Reframing Competency In Management Development

Abstract

The competency framework has attracted interest in the business world at a time when organisations are faced with the pressing need to develop the right calibre of people and particularly their managers. Organisations have always been striving to develop the ‘effective’ manager. Nowadays the demand to achieve this goal rests on the rate of change which necessitates continuous transformation. the competency framework has therefore been enthusiastically applied as a panacea, sometimes with little thought of its potentially wider implications. the article starts with a critical appraisal of the competency framework as a basis of management development activities and presents some emerging results from current research to illustrate the arguments. Based on the above analysis, the critical issues which need consideration are then highlighted. © 1996 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.