Competences in organizational e learning

i

Com pe t e nc ie s in
Orga niza t iona l
E-Le a r ning:
Conc e pt s a nd Tools
Miguel-Angel Sicilia, University of Alcalá, Spain

I nfor m at ion Sc ie nc e Publishing
Hershey • London • Melbourne • Singapore


ii
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Competencies in organizational e-learning : concepts and tools / Miguel-Angel Sicilia, editor.
p. cm.
Summary: “This book addresses competencies as the key observable workplace behavior that is
able to drive learning and knowledge dissemination processes inside organizations, and can be used

as a guide for implementing or improving competency-based approaches to e-learning”--Provided
by publisher.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-59904-343-2 (hardcover) -- ISBN 1-59904-344-0 (softcover) -- ISBN 1-59904-345-9
(ebook)
1. Organizational learning. 2. Knowledge management. 3. Communication in organizations. I.
Sicilia, Miguel-Angel, 1973HD58.82.C653 2007
658.4’012--dc22
British Cataloguing in Publication Data
A Cataloguing in Publication record for this book is available from the British Library.
All work contributed to this book is new, previously-unpublished material. The views expressed in
this book are those of the authors, but not necessarily of the publisher.


iii

Com pe t e nc ie s in
Orga niza t iona l E-Le a r ning:
Conc e pt s a nd Tools
Ta ble of Cont e nt s

Preface ...........................................................................................................................vi

Section I: General Concepts and Management Issues
Chapter I
Competencies and Organizational Learning: A Conceptual Framework ............... 1
Miguel-Angel Sicilia, University of Alcalá, Spain
Ambjörn Naeve, Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden
Chapter II
Competency Management Systems and Technologies ............................................. 10

Shantha Liyanage, University of Auckland, New Zealand
Chapter III
A Survey of Competency Management Software Information Systems
in the Framework of Human Resources Management ............................................ 41
Alfonso Urquiza, Francisco de Vitoria University, Spain


iv

Chapter IV
Competency Management using the Competence Performance Approach:
Modeling, Assessment, Validation, and Use .............................................................. 83
Tobias Ley, Know-Center, Austria
Dietrich Albert, University of Graz, Austria
Stefanie Lindstaedt, Know-Center, Austria
Chapter V
Competencies Management: Applying Technologies for Strategic
Management .............................................................................................................. 120
Miltiadis Lytras, University of Patras, Greece
Maria Mantziou, Open University of Greece, Greece
Maria Pontikaki, Intralot S.A., Greece

Section II: Competencies from the
Viewpoint of E-Learning and Organizational Memory
Chapter VI
An Organizational Memory Tool for E-Learning .................................................. 146
Marie-Hélène Abel, Laboratory Heudiasyc UMR CNRS 6599,
University of Compiègne, France
Chapter VII
An Ontological Representation of Competencies as Codiied Knowledge........... 169

Salvador Sánchez-Alonso, Unversity of Alcalá, Spain
Dirk Frosch-Wilke, University of Applied Sciences, Germany
Chapter Chapter VIII
Ontology-Based Approach to Formalization of Competencies ............................. 185
April Ng, Simon Fraser University Surrey, Canada
Marek Hatala, Simon Fraser University Surrey, Canada
Chapter IX
Linking E-Government with Organizational Memory through Individual
Competencies ............................................................................................................. 207
Juan G. Cegarra-Navarro, Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena,
Spain
Chapter X
Designing and Implementing Views on Competencies .......................................... 221
Marcel van der Klink, Open University of The Netherlands, The Netherlands
Kathleen Schlusmans, Open University of The Netherlands, The Netherlands
Jo Boon, Open University of The Netherlands, The Netherlands
Chapter XI
Ten-Competence: Life-Long Competence Development and Learning............... 234
Rob Koper, Open University of The Netherlands, The Netherlands
Marcus Specht, Open University of The Netherlands, The Netherlands


v

Section III: Competencies and the Semantic Web
Chapter XII
An Ontology-Based Competence Management Model to Support
Collaborative Working and Organisational Learning .......................................... 253
José Braga de Vasconcelos, Universidade Fernando Pessoa, Portugal
Chris Kimble, University of York, UK

Chapter XIII
Integrated Semantic-Based Composition of Skills and Learning Needs in
Knowledge-Intensive Organizations ....................................................................... 266
Simona Colucci, SisInfLab, Politecnico di Bari, Italy
Tommaso Di Noia, SisInfLab, Politecnico di Bari, Italy
Eugenio Di Sciascio, SisInfLab, Politecnico di Bari, Italy
Francesco Maria Donini, Università della Tuscia, Italy
Azzurra Ragone, SisInfLab, Politecnico di Bari, Italy
Chapter XIV
Semantic Web Technologies in the Recruitment Domain...................................... 299
Ralf Heese, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany
Malgorzata Mochol, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany
Radoslaw Oldakowski, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany
Chapter XV
Ontology-Based Competency Management for Corporate E-Learning .............. 319
Fotis Draganidis, University of Athens, Greece
Gregoris Mentzas, University of Athens, Greece
Chapter XVI
Applying Semantic Web in Competence Management ......................................... 333
Mikko Laukkanen, TeliaSonera, Finland
Heikki Helin, TeliaSonera, Finland
About the Authors ....................................................................................................... 358
Index .......................................................................................................................... 367


