important quality and its kinds, profession, specialty, determined work, work analysis, professional psychology, psychology of professions. It describes historical analogues and predecessors of the competency approach (“Enlightment experience”, experience of scientific management, of the industrial psychotechnique and reflexology). It considers job specification (free characteristics̕ method, O. Lipman̕s checklist, observation method of labor products̕ analysis, method of mistakes̕ analysis, records̕ method, work method, artificial and natural deautomation method, critical incidents̕ method, characterological method, collective discussion method, statistic method, or intergroup differences̕ method, comparative method, experimental & psychological method) and its use in the analysis of work, labor tasks and labor subject features. The article describes the experience of studies of professions in labor psychology, achievements and problems of professions̕ psychology in 20-30s XX century. The reference to works of predecessors of the competency building approachis useful for experts of personnel management services from the point of view of the experience, accumulated in work psychology and psychotechnique, scientific administration. The historical and scientific reflection of the offered type is useful for the normal functioning of the modern applied psychology, for the theory and practice of assessment centers, testologists, dealing with the forecasting of professional success, career consulttants and professional orientators.

In article the brief retrospective of research of competences for more than last 50 yearsis given. The author substantiates the necessity for classification of competencies. Four models of classification of competences, including three ones proposed by famous researchers of competences from 1982 to the present, and one the author’s model are considered. The comparative analysis of all models is given; their advantages and disadvantages are specified. The common essential features of all approaches to classification of competences are marked out including a two-level clustering and existence of interrelations, both between competences, and between clusters of competences.The general-purpose professional competences model in which five clusters of competences are allocated is considered: personal, social, technical, organizational and administrative competences. In the proposed model clusters of competencies are arranged in a certain order. The author for the first time makes a hypothesis of evolutionary development of competences, implementing in the proposed model the idea of cyclic changes in quality of competences during human life. The author identifies ten main interrelations between clusters of competences, five of which illustrate the natural interrelations promoting development of competences in the employee, five other interrelations illustrate obstacles for development of competences which arise in case of violation of the natural course in development of competences. The author offered original visual interpretation to illustrate the proposed model of professional competences. This visualization is designed to simplify understanding of the model, and to illustrate the interrelations arising in development of competences, as well as the contradictions arising between clusters of competences.

International Conference "Psychology of communication and trust: Theory andPractice" was held in November 2014 in Moscow, where the section “Problems of communication and trust in entrepreneurship, business and management” was organized.

The paper reflects upon the First International Congress “Research and group psychotherapy of chronic stress” (Athens, Greece ), which was hold on November 20-23, 2014, and gathered more than 200 participants from Western and Eastern Europe, North and South America and the Middle East. Most of the participants were researchers or practitioners in the field of group psychotherapy. However, actual for organizational psychology themes were also in the scope of the Congress. The interlink between psychotherapy and organizational psychology was a group – both psychotherapeutic and working – and the group dynamics. The paper discusses in detail the themes of the Congress that were relevant for organizational psychology and summarizes the key corresponding reports.

The paper consists of two parts. The first part presents a review of the article T. Bazarov, A. Yerofeev, A. Shmelev “Collective definition of “competence”: an attempt to extract meaningful trends from diffuse expert knowledge”, sustained in a polemical style. In particular, we are talking about the relationship of concepts such as “competence”, “competency”, “property”, “quality”, “professional important qualities”, “psychologically-important qualities.” The second part describes the author’s view on the evaluation procedure of the job competence, including expert instruction, examples of criteria for assessing competencies, as well as mathematical formula for calculating the job competence.

Information about the 20 most cited and 20 most recent articles on competent-ference approach provides the analysis of English sources from the database Web of Science. Use a set of Core Collection, which includes the most authoritative journals in various fields of knowledge, he was selected from two citation index: Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED) and the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI). All data act trivial at the time November 23, 2014. When searching method was used snowball sampling. The choice of this method stems from the fact that the word competence (competence) was not the specificity and applicable only in the field of organizational psychology, and is a common word in English. As a result of filtering by name articles were found about 12,000 articles. To narrow your selection without losing quality, to compile lists used multipletechniques, in particular, clarifying the criteria used and were viewed “outbound” links (forward references) the first two articles on the competence-based approach (McClelland, 1973; White,1959). The largest number of articles have been found in the interdisciplinary fields of psychology, management (mainly strategic), medicine, research, business, education.