1. Forecasting core competencies
in an R&D environment
carried out in 1998
Management Department,
University of Brasilia
Submitted To :
Dr.Rabeh Morrar
Presented By :
Abdulla Alhroub

2. Outline
•Introduction
•The org
• The concept of core competency in R&D organizations
•Competency-based management process.
•Strengths
•essential competencies
•Delphi technique
•Methodology
•Delphi
•Selected results and discussion
•Barriers
•Conclusions

3. INTRODUCTION
• This study, carried out in 1998 , University of Brasilia
•aimed to develop a method of forecasting core competencies in an
agricultural research organization
• using the Delphi Technique
• 2 questionnaire

4. INTRODUCTION
• knowledge and information have become strategic production
resources for organizations .
• The generation of innovations must be viewed as the result of a
technological innovation process.
• This process is composed of a group of activities that begins with
the forecasting of market demands, goes through planning,
organizing, research, developing and testing of prototypes, and ends
when the production sector incorporates the innovations.

5. Introduction
•In order to avoid the dispersion of effort and the waste of
resources, R&D organizations need to clearly define what
to research.
•This definition must be made after studying priorities that
can assist the decision- making process of these
organizations
•This paper describes the methodology of a research
project carried out in 1998 at the Brazilian Corporation for
Agricultural Research ± Embrapa, to diagnose its human
core competencies

6. The organization
•Embrapa was founded in 1973
• it is the main Brazilian government organization in the
agricultural research field.
•It has 39 research centers located all over the country,
• livestock, crops, soil, genetic resources, environment,
aiming to develop knowledge and technological options to
solve Brazilian agricultural problems.
•8,500 employees, 2,000 researchers.

7. The concept of core competency
in R&D organizations
•There is a consensus in the organizational literature that the
competitive advantage of a firm is directly related to its
management capability and the amount of knowledge used
in its productive process .
•Hamel and Prahalad (1995), the organization's ability to
compete is a result of its capacity to identify and develop its
core competencies

8. The concept ….
•Prahalad and Hamel (1990) conceived core competency as a
set of skills, knowledge, technology, and physical,
managerial and value systems that generate the competitive
advantage of the organization.
•Ferlie, et al. (1996) suggest that the strategy of a competitive
organization of high performance must include internal
development of its core competencies and not only a
replacement of necessities to respond to market signals

9. Competency-based management process.

10. strength of a R&D organization's core
competencies
•identified by their capability to generate technological
innovations that have a systemic character.
• The innovative character of competency consists of a set of
methodologies, knowledge and methods of work used by the
organization to generate products or services that meet the
needs of its users
•This creates some competitive advantage over the
organization's competitors that could result in products or
services of better quality or cheaper prices

11. In this sense, the productive process in the research
environment totally depends on intellectual capital or on the
existing knowledge of the organization.
• These issues need to be constantly updated and perfected
by continuous training and education programs.

12. Human core competency is highly important within R&D
organizations and it can be defined as a group of :
•skills, knowledge, cognitive strategy,
• met cognitions, beliefs, values and attitudes
•belonging to people that command and perform the
processes of R&D, usually researchers.
• They are able to determine which knowledge and
technology are generated by these organizations

13. other essential competencies
This paper focuses on this group, but at the same time
realizes that there might be other essential competencies in
the organizations
• like physical systems
•existing technology
•specific structure
•ways to influence
•own benefit
•the external environment.

14. Delphi technique
The technique aims to identify future events by way of a
consensus of opinions of a group of experts. The usual
steps are as follows
• a)definition of the main concepts and references necessary
to carry out the research
•b) identification and selection of the individuals who will
constitute the panel of judges to be consulted;
• c) designing the questionnaire containing the main
concepts, reference terms and orientation for the
participation of the judges;.

15. Delphi technique con,,
• d) application of the questionnaires, data treatment and analysis of the
answers
•e) verification of the need to introduce new questions and the repetition
of stages b, c, and d, if necessary;
• f) analysis to obtain convergent answers;
• g) general conclusions

16. Methodology
•initial work plan …( training – recruiting – defining )
•5-year period of 1999± 2003
•validity period of the results was reduced from 5 to 3 years
•it was based on the judgment of directors and managers of the research
and management units of the firm
•it favors the vertical dimension, ignoring the horizontal

17. Delphi
•First, based on a survey of internal documents and interviews, nine
organizational core competencies and their specific components (human
competencies) were defined, and expert judges identified. These judges
responded to a questionnaire, in which the importance of the future
human competencies was assessed and the organization's existing human
capacity was evaluated.
•Another questionnaire was designed and sent out to an expanded panel
of judges to confirm or to revise the priority mean scores obtained or to
add scores in the case of competencies that entered later. Factor analysis
and reliability scores have demonstrated internal and inter-competency
consistencies

18. First questionnaire
•First, an initial list of 17 organizational core competencies
•was presented personally to a group of 17 top experts of the firm
•The questionnaire was sent out to 151 experts, 115 internal and 36
external.
•The group of internal experts consisted of researchers from Embrapa.
•They were heads of projects or research groups, directors of research
centres, and directors of administrative units at Embrapa.
•The group of external experts was made up of Brazilian University
lecturers

19. First questionnaire con,,
Each expert was asked to make the following contributions
a) to review the operational definitions of the organizational competency
associated to his or her expertise
b) to verify the list of human competencies of that competency,
recommending new ones, or suggesting the elimination of those judged
inadequate
c) to evaluate each human competency in terms of its future importance
and current installed capacity at Embrapa, utilizing a Likert scale of six
points

20. First questionnaire con,,
Of the 151 questionnaires distributed,
77 were returned (65 internal, 12 external).
That represented 51% of the total, which is satisfactory for this kind of
study

21. Second questionnaire
•sent out to a larger group of 202 experts, consisting of 142 internal and
60 external
•The same nine existing organizational core competencies appeared on
the second questionnaire
•UN (undecided), A (agree with the average)
•137 questionnaires (94 internal, 43 external), 68% of the total sent.
•very good return

22. Selected results and discussion
•that the results could be safely used for the Embrapa's nation-wide
decision-making processes concerning its human resources, in the period
from 1999 to 2001
•Organizational core competency
1. Technological innovation management
2. Geoprocessing
3. Agribusiness and technological economics
4. Environmental resources economics
5. Animal pathology
6. Family-based agriculture
7. Environmental resources
8. Molecular and cellular biology
9. Plant pathology

23. Barriers
•Gathering answers from the experts who were consulted in each phase
of the investigation was not an easy task
•extremely busy and always on the move. It was difficult to track them
down and to invite them to participate in the study.
•Another problem, also related to the question of sample representation,
refers to the participation of external experts, their answers did not differ
significantly from their internal counter- parts. However, as a percentage
the return of their questionnaires was much less than that of the internal
experts. Concerning the Delphi technique, this method seemed to be
expensive depending on the size of the sample.

24. Conclusions
•The results have been used as subsidies for several decisions concerning
management of human resources
•especially those connected with selection and graduate training of
researchers
•lead the processes of hiring, training, and placement of researchers