vi

Pre fa c e

Companies should decide what processes and competencies they must excel at

and specify measures for each.
~ David P. Norton
The term “competency” (plural “competencies”) has become a widely used term in discussions and technical-scientiic literature that deals with organizational or workplace learning
in the last years. This has raised the need for many professionals and scholars to have a full
understanding of the meaning and implications of the concept. However, there is not a reference guide for people who want to have such overall understanding, and the monographs or
books dealing with the subject do it from a single, speciic perspective, which in my view
restricts the landscape to a single aspect. This book attempts to ill this gap in the subject
of competencies by bringing together different author proiles and different interests and
perspectives with regard to competencies.
In a nutshell, competencies can be deined as observable capabilities of individuals for speciic
work situations. Since they are observable, they are subject to measurement in some way.
This provides a convenient approach to the measure of organizational capability in regards
to human resources. However, there is not a single account of how competencies can be
measured, since their deinition is complex in several aspects. These aspects include their
deinition, relationships, similarities or complementarities, and the issues of how to derive
“aggregated” competency scores or igures. This last aspect is fundamental in measuring
the competencies for groups or teams, and also to measure the aggregated competency of
a department or an organization. Aggregates are also required for the important issue of
assessing the “competency gap,” in which the objective is to measure the actual capability
of the organization in contrast to some organizational objectives or needs derived for some
kind of statement, be it from management, market forecasts, or individual desires. These
are the core concepts approached from different perspectives in this book.
Each chapter in this book takes a different perspective in the above-mentioned and related
issues. I hope to have collected a selection that covers the main issues and fosters further
efforts in research and in the elaboration of reference material in the topics.


vii

Motivation

The concept of competency can be used as a key element in the organizational learning
and the design of information systems that are driven by representations of competencies
making a more eficient organizational learning processes. This statement is the underlying
motivation for this book. However, for such a claim to become a reality, organizations require
a clear understanding and strategy regarding competencies. Competencies as patterns of
observable, measurable human behaviour in workplace situations can be used as a standard
for measuring the capacity of employees in activities that create value of some kind.
Thus, a irst important issue is clarifying how to deine and represent competencies and
their constituents. Competency schema deinition is a legitimate research subject in itself.
It comprises the representation in formal languages of competency descriptions and actual competencies, and the inquiry on the relationships possible between competencies.
Knowledge, skills, and abilities are often considered ingredients required for competency
in concrete work situations.
A second, related issue is assessing, measuring, and computing with competencies. This
includes both the procedures and methods for knowing the competency levels of employees
and also the computing of aggregated competency levels for groups or organizational units.
This is a topic that requires a lot of attention due to the diversity of computing approaches
that can be devised to solve it.
In addition, the assessing of “competency gaps” connects with the cycle of needs and behaviour of the organization. It formalizes in some way the learning needs of an organization
or unit. Thus, learning activities can be planned to ill the competency gap, selecting for
that the best target human resources, considering their previous competency record and the
constraints of their calendar. The organizational information systems, if linked to a learning
management system, could be arranged and scheduled learning processes and their results
tracked, selecting the best-suited learning resources.
Considering further the organizational issues, there is also a need to clarify the relationships
of competency-driven learning with knowledge management (KM) activities, and particularly
with organizational memories. A straightforward connection might be that of considering
learning resources as particular knowledge assets, and the processes that manage them as
comprising also learning activities. This allows for a competency approach in KM also.
All the issues mentioned above are dealt with in this book, but the material provided does
not exhaust the range of approaches possible to address each of them. However, the material included provides a solid ground for researchers and practitioners who in some way or

another need to deal with competencies, learning technology, and/or knowledge management systems. If those needs are fulilled to some extent, the objectives of the book will
have been achieved.
The rest of this preface provides information on the process of editing this book and an
overview of its organization and contents.


viii

The Process
The process of selection of papers combined an open call for chapters in popular newsgroups
with targeted invitations to submit to speciic people who had experience or previous publications on the topic. All the chapters had undergone a peer review process to ensure both
technical and scientiic quality and also to check the appropriateness for the objectives of
the book. The review process proceeded in two phases: a irst one in which chapter proposals were requested and a second one in which full papers were required for those chapters
that passed the irst ilter.
The review of the proposals was aimed at having the right contents in the book, excluding
chapters that were clearly out of the scope and objectives of the call for chapters. It included
some brief comments on appropriateness when required, provided as a convenience for
authors of full chapters to align the writing with the overall objectives of the book.
The review of the full chapters was aimed at ensuring technical and scientiic quality, and
it attempted to provide constructive suggestions for chapters that were clearly acceptable
but could be improved to provide further value to the reader. After the peer review process,
minor but important matters on formats and additional material were addressed.
Now that the book is available, it is time for the last part of the process, that is, gathering
feedback from readers. Receiving feedback would be for me very rewarding, even in the
cases of critical comments, since it would allow me to redirect my future planned efforts in
the area of competencies and e-learning. This is a sincere invitation for any reader interested
in the topics of the books to send me any kind of suggestion or comment.

