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Second, it is clear from the definition of knowledge or core competencies that in
order to both identify core competencies and develop a knowledge transfer program
within a short time frame, one must enlist the support and trust of individuals who both
have and need core competency skills, abilities, and knowledge. Thus while the content
including understanding is what is needed to keep the organization functioning, the
process used to identify what core competencies are and who has/needs them may be
equally important. Time was short for this project and yet high-quality information was
critical to the success of the respective organizations. We absolutely had to know what
skills, abilities, and knowledge were critical to the organizations. In addition, the trick was
to enlist the help of those who had knowledge to help train and get those who needed
knowledge up to speed as quickly as possible. All of this took place at a time when
everyone felt overworked and there was a great deal of uncertainty in the environment
of both organizations.
CASE DESCRIPTION
Having said that support (implying participation) and trust of employees are
important, the first mandate from management in the needs assessment part of the study
was to use a “fast and good enough” approach. In other words, the researcher needed
to identify the core competency needs related to knowledge transfer, keeping in mind the
organizational goals of expediency, needing a high level of detail, and using a method
that requires the least amount of individual employee time. After looking into several
methods that included one-on-one interviewing by the researcher, it was determined that
electronic focus group meetings were the most expedient with the highest level of needed
detail. While individual groups by job group within the company were desired, time
permitted only a job family approach. Because the skills needed by the two new
organizations were believed to be the same since the business processes and systems
were being cloned, there was no need to do separate groups for each company as long
as ranking the items could be done within each company.
Initially, the focus groups were designed to be the end-all for needs assessment.
The organizational structure of the target audience consisted of functional areas such
as vendor payables, accounts receivable, assets, tax, and general ledger. Based on a
previous study of needed skills, abilities, and knowledge of employees, job families were
identified. For the target group of the current study, there were four job families within
which all jobs were grouped: (1) systems developers, (2) process engineers, (3) SAP
implementers, and (4) production systems (and applications) support personnel. (The
prior study was done in 1998 for the purpose of identifying skills, abilities, and knowledge
needed to advance in one’s job. After reviewing the items identified in the 1998 study
it was determined that the purpose was sufficiently different and that the skills from one
study could not be used for identifying candidates for knowledge transfer. A comparison
of the data appearing in Table 2 in the Results section confirms the accuracy of this
assumption.)
GroupSystems (an electronic meeting software system) was used to capture
detailed lists of core competencies across functional areas within job families. In other
words, four sessions were conducted by job family. Managers were asked to send