such recognition of competence, irrespective of the route of acquisition, for those
who have had fewer opportunities for formal education and training (Rainbird
2000 a); and the potential of a competence-based approach for integrating
education and training, whilst aligning both with the needs of the labor market
(Winterton 2005 ).
Despite the central role of competence, there is such confusion surrounding the
concept that it is impossible to identify or impute a coherent theory or to arrive at a
deWnition capable of accommodating and reconciling all the diVerent ways that the
term is used. DiVerent cultural contexts profoundly inXuence the understanding of
competence and four dominant approaches can be distinguished that developed
more or less independently in the USA, the UK, France, and Germany (Delamare
Le Deist and Winterton 2005 ). These four approaches have variously inXuenced
policy and practice worldwide.
The competence movement began in the USA where White ( 1959 ) is credited
with having introduced the term to describe those personality characteristics
associated with superior performance and high motivation. White deWned com-
petence as an ‘eVective interaction (of the individual) with the environment’ and
argued that there is a ‘competence motivation’ in addition to competence as
‘achieved capacity.’ McClelland ( 1976 ) followed this approach and developed
tests to predict competence as opposed to intelligence, subsequently describing
this as ‘competency’ and marketing the approach through the consultingWrm that
became Hay McBer. Because of skepticism regarding the predictive value of
cognitive ability tests, the competency approach started from the opposite end,
observing eVective job performers to determine how these individuals diVer from
less successful performers. Competency thus captures skills and dispositions
beyond cognitive ability, such as self-awareness, self-regulation, and social skills;
while some of these may also be found in personality taxonomies (Barrick and
Mount 1991 ), competencies are fundamentally behavioral and susceptible to learn-
ing (McClelland 1998 ). This tradition has remained particularly inXuential in the
USA, with competency deWned in terms of ‘underlying characteristics of people’
that are ‘causally related to eVective or superior performance in a job,’ ‘generalizing
across situations, and enduring for a reasonably long period of time’ (Boyatzis
1982 ; Hay Group et al. 1996 ; Klemp and Spencer 1982 ; Spencer and Spencer 1993 ). It
is worth noting that others have defended the predictive power of intelligence tests
(Hunter and Hunter 1984 ; Barrett and Depinet 1991 ).
Since the end of the 1990 s, competence-based HRM has become widespread in
the USA, not only in relation to HRD, but also in selection, retention, remuner-
ation, and leadership (Athey and Orth 1999 ; Dubois and Rothwell 2004 ; Foxan 1998 ;
Rodriguez et al. 2002 ). In this renaissance, competency has a much broader
conception than hitherto, including knowledge and skills alongside the behavioral
or psycho-social characteristics in the McClelland tradition. Even within the predo-
minantly behavioral approach, many conceptions of competency now include
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