Overall View of the Book
The book has been organized in three parts, in an attempt to give some structure to the different viewpoints provided in each chapter. However, this organization is not intended as a

sharp classiication but rather as an aid for guiding the reader to the parts that could be of
most interest to her or him. It is my hope that chapter authors feel that their chapters have
been put in the appropriate part, but many of them could have been classiied under more
than one label, so that there is a degree of subjectivity in the inal choice that could perhaps
be understood by some readers as a misclassiication. In any case, I suggest a quick reading
of the abstracts of the chapters before starting with their contents, just to have a quick idea
of the diversity of topics and orientations that will be found.
The rest of this section provides a brief reference to the contents and main points of each
chapter, intended as a roadmap for the reader.
Section I. General Concepts and Management Issues
Section I groups together papers that provide comprehensive accounts of the main concepts
in the topics or the book, or that touch general issues. In both cases, these chapters provide
an overall view of the many surrounding topics of the paradigm of competencies.
This irst section of the book starts with a short contribution Ambjörn Naeve and myself.
This contribution is intended only as a brief essay for roadmapping future efforts in the area.
It built directly from the experience of the authors in modeling competencies for e-learning,


ix

and writing it was an useful exercise in the inception of our joint European project LUISA
(Learning Content Management System Using Innovative Semantic Web Services Architecture), code FP6−2004−IST−4 027149, and other research initiatives.
In the second chapter, Dr. Shantha Liyanage provides a comprehensive account of the competency approach and its relation to organizational learning, Web systems, and knowledge
transfer. The chapter addresses why learning and the competency approach are important and
how learning is a part of the organizational functioning. The chapter is especially interesting
in that it explains clearly the main elements that are dealt with in the rest of the book, following a seamless low. I strongly recommend readers start with this chapter, since it provides
a good start for thinking in competencies and learning from a holistic perspective.
The third chapter turns attention to the software market of competency systems and also
focuses on the view of competencies that is usual in the human Resource management
perspective. Alfonso Urquiza provides a clear view on the state of the market of software

tools that includes competency management, using a detailed functional description. This
chapter can be read independently of the others and is especially targeted at practitioners
and decision makers who are in the process of choosing a software platform for Human
Resource Management that includes the competency approach in some way.
Tobias Ley, Dietrich Albert, and Stefanie Lindstaedt provide in the fourth chapter a different contribution, which reports a substantial advancement in the practice of competency
management in organizations. They start reviewing current competency approaches and
the models available, along with the main future challenges for the ield. From that initial
analysis, the authors devise a new approach with a strong theoretical background, and then
provide relevant evaluation data. The resulting model is a relevant contribution to competencies as a management discipline, and the chapter illustrates a research methodology that
can be useful for readers who are seeking ways of testing or creating tailored competency
management models for their organizations or institutions.
Chapter V takes a completely different approach in introducing concepts related to competencies. Miltiadis Lytras, Maria antziou, and Maria Pontikaki approach competencies
through real-world scenarios, providing a fresh look at several managerial topics. The
chapter provides a number of “must haves” for competency solutions from a management
perspective. For readers who have never been involved in competencies, this chapter might
be the best option to start, since it provides informal, real-life examples of the implications
of competencies in management.
Section II. Competencies from the Viewpoint of E-Learning and Organizational Memory
The second section of the book includes chapters with an emphasis on e-learning or knowledge management elements as organizational memories.
In Chapter VI, Marie-Hélène Abel describes the E-MEMORAe tool, which supports an organizational goal-driven approach based on the concept of learning organizational memory.
It takes knowledge, know-how, and behaviours as the main elements of competencies, and
connects them with the concept of organizational memories. The tool described takes a
Semantic Web approach, since it uses ontologies and semantic annotation, and it also builds
on the concept of learning object. This results in a state-of-the-art example on the combination of learning objects and Semantic Web for the purpose of organizational management
of knowledge.


x

Chapter VII starts with a discussion of knowledge lifecycle models as the Knowledge

Management Consortium International (KMCI). Then, Salvador Sánchez-Alonso and Dirk
Frosch-Wilke proceed to map the main concepts of competency management with the elements of the KMCI. This provides an understanding of the degree overlapping competency
management has with the dynamics of knowledge management. Finally, the ontological
representations that underlie these mappings are sketched.
Chapter VIII by April Ng and Marek Hatala enters into a very speciic but critical aspect of
the integration of learning technology with competency management: the linking of learning objects with competency representations. Ontologies of competencies are included in
standardized learning object metadata records, thus enabling a uniform, interoperable way
to retrieve learning objects based on the competency gap. This chapter is especially relevant
to researchers and practitioners in standardized learning technology.
In Chapter IX, Juan G. Cegarra-Navarro turns attention to the role of organizational memory
in the adoption and use of e-government systems. He focuses on the “competences” that
are required to manage and exploit knowledge at the organizational level. The chapter ends
with an assessment of some important aspects that require more attention in the ield of
e-government.
Chapter X, by Marcel van der Klink, Kathleen Schlusmans, and Jo Boon, provides an
insightful discussion on the concept of competency and proposes ive fundamental dimensions: speciicity, coherency, durability, activity, and trainability. These dimensions are of a
great importance in clarifying the approach taken on competency in research projects and
organizational approaches. Then, the chapter continues with two differentiated competency
models: function-based and employee-based. The former focuses on capabilities for speciic
functions, while the latter focus on the combined competencies of the individual. These different models lead to different competency management strategy, which makes this chapter
especially interesting for devising organizational models for competencies.
Chapter XI, by Rob Koper and Marcus Specht, describes the main issues being dealt with
in the European Union’s TENCompetence project. It starts by describing a number of major
problems associated with achieving a platform that supports individuals, groups, and organizations in lifelong competence development using open-source, standards-based, sustainable,
and innovative technology. Then it moves onto a description on how the TENCompetence
approach provides the main directions that are required to tackle with those problems. Some
of these chief issues include dealing with different levels of learning support and providing
advanced mechanisms for learning networks.
Section III. Competencies and the Semantic Web
This third section of the book focuses on an advanced information technology topic. The

