It was Plato who first defined 'skill' as the useful application of
knowledge mediated by experience, and competence as the capacity to
achieve an objective through the deployment of skills. So measuring
knowledge is not what one really wants to do in a workplace - it is the
holistic measurement of competence and performance (from which knowledge
may be inferred) that is important.
But even then the whole thing is slippery. Competence is something which
is defined contextually - and one important component is to ensure that
the definition is sound - and that is a management issue, not an
individual one.
Here in New Zealand there is currently a very traumatic example of the
problems associated with this. A viewing platform at a scenic site, built
by a NZ environmental management agency, collapsed recently, killing 14
people. In the subsequent public enquiry a frightening number of
individual errors and management failures have been demonstrated to have
contrbuted to the disastrous inadequate and unmonitored construction of
the platform. Much public debate has focused on tha apparent incompetence
of all involved.
But a systems analysis provides a different picture. The agency was trying
to cope with vastly increased demand for public recreational access to
reserve lands with shrinking resources. On the evidence at the enquiry it
is arguable that a culture developed in which 'competence' was defined as
doing a lot of things with minimal resources. The more short cuts you
could take the more 'competent' you were seen as being.
If this is true then the competency measurement of all those involved in
the process of designing and building the platform which collapsed was
very high. It was the way that management defined competence that was at
fault. It was such an argument which led to the prosecution of the
management of Townsend Ferries following the capsize of the 'Herald of
Free Enterprise'.
There are, of course, countless less dramatic manifestations of this
phenomenon. It is why I believe that in an organisational learning
paradigm the measurement focus should be on collective performance in a
context of whole systems analysis. Attempting to measure knowledge alone,
and attempting to find what each individual's quantum of knoweldge is, is
not only useless, but also antipathetic to the organisational learning
paradigm. Even at the collective level it is the meta-capacity to MANAGE
knowledge, and thereby create added value from it, that is far more
important than the knowledge itself
--
Phillip Capper
Centre for Research on Work, Education and Business
PO Box 2855
Wellington
New Zealand
Ph: 64+ 4 4998140
Fx: 64+ 4 4733087
EMail: pcapper@actrix.gen.nz