Developing competencies in a Brazilian research centre The organisation concerned is a unit of a…

Developing competencies in a Brazilian research centre

The organisation concerned is a unit of a federal public research body in Brazil. Over 8,000 employees are based at 37 research centres. The approach to appraisal was to develop performance by focusing on the inputs to research, and in particular the competencies of the staff. There are links between the organisation’s competence-based approach and developmental appraisal. The three main aspects of the appraisal are people’s development, effort and behaviour (Ubeda and Santos, 2007). The purpose of the appraisal is to help develop staff abilities and to stimulate the direction of their application to further organisational goals.

The organisational competencies for the unit were defined as research skills in agriculture and breeding to support agribusiness with sustainability and supplying research that would encourage the population’s health and improve nutrition. These organisational competencies were translated into individual competencies, including abilities to run and monitor research projects, abilities to produce and transfer technology to practical uses, and the ability to work with others to produce research outcomes and publications. Individual appraisals focused on the appraisee’s competencies and defined routes for development. The ethos of appraisal was to stimulate creativity. The research centre operated on the basis of temporary teams put together to work on particular research projects, and a key mode of development was to agree with researchers which teams and projects they should be allocated to next, so that they were being exposed to new knowledge. In addition, there was considerable investment in courses for researchers and on enabling them to visit and work with researchers at other leading-edge research institutions.

This developmental process highlighted the need for some modification of the strategic positioning of the centre, and as researchers brought in new knowledge and spread it to others through team activities, the focus and performance of the centre became more clearly defined. Hence, organisational development was spun off the back of personal development, and this, in turn, had been driven by an open attitude towards creativity and new competencies. Source: based on Ubeda and Santos (2007).

Question

1 Do you think that the approach adopted in this case would be as successful in other settings where there is less integration, e.g. in a networked organisation (see Chapter 3)?