Semantic Web vision described by Berners-Lee, Hendler, and Lassila (2001) represents an
approach to enhancing the current World Wide Web with machine-understandable semantics.
The essential idea is that Web resources as identiied by URIs can be described by metadata
with the purpose of enabling automated processing. The precision of logics-based description would allow for the creation of tools that do not rely on natural language processing
as current search tools, thus ideally removing the problems associated with ambiguity and
implicitness in natural language. Metadata requires shared semantics in the context of an
open Web, so that the proliferation of descriptions and vocabularies do not end up in a Tower
of Babel. Ontologies provide the support for the shared representation of such semantics,


xi

and ontology mapping procedures could resolve the issues of semantic interoperability in
case of disparate representations over the same domain. Ontologies act as descriptions of
semantic domains that are used to express metadata records according to previously agreed
deinitions. Ontologies provide an explicit, shared representation of a domain providing unambiguous deinitions for the main concepts and relations describing the phenomena under
consideration (Gruber, 1995). Description logics (Baader et al., 2003) are well known and
thoroughly studied knowledge representations that can be used to develop formal ontologies
and systems that use them, enabling reasoning services of a diverse kind. Formal ontologies
thus provide a foundation for representing the diverse aspects of virtual communities and the
artefacts they deal with in terms of ontologies, which would eventually result in advanced
tools that are aware of the structural and cultural issues that are part of a community. Ontologies can be expressed in Web markup languages for ease of processing and interoperability.
Notably, the OWL language has reached the status of W3C recommendation, and several
tools are yet available to edit or process OWL representations.
Ontologies are a natural target as a representation language for competencies, since they
provide advanced support for intelligent agents and are able to reuse existing knowledge
representations in the form of domain ontologies.
The book provides ive chapters that deal with Semantic Web issues from different perspectives.
Chapter XII focuses on management issues and uses ontologies as the key structuring
principle for the competency approach. More concretely, José Braga de Vasconcelos and

Chris Kimble describe the functional architecture of a system based on ontologies that use
competencies and expert annotations to drive collaborative work and learning. It is of special
interest that the chapter describes a multi-level ontology architecture connecting with the
main components of an organizational memory.
Chapter XIII, by Simona Colucci, Tommaso Di Noia, Eugenio Di Sciascio, Francesco Maria
Donini, and Azzurra Ragone, has a much different focus than the previous chapter, in that it
describes in detail a computational model for searching among available skills and facilitating the acquisition of missing ones. Concretely, the proposed approach uses a description
logic and reasoning services, providing the main formal deinitions. This chapter provides
a concrete, fully speciied approach to competency gap analysis and targeting, and as such,
it constitutes a novel and signiicant research result that can be used for contrasting other
approaches or extending the one presented in some concrete ways.
One speciic and important domain of application for competency approaches is that of
recruitment. Chapter XIV by Ralf Heese, Malgorzata Mochol, and Radoslaw Oldakowski
addresses precisely that area from a Semantic Web perspective. The application of Semantic
Web technology is put in context by pointing out the requirement for semantic metadata to
cope with the large and heterogeneous volume of job offerings in popular job portals and systems. A prototype implementation is described, providing a really interesting case of matching
offerings and needs through competencies for competency as enabled by semantics.
Chapter XV by Fotis Draganidis and Gregoris Mentzas describes the architecture, design,
and deployment of a system that integrates ontologies with competency management and
e-learning. It provides the architecture of such a system, describes the approach to specifying competencies, and inally proposes a method for adopting competencies under such a
technological view. The chapter ends with a summary of lessons learned of special relevance
to managers and decision makers.


xii

Finally, Chapter XVI, by Mikko Laukkanen and Heikki Helin, describes another approach to
Semantic Web and competency management, in this case providing both the description of
a concrete tool and the details of the algorithms used for matching competencies and needs.
A description on the use of the tool illustrates the advantages of the ontology approach to

competencies. A very important aspect of this last chapter is that it provides both the technical material and the organizational context in which the requirements were originated, thus
becoming a complete technology development case.

