Posted by We encourage you to read our latest publication entitled “Competencies of employees at research universities in Poland – key research findings”. “Competencies of employees of research universities in Poland – the most important research results”, in which we included an analysis of the competencies of employees of Polish research universities based on the research we conducted in 2022.
Below are the key findings of our publication. You can purchase it at the bookstore of the Publishing House of the University of Silesia in Katowice:
https://wydawnictwo.us.edu.pl/node/27063
The above publication contains an elaboration of the conducted empirical research in terms of assessing the competence of research staff and support and in relation to the main 4 research processes conducted at universities. The publication consists of 5 chapters describing individual phenomena in the field of competence management of university employees. In each chapter, we described the competencies of research university employees from five different perspectives.
First, in Chapter 1, we solved the research problem of finding key competencies for individual research conduct processes and determining the level of these competencies for research staff and support staff of research universities. In it, we discussed the concept of competencies and the processes for studying them, and presented the results of the project team’s work related to building a competency model, as well as the results of assessing the key competencies for the various processes of conducting scientific research.
Secondly, the subject of consideration in Chapter 2 is the social competence relationships obtained from the survey conducted in Polish research universities on the key competencies of research and support staff in the process of achieving research excellence. In this chapter, we focused in particular on the competencies of building relationships, sharing knowledge and experience, and collaboration, as key competencies from the point of view of the theoretical model adopted in the study. The research question we posed concerned the impact of the social competencies of research and support staff on the process of pursuing research excellence at universities.
Thirdly, the goal of Chapter 3 was to answer two research questions, linking the issues of objective effectiveness of the research staff and the competency gaps that were established during the competency survey. The research questions we posed to meet this objective were:
- How were the competency gaps of the research staff with the highest given performance indicator shaped in each position at the university?
- What is the relationship of the position held at the university to the average of a given performance indicator of research personnel?
In Chapter 4, we posed the research question of what role the competencies of the university’s research staff play in the effective achievement of scientific goals and the commercialization of the university’s research. In this section of the study, we presented the relationship between the overall level of competence ratings and the university’s effectiveness in achieving its basic scientific goals and commercializing research.
The purpose of Chapter 5 was to discuss the key characteristics of the research team and the importance of diversity for team effectiveness and member satisfaction. In this chapter, we analyzed the case of a diverse team and discussed its characteristics in terms of employee competencies. We formulated answers to 5 research questions regarding competency gaps in the analyzed research team, namely:
- How were the average competency gaps of the team members shaped according to the position occupied?
- How were the average competency gaps of team members for each competency shaped according to gender?
- How were competencies distributed in the research team according to seniority?
- How were the competency gaps in the survey team shaped depending on the respondent’s preferred research process?
- How was the competency gap shaped in the context of the employees’ self-assessment to other academics in the discipline?