INTRODUCTION:

In an ideal setting, majority of the employees will be high performers producing quality work and taking the organization to new heights. However in the vast majority of the organizations, high performers are a minority group. Yet the organization’s growth and prosperity depends largely on the performance of its employees which in turn creates the culture of the firm considered to be a determining factor in determining organization’s success and failings (Fariba, 2014). How can organizations ensure top performance from its employees? The aim of this paper is to cognize and identify core factors responsible for top performance of employees in an organization. The core focus will be on intrinsic factors i.e. individual capabilities and not extrinsic factors like the work environment, HR practices and policies, leadership style etc. of the organization.

The paper will progressively examine the concept of individual capability with each progression resulting in a deeper insight into the topic. The paper will commence by examining the concept of individual capabilities. The first section will focus on core skills underlying individual capabilities. Various types and classification of skills is discussed in the section. The subsequent section explores the role of metacognition and attitude concerning individual capability.

Capabilities Overview:

The term capability is open to wide interpretation. It means many different things to many different people hence, it is imperative that we begin by clarifying the concept of what exactly we mean by capability. The Wikipedia defines capability as “ability to do things and to choose for a way of life according to one's personal values. As it applies to human capital, capability represents performing or achieving certain actions/ outcomes in terms of the intersection of capacity and ability” (Wikipedia, 2019). Merriam-Webster defines capability as “the quality or state of being capable; a feature or faculty capable of development” (Merriam Webster, 2019). Business Dictionary defines capability as “measure of the ability of an entity (department, organization, person, system) to achieve its objectives, especially in relation to its overall mission” (Business Dictionary, 2019). Lexico online dictionary defines capability as someone's or something's ability to do something in relation to a specific task (Lexico, 2019).

From the above definitions what is most striking is association between the word capability and ability. Capability is defined in terms of ability. This interrelationship between capability and ability is further defined by Stephenson. He defines capability as consisting of four core abilities:

· Ability to take effective and appropriate action

· Ability to explain what they are about

· Ability to live and work effectively with others and

· ability to continue to learn from their experiences as individuals and in association with others, in a diverse and changing society (Stephenson and Yorke, 1998).

Furthermore these abilities are connected and interrelated and are composed of many skills and qualities. By skills and qualities, he is referring to planning and organizing skills, communication skills, interpersonal skills, team building and teamwork skills etc. He states that such knowledge and skills are essential for capability. Capability stems from possession of skills, which a capable person understands how to use it effectively. Stephenson (1998) distinguishes between dependent and independent capability. Dependent capability are learned capability that enables us to effectively handle ourselves in familiar context and with familiar problems. It is learned from the shared experiences, solutions and knowledge of other people. Such capability is developed through coaching, education, practice and evaluation. Familiar context could be work place environment, the home, community etc.

Figure 1: Dependent and Independent Capability Diagram

Note: Reprinted from “The Concept of Capability and its Importance in Higher Education”, by J. Stephenson and M. Yorke, 1998, Capability and Quality in Higher Education (pp.1-13). London, UK: Kogan Page

This refers to position Y in the Figure 1. Independent capability occurs at position Z where we are in an unfamiliar context and facing unfamiliar problems. It more realistically reflects our current macro environment characterized by constant change, which in turn affects our work environment, home environment, community etc. Here there are no prior experiences, solutions, and knowledge to lean on. To succeed in situation Z requires intuition, judgement and self-confidence to try novel solutions, qualities a capable person must possess. Learning and self-learning becomes a key attribute for success and becomes an individual’s own responsibility. For Stephenson and Yorke (1998) the notion of independent capability is defined best in the 1997 Dearning report as the development of higher level intellectual skills, knowledge and understanding' because it 'empowers the individual - giving satisfaction and self-esteem as personal potential is realized' and 'underpins the development of many of the other generic skills so valued by employers and of importance throughout working life (Stephenson and Yorke, 1998).

There are several important takeaways here. First, capabilities are highly individualized. It will vary from person to person. This is because different people have differing abilities i.e. skills and knowledge. Second, this variation in capabilities is largely due to learning and self-learning capacity i.e. independent capabilities of individuals. Stephenson places strong emphasis on learning and self-learning. Indeed, in the same paper Stephenson goes on to highlight how companies such as IBM (UK) and Rover Group encourage staff/employee learnings by requiring employees to keep a detailed record of their own learnings and skills updation which than become part of the annual review process. Such personal learning plans are encouraged at all levels of the management at these organizations. According to Senge, this learning at the individual level is key to organizational learning (Senge, 1990). The final important takeaway from here is that independent capabilities underpin the development of many other skills and capabilities. In other words, an individual’s inclination and attitude towards learning and self-learning are key underlying factors influencing the acquisition and development of other capabilities.