Outlook
As evidenced in the brief summary of the chapters, there are a number of recurrent problems
in the application of competency management to learning in organizations, but the solutions,
perspectives, and areas of research range from pure management issues to technical knowledge representation using logic languages. The chapters in this book have pointed out the
main questions opened in “competency-based approaches” as a research (sub-)domain.
The effort in editing this book is a irst step toward a clariication of the different viewpoints
on competencies as applied in organizational settings. I irmly believe that competencies
will be the focus of a great deal of research attention in the following years, especially in
the domains of learning technology and knowledge management.
The natural follower of this book would be a monograph providing an in-depth and comprehensive account of competencies deinition, assessment, and management that combines
both a managerial and a technical view. That would serve as a blueprint for the adoption
of a rich competency management approach in organizations, built on best practice and
powerful enough to adapt to the different requirements of various industrial sectors and
types of enterprises.
Dr. Miguel-Angel Sicilia
Alcalá de Henares
July 2006

References
Baader, F., et al (Eds.). (2003). The description logic handbook. Theory, implementation
and applications. Cambridge.
Berners-Lee, T., Hendler, J., & Lassila, O. (2001). The Semantic Web. Scientiic American,
284(5), 34-43.
Gruber, T. R. (1995). Toward principles for the design of ontologies used for knowledge
sharing. International Journal of Human and Computer Studies, 43(5/6), 907.

xiii

Ac k now le dgm e nt s

This edition of this book was, in fact, the original idea of Dr. Miltiadis Lytras, and it came
to light during my stay in Athens with him in 2004. My interest in research on competencybased techniques for the Semantic Web and e-learning resulted in a chapter in Dr. Lytras
and Dr. Ambjörn Naeve’s excellent book Intelligent Learning Infrastructure for Knowledge
Intensive Organizations: A Semantic Web Perspective, published by IGP. That chapter was
the seminal concept for this book. Later, I received feedback from the ideas on that paper
from many colleagues worldwide. Those comments helped me in setting the scene for this
book, which attempts to provide a comprehensive account of the use of competencies in
organizational learning.
In other aspects, this book is also a result of the patience and understanding of my wife
Elena and my two-year-old son, Miguel-Angel. They are the real energy behind all my
undertakings.
I have also to mention the help, support, and patience of Kristin Roth, Idea Group development editor, and the rest of the IGI staff.
Dr. Miguel-Angel Sicilia
Alcalá de Henares
July 2006


xiv

Section I:
General Concepts
and Management Issues


Competencies and Organizational Learning 1

Chapter I

Competencies and
Organizational Learning:
A Conceptual Framework
Miguel-Angel Sicilia, University of Alcalá, Spain
Ambjörn Naeve, Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden

Abstract
Organizational learning can be considered as systemic behaviour oriented to acquire capacities for dealing with the needs and challenges of organizations in competitive environments. This entails that there must be some measurable and lexible concept that drives the
acquisition of those capacities. Competencies understood as the workplace capabilities of
individuals or groups can be used as one of the approaches for managing such capacityacquisition behaviour. Even though competency is not a new concept, the management of
competencies through information technology (IT) for improved effectiveness and eficiency
poses a number of signiicant challenges that still require much research to come up with
general-purpose and reliable solutions in the information systems discipline. This chapter
delineates the main concepts for a competency-based framework in the context of organizations and enumerates some requirements for which deinitive and commonly accepted
solutions are still not available.

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of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited.


2 Sicilia and Naeve

Introduction and Background
Competencies as related to learning and work performance have received a great deal of
attention in the last years. This has resulted in a plethora of papers and reports on how
competencies should be deined or assessed, including some papers that deal with their
representation in a computational form. But the literature on the topic is fragmentary in
what concerns the concept of competency, since deinitions are in many cases taken for

granted, and, in other cases, the studies focus on a single aspect of competencies. This makes
it dificult for newcomers to have a clear understanding on the main issues that need to be
dealt with when approaching competency-based systems. That lack of a systematic way of
dealing with competencies calls for a clear statement of the requirements that are signiicant
for studies and future research on the topic.
This chapter attempts to provide a checklist, or roadmap, for such requirements. To do so,
we will start with a concrete deinition for the term competency, and then we will proceed
to describe the main requirements in a synthetic way, hoping that the resulting collection
of aspects is valuable as a skeleton for the clariication and comparison of the concrete approach each author or system is providing in what regards to competencies.
The notion of competency is linked to the concept of human performance, which according to the model of Rummel (Rothwell & Kazanas, 1992) encompasses several elements:
(a) the work situation is the origin of the requirement for action that puts the competency
into play, (b) the individual’s required attributes (knowledge, skills, attitudes) in order to
be able to act in the work situation, (c) the response, which is the action itself, and (d) the
consequences or outcomes, which are the results of the action and which determine if the
standard performance has been met. Finally, individuals usually receive some kind of feedback depending on the success or failure of their action.
Since competency is related to human capacity, it is clear that learning is a process that
eventually results in improving competency. In straightforward terms, then, learning activities
can be arranged, scheduled, carried out, and evaluated with the aim of helping employees
to acquire some required competencies for concrete work situations. This link is a irst
important assumption in competency approaches to e-learning in organizational settings,
which in turn leads to a irst requirement for them.
Requirement #1. Competency-based approaches to organizational learning require an explicit model for linking competency deinitions to learning activity
objectives.
Even though this irst requirement may seem obvious, it entails a number of related requirements that are described in what follows and that do not have a straightforward solution. The
irst one is the formal deinition of competencies, that is, the aspects of competencies that
should be considered. Knowledge, skills, and attitudes are often mentioned as examples of
such aspects or contributing elements. However, there is not a single deinition accepted, and
the approaches will be different depending on the granularity and level of detail considered.
This leads to a second requirement.

