Transversal Competency Concept As a Structuring Element of the Organization

Since the beginning of their existence, human beings look to join their fellowmen who share the same vision on a particular set of goals that they aim to reach together forming, that way, Organizations. For these goals to be met with the greatest efficiency possible, Organizations continually develop mechanisms and tools to enable them to select the most capable individuals. Competencies and competency management are widely accepted in the scientific community as being fundamental tools for human resource management, due to the fact that they can guarantee the allocation of the ablest elements for each of the existing organizational positions. Despite the advantages associated with those tools, the Portuguese Air Force still does not use them in a transversal manner. In fact, there is not even an unequivocal and standardized competency concept defined for the Organization. Using the principles of Organizational Engineering along with the existing competency knowledge, this work seeks to fill that gap by developing a transversal competency concept for the Air Force that folds out in a transversal competency definition proposal, a transversal competency wheel and a competency profile. Thus, this research looks to contribute to the definitive introduction of the competency concept in the Organization. (C) 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.