Heckman and Corbin (2016) further support the idea that skills are essential ‘ingredients of capabilities.’ Their concept and definition of skills is very broad and includes dimensions such as trust, altruism, reciprocity, perseverance, attention, motivation, self-confidence, and personal health and nutrition. They group these dimensions into personality skills, health skills and cognitive skills. Furthermore they state that capability, defined as state of potential actions, is defined and shaped by these skill sets as well as additional factors such as financial resources, peers, endowments and information. Finally which capabilities are selected depends upon the effort required to build the capability which in turn is strongly influenced by social and personal preferences and socio-cultural norms (Heckman and Corbin, 2016). This is illustrated in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Factors Shaping individual Capability

Note: Reprinted from, “Capabilities and Skills”, by H.J. Heckman and C.O. Corbin, 2016, Journal of human development and capabilities, 17(3), 342–359.

In another instance, a research was conducted by Suleman to identify the most important i.e. relevant employability skills of higher education graduates. Here employability skills is akin to desired capabilities within individuals by organizations. The research is a compilation of research done by other researchers concerning relevant skills. The findings suggest that there is no consensus in what constitutes the most important and relevant set of capabilities/skills for graduates other than relational skills. Relational skills was widely cited as important by all participants in the survey. Relational skills are generic soft skills such as interpersonal, communication and teamwork abilities (Suleman, 2016).

In their publication the Department for Education and Employment (DfEE) Australia, states that an individual’s employability assets comprise their knowledge (i.e. what they know), skills (what they do with what they know) and attitudes (how they do it).

They further make a distinction between baseline assets such as basic skills and essential personal attributes (such as reliability and integrity), intermediate assets such as occupational specific skills (at all levels), generic or key skills (such as communication and problem solving), and key personal attributes (such as motivation and initiative), and high level assets involving skills which help contribute to organizational performance (such as team working, self management, commercial awareness etc.) (Hillage and Pollard, 1998). Perhaps what is most conspicuous about these categorizations is the implied hierarchy of skills. It suggests that there are basic levels skills that underpin higher level skills.

Likewise SkillScan broadly classifies skills into three types:

· Transferable/functional skills – these refer to skills associated with performance of a task. It is functional in nature and can be transferred to wide variety of jobs. Such skills include skills like planning, organizing, coordinating, controlling, problem solving, creativity etc.

· Personal traits/attitudes – These skills are personal in nature. It may be considered as natural or innate and is developed in childhood and through life experiences. It is associated with an individual’s trait, for example interpersonal skills, social skills etc.

· Knowledge based – These refer to skills acquired through acquisition of knowledge. Such knowledge are acquired through education, training, and on the job programs such as, Accounting, contract management, personnel administration, process modeling, business modeling, project management, business analysis etc. (SkillScan, 2012).

According to Schein the future will see the development and creation of many new jobs that currently do not exist while several others will become obsolete (Schein,1996). This will largely be due to national and global trends such as globalization, demographic change, environmental sustainability, technological change, urbanization, increasing inequality and political uncertainty. Hence, the demand for transferable skills will be much higher going into the future to enable workers to successfully transition and handle uncertain job roles and job markets (Harris and Clayton, 2018). Transferability of skills is a concern addressed by multiple experts. Transferability implies generic set of skills not occupation specific skills and knowledge. The fact that these ‘transferable skills’ are not only mentioned but also stressed as extremely important repeatedly by experts suggests that these skills are critical in performance of jobs and tasks. Consider the case of the Institute of Public Administration Australia (IPAA). The IPAA has defined this standard to assist in developing the professional capability required by individuals for delivering effective and efficient regulatory outcomes. They explicitly state that a regulatory professional must possess both subject matter expertise in the particular matters being regulated, as well as core regulatory capabilities. Core regulatory capabilities are defined as ability to construct a strategic view of the entire regulatory process, application of ‘judgment to complex issues in conditions involving considerable uncertainty and ambiguity, application of a range tools, methods and approaches to varying circumstances for best effect and ability to assess, through monitoring and evaluation, the impact of regulation’ (Institute of Public Administration Australia, 2015). Here there is a clear emphasis on domain/subject specific knowledge, which is usually what is emphasized mostly by organizations, but also equal if not more emphasis on core regulatory capabilities i.e. capabilities to ensure that the acquired knowledge can be put to its best use. In another case the University of Newcastle, Australia has developed a Capability Matrix to assess, develop and improve the capabilities of its professional staff. It is based on the understanding that ability of University of Newcastle to achieve its strategic goals relies on the capability and performance of its staff. They have identified five core set of capabilities “that provide a common language and focus for all professional staff in performing their roles effectively” (The University of Newcastle Australia, n.d., p.3). Each core capability has four outcomes associated with it. Table 1 lists the five core set of capabilities along with its four associated outcomes.