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Idea Group Inc. is prohibited.


Competencies and Organizational Learning 3

Requirement #2. The components of competencies must be clearly described.
An ontological schema for the Rummel model cited above can be found in the work of
Sicilia (2005). Further, relationships between competencies are an important element to be
considered. A discussion of techniques for dealing with some typical competency relationships can be found in Sicilia, García, and Alcalde (2005).
In addition to describing competency components, a deinition of the measurement instruments
and scales is required. An option is an “all or nothing” approach, in which an individual has
or not a given competency. However, it is more common to have some measurement scale,
numerical in a range or qualitative, based on linguistic labels, as “high” or “low.”
Requirement #3. The scales or constructs for measuring competencies must be
deined.
Following with measurement issues, competencies in organizational approaches will likely
be aggregated in constructs as “competencies of a team” or “competency level for the organization.” These aggregations entail a concrete kind of “algebra” of competencies. For
example, existing approaches differ in these aggregations to be compensatory or not (Sure,
Maedche, & Staab, 2000).
Requirement #4. The aggregation techniques considered valid must be deined
to the level of allowing a form of computing aggregated competency levels.
Competencies are, of course, the actual capabilities of employees, but the same concept can
be used to express desires or needs, that is, competency requirements. When understood
as a lack that should be ixed, one can use the term “competency gap.” This raises an additional requirement.
Requirement #5. The expression of needs and objectives in terms of competencies
must be speciied in terms of the same model used to express the capabilities
of individuals or groups.
In addition to the representational problems described so far, the procedures or techniques
that are considered proper for the assessment of the presence of competencies in individuals require consideration. Such techniques may involve observation, tests, inter-subjective

assessments, or any other technique that is considered reliable.
Requirement #6. The procedures for the assessment of competencies considered
valid must be stated.

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4 Sicilia and Naeve

With the above requirements, the representation is equipped with the fundamental aspects.
But more is required for an effective selection and targeting of learning activities to cover
competency gaps. The irst of these additional aspects is that of how to combine pedagogies
with the competency-based selection of activities or learning resources. Different kinds of
pedagogical accounts could be considered (Sicilia & Lytras, 2005), and these could better
it different settings. Another important element is how to combine the agendas and time
constraints of employees with the targeting of learning activities. It is possible that the
employees that are better prospects for the immediate acquisition of some competencies
have, in fact, a workload that impedes it. These aspects illustrate the fact that algorithms that
target learning activities to ill competency gaps in organizations are complex and require
the consideration of diverse dimensions.
The following section briely sketches the main elements of an information system approach
to competency-based learning. Later, some speciicities of such an approach for the current
state of technology will be mentioned, with the aim of serving as a roadmap for research
and practitioner work in the ield.

Main Components of an IT-Based Approach to
Competency Management
The above discussion provides a blueprint for competency management information systems.
Since competency deinitions are potentially complex, and the amount of information on

Figure 1. Main generic components for competency-based approaches
Organizational planning database
Organizational needs
registry

Competency gap
analysis

competency gap

Learning activity
targeter

Competency
assessment

Organizational
competency
database

Organizational
planning
database

Learning objects/
learning activity
repository

Organizational

learning schedule

Competency defintion schema
Human resources information database

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Competencies and Organizational Learning 5

employees, teams, and business needs is large, an information technology-intensive solution becomes a critical issue. Figure 1 depicts the main functional, generic components of
a competency-based approach to organizational learning.
Figure 1 includes functional components that store information, represented as rounded
rectangles, and also a number of processes, namely “competency gap analysis,” “competency assessment,” and “learning activity targeter.” The following is a concise description
of the elements in the igure:
•

Thecompetency deinition schema is the realization of requirements #1 and #2 above,
and the organizational competency database is the registry of all the competencies that
are believed to be possessed by the employees. This last component is basically a part
of a human resources database in which the actual competencies of each employee
are described in detail.

•

The competency database is updated by the activity ofcompetency assessment, which
should at least be triggered after each scheduled learning event. According to requirements #3 and #6, this assessment requires pre-established, documented procedures to
provide a degree of homogeneity that allows the aggregation of competencies.

•

The organizational planning database contains the information of the calendar and
activities of the whole organization, and the project plans with the information of the
employees assigned to each of them.

•

Theorganizational learning schedule (which could be considered a part of the planning database) contains the information of the learning activities scheduled, be they
individual or team-based.

•

It is supposed that some kind oflearning resources and/or learning activity repository
exists, storing contents, learning plans, and other resources for reuse in future activities. In some cases, these resources might be outsourced or required on demand.

•

Theorganizational needs registry aims to store the needs or desired capabilities of
the organization. These may be derived from the needs in the projects or customer
demands, or could be strategic, medium, or long-term directions. To comply with
requirement #5, these needs must be expressed in terms of desired competencies.

