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1. Define KSA’s and explain the different levels of each. Use a diagram if you like.

KSA is an abbreviation for Knowledge, Skill and Ability. They are the fundamentals considered when organizations are looking for a candidate suitable for a specified job. They are basically used to filter out qualified candidates from unqualified candidates (Brainerd, L, W., 2004).

Knowledge:

The term takes much from its literal meaning here. It is actually a body of organized facts and figures which a person has gathered in his mind from research in the specific field and his own experiences in the field.

Skill:

Gathering data alone isn’t enough to get you successful in a field. You should know how to interpret and analyze that data and draw meaningful conclusions from it. This is your skill at work. In a majority of cases, candidates with more skill are better than candidates with more knowledge. This is because having more skill means you have the ability to make deeper interpretations from little knowledge.

Ability:

Finally, the candidate can be capable of performing a task, but is he actually able to do it? Therefore, the candidate’s ability to perform a task is far more important than either of the knowledge and the skill. A person with excellent knowledge and skills may not be able to perform a task, making him worthless for the organization.

There are two types of KSA’s

Specific KSA’s:

These have to do with performance in certain specific jobs.

Individual KSA’s:

These have to do with the individual’s personal experiences and training throughout his lifetime.

2. Explain, with the use of a diagram, the key concepts of the “open systems model.”

Above shown is a basic open systems model it has been broken down into five steps (Mullins, 2007):

Step 1:

All elements outside the system are gathered. They constitute the broader environment but have the ability to affect the system. Therefore thy have to be considered as part of the system.

Step 2:

All resources are sent for transformation into the system as input

Step 3:

This is the main part of the system. The raw information sent into the system from the system’s surroundings are processed according to the needs of the organization and are then ready to come out of the other side and released back into the environment.

Step 4:

As said in the previous step, the processed input is introduced back into the external environment.

Step 5:

This is where the environment starts to interact with the processed output of the organization. This is now going to become the next input for the organization. The cycle will continue like this and the organization will have to keep changing conditions in step 3 to keep the system in equilibrium or the external factors will become irreparable and start damaging the organization.

3. Briefly describe the three components to organization structure: Organizational Design, Decision Autonomy, and Division of Labor.

Organizational Design:

Organizational design is how the organization is laid out in terms of power given to employees. It measures the distance between the top, middle and lower management. These are two types of organizational designs, horizontal and vertical. Horizontal (lateral) design is considered better as there is little space between the three management positions. This means that if some news has to pass from the lower to the top management, it will have fewer interruptions along the way. Ideally, the lower level manager will himself bring the news to the CEO. In the vertical structure, the news travelling from the lower management to the top will have so many interruptions that the message reaching the top will have changed considerably and that can lead to miscommunication. Also, direct communication between management positions having more space in between them is highly discouraged. For example, a clerk cannot go to talk about his work issues with the CEO of the company. He will have to talk to his supervisor only.

Decision Autonomy:

Decision autonomy is the amount of power given to employees with regard to decision making. The more power given to employees, the more motivated they will feel as they will assume managerial positions. However, it has shown that giving too much power to employees has resulted in them making many wrong decisions for which the company has had to pay. Therefore, the best approach here is to manage each company’s case individually and calibrate the matter carefully.

Division of Labor:

The division of labor is a very old technique specifically used in factories. It constitutes of the fact that a person should specialize in a highly specific task and then concentrate on performing that only. Advantage to this is that the person becomes perfect in performing that task. Disadvantages include that the person becomes tired of doing the same task repeatedly and his exposure becomes severely limited. If for some reason he gets laid off, he will face a lot of problems for finding another job as he doesn’t have a broader experience.

4. Should an organizations strategies be reactive, proactive, or both? Support your answer.

We constantly study that the market is dynamic (Merrienboer, 1997). Considering that, I think that an organization’s reactions should be decided depending on the individual case. The recent economic crisis should provoke a reactive strategy to the problem by laying off it’s workers. However, if this economic crisis had been foreseen before, the strategies should have been proactive. The company should have streamlined its processes even further and reduced its inventories and done things which would reduce costs further so that it would not have had to lay off its employees when the time actually came for the crisis.

5. Define and provide an example of the following:

A. KNOWLEDGE (three types)

Declarative Knowledge:
It is knowledge which is declared. Example: that child is a boy.

Procedural Knowledge:
It is knowledge which constituted a procedure. Example: sewing clothes.

Strategic Knowledge:
It is the reusable knowledge which relates to strategies. Example: building of a motor car.

B. SKILL (two levels)

Compilation (skill):
It is the skill of deliberately compiling objects or resources. Example: compiling a new music album.

Automaticity (skill):
It is the skill where learning plays an important part such that the ability to do things becomes automatic and therefore requires low attention from the mind because it has been repeated so often in the past by the person (Donald Clark, 2007). Example: habit of drawing margins on your paperwork.

C. ATTITUDE

Attitude:

It is the skill of perceiving an object as negative or positive. Example: a person’s attitude towards cigarette smoking.

References

Brainerd, L, W. (2004) 9 Steps to a Great Federal Job. Learning Express

Clark, D. (June 25th, 2007). Declarative Knowledge. Retrieved January 6th, 2009, from http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/learning/declarative_knowledge.html

Merrienboer, J. (1997). Training Complex Cognitive Skills: A Four-Component Instructional Design Model for Technical Training. Educational Technology Publications

Mullins, L, J. (2007) Management and Organizational Behavior. Financial Times Prentice Hall

 

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