Psychosomatic analysis of the concept of manager’s competence

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Psychosomatic analysis of the concept of manager's competence

Liudmyla Malimon

Alla Pashkina

Lesya Ukrainka Eastern European National University, Ukraine

Abstract

The article deals with the psychosemantic reconstruction of the concept of manager's competence. The study is based on free word association test (WAT) held with the managers of public administration (n=38) from Volyn Oblast (Ukraine) and master candidates of the public administration program (n=38) who studied at Eastern European National University in Lutsk (Ukraine). Nuclear zones, single frequency responses, and associative field structure of the investigated concept in the two samples were analyzed. The most frequent nuclear associations confirmed the lexicographic meaning of the concept "competence" and revealed that the leader's expertise is closely related to their professional knowledge and skills. Next, factor analysis of data obtained from the Semantic Differential (SD) test established common and distinctive features of the semantic field structure of the concept of manager's competence. The research results showed that the managers from the sample emphasized the importance of experience and effectiveness, the development of their professionally relevant job skills and ability to influence their subordinates. By contrast, master candidates, along with experience and job skills, indicated a set of characteristics that demonstrate the need for a general intellectual level of the managers, their moral and ethical personality traits, and their ability to maintain effective interpersonal interaction. administration psychosemantic managers

Keywords: psychosemantic analysis, manager's competence, concept, public administration, free word association test, semantic differential.

Малімон Людмила, Пашкіна Алла. Психосемантичний аналіз концепту "управлінська компетентність".

Анотація. Статтю присвячено реконструкції концепту "управлінська компетентність". Дослідження здійснено на основі методу вільного асоціативного експерименту, проведеного з 38 менеджерами державної служби Волинської області (Україна), а також 38 здобувачами ступеня магістра освітньо-професійної програми "державна служба". Проаналізовано ядерні зони, реакції з одиничною частотністю та структуру асоціативних полів досліджуваного концепту у двох вибірках. Виокремлено найчастотніші ядерні асоціації, які підтвердили лексикографічне значення слова "компетентний" і пов'язують компетентність керівника з його професійними знаннями й уміннями. Зіставлено результати факторного аналізу даних семантичного диференціалу. Підсумком є з'ясування спільних і відмінних ознак у структуруванні семантичних полів концепту "управлінська компетентність": керівники державної служби підкреслюють важливість досвіду й результативності діяльності керівника, розвитку його професійно важливих управлінських якостей і здатності впливати на інших. Натомість, студенти- магістри, поряд із досвідом та результативністю праці, виокремлюють групи характеристик, що засвідчують потребу загального інтелектуального рівня керівника, розвитку його морально-етичних особистісних рис та вміння налагоджувати ефективну міжособистісну взаємодію.

Ключові слова: психосемантичний аналіз, управлінська компетентність, концепт, державна служба, вільний асоціативний експеримент, семантичний диференціал.

Introduction

The reform of public administration institute in our country presupposes implementation of the EU standards, in particular, the competence-based approach, in the assessment of performance, system of education and advanced professional training of civil servants. Due to this in recent years considerable research has been devoted to the issues of raising the performance of civil service personnel management, the necessity of existing civil servants professional competence profiles development and improvement, their compatibility with the realia of professional activity; definition of clusters of competences necessary to fulfill professional duties of a certain position, including the ones essential for senior government officials of senior and middle management (Zhminka, 2013; Kukulia, 2012; Lyndiuk, 2015).

At the same time it is worth mentioning that recent years have seen considerable changes in public inquiry about the assessment of state institutions not only from the point of view of their performance in providing administrative service and meeting the demands of society to the maximum extent, but also referring to the attitude to civil servants as to individuals who present worldview and moral value orientations in the development of society and the country in general. That is why the competence-based approach focuses on formation and development of not only professional, but also the so-called key (social and personal) competences of a civil servant (Bolotina, 2017).

Well-formedness of the latter ones depends greatly on civil servants' reportable and unconscious attitudes to perceiving their own competence and understanding the necessity to develop those features and characteristics, which constitute its basis. Definition of such attitudes as well as definition of the essence and details of the concept of "management competence" require the reconstruction of the manager personal meaning system, through which they perceive themselves as competent or incompetent. It has been possible only due to application of the set of methods used in psycho-semantics, a modern branch of investigation which studies the genesis, structure and functioning of the personal meaning system (Drobot, 2014).