The process of competency gap analysis takes as inputs the organizational needs and the
organizational competency database to assess the mismatch between the two. For this to be
effectively accomplished, clear algorithms and computation techniques (requirement #4)
must have been agreed upon. Without that previous agreement, measurement of organizational progress in terms of competencies will be seriously lawed.
The competency gap then becomes the key measurement element that is used for action in
the organization. Following it, the decision process of targeting learning activities to the
“right” employees at the “right” time requires a consideration of the competency gap, the

available competencies, and the agendas of the people. The result of such a “targeting”
process is that some learning activities with some concrete objectives will be scheduled and
initiated through the e-learning platform available company wide.

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6 Sicilia and Naeve

The succinct description above serves as an abstract framework of the key organizational
assets that are required for a competency approach to learning. It can be used as a reference
framework for the comparison of concrete studies, tools, or techniques, and, of course, it is
simply an abstraction of the complexities of the competency paradigm that are relected in
the requirements stated in the previous section. In what follows, some e-learning technologies providing important services for that framework are referenced.

Bridging Competencies and Modern E-Learning
Modern e-learning technology in the last years has been inluenced by the paradigm of
learning objects. The concept of learning object is at the centre of the new paradigm for
instructional design of Web-based learning that emphasizes reuse as a quality characteristic
of learning contents and activities. For example, Polsani (2003) includes reuse in his deinition of learning object as “an independent and self-standing unit of learning content that is
predisposed to reuse in multiple instructional contexts,” and Wiley (2001) also mentions
the term in his learning object deinition “any digital resource that can be reused to support
learning.” A number of speciications and standards that describe or make use of the learning object concept have evolved in the last years. The basic metadata elements associated
with learning objects have been described in the IEEE learning object metadata (LOM)
standard (IEEE, 2002), which organizes its conceptual metadata schema in nine categories:
general, lifecycle, meta-metadata, technical, educational, rights, relation, annotation and
classiication. Learning objects are considered as reusable elements that can be used as part
of learning designs.
In the experience and view of the authors, there are two important directions in learning

technologies that are especially relevant for the competency approach described above.
These are activity-orientation and the use of Semantic Web technologies. These are sketched
in what follows.

Activity Orientation in E-Learning
The IMS learning design (IMS LD)1 provides a powerful language for the expression of
learning designs targeted at the realization of activities. An activity is considered as a piece
of interaction among a number of speciied roles played by persons who produce a tangible
outcome by using a concrete environment made up of learning objects and services (facilities
available at runtime). Activities can be further decomposed in sub-activities, and they are
aggregated into methods that specify the conditions for application of the learning design,
along with the planned objectives that will eventually match the outcomes of the activities.
Methods can be structured around concurrent plays, and these in turn can be structured in
sequential acts, the latter allowing the speciication of execution conditions. This schematic
description of LD gives an idea of the lexibility the speciication provides in describing
activity-based learning programs.

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Competencies and Organizational Learning 7

These activities can be framed in the context of process-orientation. The processes in an
organization are related to different goal, obstacles, actions, and prerequisites (GOAP). We
will now describe the main elements of the GOAP approach to process modeling (Eriksson
& Penker, 2000). To start with, relationships between goals as dependencies and associations are introduced. The dependency should be interpreted as stating that the fulilment of
the smaller (partial) goal contributes toward the fulilment of the larger (dependent) goal.
A goal that has been completely broken down into partial goals indicates that the goal will
automatically be fulilled if all of the partial goals are met.

In connection with describing the goals we also describe the obstacles that stand in their
way. An obstacle is a problem that hinders the achievement of a goal. By analyzing the
problem, new goals or partial goals are discovered that attempt to eliminate the problem.
An obstacle is therefore always linked to a goal. Similar to a goal, an obstacle can also be
broken down into partial obstacles. Obstacles are eliminated (overcome) by actions. An action plan can be formulated from the goal/obstacle model, where temporary obstacles are
resolved as soon as possible, and the goals linked to the continuous obstacles are allocated
to processes in the business.
Finally, for each process, prerequisites take the form of input resources or supporting
resources. The outcomes of the process module are relevant to different stakeholders in
the organization, and the connection of the outcomes of concrete activities with the input
and support of others provides a way to explain the transition from the individual to the
organizational behaviour.
Competencies in the GOAP framework can be used as a speciic kind of goal with some
added descriptions. In this view, relationships between competencies and their constituents
can be considered prerequisites; for example, “it is required to have competency X prior
to be able to have competency Y,” or “competency Z requires some attitude A.” Further,
learning activities as expressed in IMS LD can be considered speciic actions. Thus, process
models as GOAP combined with more learning-speciic languages as IMS LD provide a
seamless platform for competency approaches, with the added beneit of having available
free technology implementing the worklow and automation aspects of IMS LD units.

