Information and Knowledge Management using ArcGIS ModelBuilder

Mohammad Abooyee Ardakan et al.
Many authors have explored the concept and seemingly, three main positions have been taken
toward a definition of the term. Hoffman (1999) summarizes these positions as:
Observable performance (Boam and Sparrow 1992; Bowden and Masters 1993);
The standard or quality of the outcome of the person's performance (Rutherford 1995; Hager et
al. 1994); or
The underlying attributes of a person (Boyatzis 1982; Sternberg and Kolligian 1990).
As it can be seen in the above classifications, competency as quality of the person’s performance is
an accepted category among scholars. In this study, we adopt this definition to develop a model to
assess the main IT competencies managers.
3. Conceptual framework
Figure 1 shows the model that is to be tested in this paper. The model is taken from a previous work
to identify IT competence of business managers (Bassellier et al. 2003). In that study, the researchers
have divided IT competency of managers into two dimensions: Knowledge and Experience (Figure 2).
Figure 1: Model to be tested
In our proposed model, we have determined four areas for IT competency of managers:
Technology;
Engineering and management;
Intellectual; and
Learning
Comparing to Bassellier’s model, we have transformed competencies from two main areas into four.
There are two points in this transformation. Firstly, we think that this categorization better identifies the
different IT competency areas of managers. In fact we have tried to rearrange all seven competency
items of their model into a new organization. Secondly, our new arrangement is in more accordance
to Katz’s managerial skills (1955). With the aid of Katz’s model, we have included an intellectual
(conceptual) area into our model which we believe Bassellier’s model has not taken into account.
In an article published in Harvard Business Review in 1955, Katz argued that what a manager can
accomplish is based on the skills that he or she possesses. People will not embark on a task if they
believe they are not adept enough to perform the task effectively (Bandura and Schunk 1981). This
means that at least some managers, who have acquired their managerial positions because of
technical knowledge and competencies, will tend to avoid the managerial aspects of their job
preferring instead the technical, but not the managerial, aspects of their jobs. Therefore, for a
manager to perform effectively, a combination of technical and managerial skills is required.
Katz (1955) proposed a three-category typology of skills: technical, human and conceptual. Although
numerous abilities can be identified within each of these categories, he believes the triad to be
essential set of managerial skills (Peterson and Van Fleet 2004).
Amongst Bassellier’s competency items, we believe that ‘access to knowledge’ has a different nature
from our previous other three dimensions. Therefore, we have incorporated it into our model with a
new title: learning, or the capacity for finding required knowledge and information. This name change
also has the potential to incorporate some new skills that we believe comprise a manager’s IT
competency. Table 1 presents a more detailed definition of each of the competency areas in our
model.
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