Methods

The purpose of our research is the psycho-semantic reconstruction of the concept of "manager's competence" semantic field, as well as contrasting and comparing its semantic scope in the Government Agencies' Executives (managers) and Master's students doing a degree in Public Administration.

The survey sample comprises managers of state institutions in Volyn Oblast (n=38, 47 % males and 53 % females, with 3-16 years of seniority in top management) and Eastern European National University master's student s doing a degree in Public Administration (n=38, 34 % males, 66 % females, with no work experience in the filed). The respondents were informed about the anonymous character of the survey and the possibility to resign on any stage.

The word association test (WAT) is an important tool of semantic research (Lat. associato - combination, experimentum - experience), which is widely used to study the peculiarities of comprehension and recognition of the concepts used by the speakers and it provides "live" data to build associative fields of certain concepts, to reconstruct fragments of linguistic and conceptual worldview. We have used the modified version of the "Sentence Completion" method which refers to projective diagnostics and is a variation of the Word Associations technique. It is considered that the associations received present both reportable and unconscious attitudes of a person to the perception of certain concepts or phenomena (Petrenko, 2005). The associative method represents cognitive structures behind linguistic meanings, individual peculiarities of the examined and their personal senses (Drobot, 2014; Lozova, 2007).

The method of semantic differential, which is treated as a combination of the method of controlled associations and scaling procedures, has become an experimental method of personal meaning system reconstruction and individual and group semantic spaces of the concept of "management competence" construction (Drobot, 2014; Petrenko, 2005; Lozova, 2007).

The professional concept offered to the examined in the free WAT was the concept of "manager's competence", namely, it was required to complete the sentence "A competent manager is a ... manager" with a set of associations (the number of associations was unlimited) within a specific time period. The WAT was carried out in written form and it complicated spontaneous response but contributed to the respondents' professional experience actualization. As a result, 350 words- associations have been received, which outlined the semantic field of responses on the word-stimulus. Processing of the results has been carried out using the method of ranking the words given by the examined according to the frequency of the representation: association responses given more than three times have been considered to be an association norm; primary (nuclear) and secondary (peripheral) associations have been analysed.

The next stage of the research is construction of the semantic differential method on the basis of the most frequent associations received in the word association test.

Results and Discussion

The lexicographic meaning of the word "competent" (Lat. competens (competentis) - appropriate, able) is given as "1) the one who has enough knowledge in any branch; the one who is knowledgeable about something; smart (a competent person) // based on knowledge; qualified (competent help, competent opinion); 2) the one who has certain powers; fully legitimate, sovereign (competent meeting)" (DUL, 1973, p. 250). The word "competent" has the following synonyms: (expert) knowledgeable, smart; (craftsman) qualified; (government official) fully legitimate, plenipotent, sovereign (Karavansky, 2000, p. 170). The meanings of the word "competent" in English: "competent (adj.): having necessary ability, knowledge, or skills to do something successfully; (of a person) efficient and capable; acceptable and satisfactory, though not outstanding; (of a court or other body) accepted as having the legal authority to deal with a particular matter" (Stevenson, 2010, p. 355). So, in the lexicography the word "competent" is primarily connected to knowledge, skills and abilities of people, which make them knowledgeable, smart, qualified, capable in a certain field. We have compared the dictionary definition which mainly confirms the constant meaning of the word, with the associative ones, which have been received as the result of the free WAT and represent meanings, connected with this word in the consciousness of the respondents.

As in our research the term "competent" characterizes a competent manager and aims at defining personal-semantic correlates of the concept of "management competence", we have analysed associative fields of this concept received in two sample groups: managers of state institutions and Master's students. The managers' of state institutions associative field contains 166 responses, including P5 nuclear associations, 16 responses with unitary frequency. In the master's students' associative field we have defined much more responses (184), but fewer nuclear associations (P1) and, comparing to managers, more peripheral responses (PP), which represent individual attitude of the respondents. The analysis of the received associations has made it possible to combine them in groups and single out generalized blocks of the competent manager characteristics. We have compared the associative fields nuclear zones and structures in the two samples:

Table 1

Comparison of the associative fields nuclei of the "manager's competence" stimulus in the two samples