Semantic Web Technologies and Competencies
The Semantic Web vision described by Berners-Lee, Hendler, and Lassila (2001) represents
an approach to enhancing the current World Wide Web with machine-understandable Semantics. The essential idea is that Web resources as identiied by URIs can be described by
metadata with the purpose of enabling automated processing. The precision of logics-based
descriptions (Baader, Calvanese, Mcguinness, Nardi, & Patel-Schneider, 2003) when used
for creating metadata would allow for the creation of tools that do not solely rely on natural
language processing as current search tools, thus ideally removing the problems associated
with ambiguity and implicitness in natural language.
There are two fundamental kinds of beneits of using ontology description languages to

express learning object metadata (Sicilia & García, 2005). On the one hand, those languages
provide richer knowledge representation formalisms for metadata descriptions than using
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8 Sicilia and Naeve

work (RDF). Here the beneits are the result of using description logics, instead of simply
using structured data in XML format or using RDF, which is a less-expressive language than
DAML+OIL or ontology Web language (OWL). On the other hand, the use of ontologies may
eventually produce synergies with the technological advances that are taking place under the
overall label of “Semantic Web.” The most prominent of such synergies may come from the
availability of shared, consensual ontologies on many domains along with tools to develop
systems that exploit them for diverse “intelligent” behaviors. Further, the activity-oriented
approach can be used in conjunction with ontologies as described by Sicilia (2006).
Further, competencies can be speciied also through ontologies as described in (Sicilia,
2005). Thus, ontologies of competency descriptions and learning object ontologies can be
used together as a framework for the competency-based approach.

Conclusion
Competencies as a representation and measurement paradigm can be used as a structuring
principle for the selection and targeting of learning activities. However, such an approach
requires the consideration of a number of non-trivial requirements, including how competencies are described and assessed, and how they are aggregated and combined.
The competency approach for driving organizational learning can be expressed in a number of
functional elements and processes that provide a framework for the analysis and comparison
of the variety of techniques, representation schemas, and algorithms that can be devised.
Such framework has been sketched in the paper.
Finally, the deployment of IT-intensive competency systems requires advanced support for
the representation of competencies and learning activities. IMS LD and ontology languages

as those used in the Semantic Web have been described as two key enabling elements in
that direction.

References
Baader, F., Calvanese, D., Mcguinness, D., Nardi, D., & Patel-Schneider, P. (Eds.). (2003).
The description logic handbook: Theory, implementation and applications. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Berners-Lee, T., Hendler, J., & Lassila, O. (2001). The Semantic Web. Scientiic American,
284(5), 34-43.
Eriksson, H. E., & Penker, M. (2000). Business modeling with UML: Business patterns at
work. Wiley Computer Publishing.
IEEE Learning Technology Standards Committee (2002). Learning object metadata (LOM).
Final draft standard, IEEE 1484.12.1-2002.

Copyright © 2007, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of
Idea Group Inc. is prohibited.


Competencies and Organizational Learning 9

Polsani, P. R. (2003). Use and abuse of reusable learning objects. Journal of Digital Information, 3(4).
Rothwell, W., & Kazanas, H. (1992). Mastering the instructional design process. San
Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Sicilia, M. A. (2005). Ontology-based competency management: Infrastructures for the
Knowledge Intensive Learning Organization. In M.D. Lytras & A. Naeve (Eds.), Intelligent learning infrastructure for knowledge intensive organizations: A Semantic Web
perspective (pp. 302-324). Hershey, PA: Information Science Publishing.
Sicilia, M. A. (2006). Semantic learning designs: recording assumptions and guidelines
[Special issue]. British Journal of Educational Technology, 37(3), 331-350.
Sicilia, M. A., & García, E. (2005). On the convergence of formal ontologies and standardized e-learning. Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 3(2), 12-28.
Sicilia, M. A., García, E., & Alcalde, R. (2005). Fuzzy specializations and aggregation

operator design in competence-based human resource selection. In F. Hoffman (Ed.),
Advances in soft computing (pp. 219-230). Springer.
Sicilia, M. A., & Lytras, M. (2005). On the representation of change according to different
ontologies of learning. International Journal of Learning and Change, 1(1), 66-79.
Sure, Y., Maedche, A., & Staab, S. (2000). Leveraging corporate skill knowledg—From
ProPer to OntoProPer. In D. Mahling & U. Reimer (Eds.), In Proceedings of the Third
International Conference on Practical Aspects of Knowledge Management (PAKM
2000) (pp. 30-31).
Wiley, D. A. (2001). The instructional use of learning objects. Association for Educational
Communications and Technology, Bloomington.

Endnote
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10 Liyanage

Chapter II

Competency Management
Systems and Technologies
Shantha Liyanage, University of Auckland, New Zealand

Abstract
Learning processes are essential in building individual and organizational competencies and
transfer of learning and knowledge among individual and organizational learning space.

Several types of learning technologies are now available for systematic building of individual and organizational competencies through formal and non-formal learning processes.
This chapter examines the need for competency-based management systems that provide
organizations with opportunities to implement such learning processes through Web-based
e-learning technologies that are conducive for creating and building systematic knowledge
transfers across individuals and groups. It is argued that the transfer of knowledge, learning,
and learning interactions through such technologies is a seamless process that reinforces
the continual renewal of knowledge and learning through appropriate management systems.
Such systems are created by deliberate interventions for individual and organizational
learning and should be context- and content-speciic.
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