Table 1: Core Capabilities and Their Associated Outcomes Note: Adapted from “Capability matrix for professional staff: Handbook”, by The University of Newcastle Australia. (n.d.). Newcastle Education.

Five Core Capabilities
1) Communication and engagement 1.1 Communicates effectively 1.2 Presents and facilitates 1.3 Influences and negotiates 1.4 Engages with internal and external stakeholders	2) Organizational planning and project management 2.1 Plans and organizes 2.2 Implements plans 2.3 Initiates and plans projects 2.4 Controls, monitors and evaluates projects		3) Professional and technical expertise 3.1 Knows role and organization 3.2 Develops and maintains capabilities 3.3 Develops and reviews policy 3.4 Technical knowledge
4) Business understanding and business intelligence 4.1 Understands and applies business basics and financial knowledge 4.2 Manages risk 4.3 Undertakes analysis 4.4 Undertakes benchmarking		5) Creative and strategic thinking 5.1 Uses initiative 5.2 Solve problems 5.3 Aligns actions with strategic directions 5.4 Proactively responds to change

A careful examination of the outcomes reveals that they are all generic skills and capabilities that can easily be transferred from one job to the next. The clear emphasis on generic skills and capabilities highlight the importance and significance of these set of skillsets. Another highly popular and widely accepted framework for skill development is one offered by Benjamin Bloom. The framework was proposed by Benjamin Bloom in association with other researchers in the field in 1956. The original framework is popularly referred to as Bloom’s Taxonomy. It identified three areas of learning:

· Cognitive domain (knowledge) concerned with development of mental skills and how we acquire knowledge. It is further divided into six levels each level consisting of sub levels.

· Psychomotor domain (skills) concerned with development of psychomotor skills. This domain consists of seven sub domains and

· Affective domain (attitudes) concerned with development of feelings, emotions, and attitudes. This domain consists of five sub domains (Bloom, 1956).

However, the original taxonomy was revised and modified over the years. In the revised Taxonomy the cognitive dimension consists of six categories and nineteen sub categories. All the new identified cognitive processes are depicted in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Structure of the Cognitive Dimension of the Revised Taxonomy

Note: Reprinted from “A revision of Bloom's taxonomy: An overview”, by D. R. Krathwohl, 2002, Theory Into Practice, 41(4), p. 212-218.

These cognitive processes are hierarchical with increasing complexity as one moves down the table. These are all generic cognitive (mental) skills viewed as essential for successful accomplishment of tasks. However, majority of organizations concentrate mainly on occupational, job specific knowledge based skills and do not focus enough on the development of generic transferable cognitive skills and personal traits and attitudes. Yet it is the latter that dictates how well an individual is able to leverage and utilize his/her knowledge based skills.

Role of metacognition and attitude on individual capability:

Section 2.0 highlighted important skill categories and cognitive process capabilities. These are skills and capabilities that must be emphasized, imparted, and developed within each employee. One other area that requires strong emphasis is the fourth knowledge dimension, metacognitive knowledge, of the revised taxonomy. According to Pintricht metacognition concerns three things (i) knowledge of cognition strategies (ii) knowledge of tasks which enables an individual to understand what, how, when and why concerning cognition strategies and finally (iii) awareness of one’s own cognition i.e self-awareness, self-reflection, and self-regulation (Pintrich, 2002). Similarly, Bransford, Brown and Cocking states that this combination of knowledge is essential in the development and improvement of learning process of individuals (Bransford, Brown and Cocking, 2000). Research shows that metacognition is a core component of learning discriminating between a ace learner versus a poor learner. (Martinez, 2006) (Hartman, 2001) (Gunstone and Northfield, 1994) (Veenman, Van Hout-Wolters and Afflerbach, 2006) (Carr, 2010) (Sperling, Richmond, Ramsay and Klapp, 2012). Research also suggests that majority of the students lack metacognitive knowledge and skills. They are quite unaware of the metacognition component in learning and hence are unable to improve their learning techniques and skills (Mayer, 2002) (Gunstone and Northfield, 1994) (Schraw, 2001). Since metacognition is not explicitly addressed in teachings, students carry this lack of awareness when they join the workforce. Likewise corporate training and education programs also do not emphasize the metacognition dimension and the end result are assets that have not been tapped to their full potential. This is evidenced in a study conducted by Jain and Khurana (2017) where they found that training and development program has none to negligible impact on emotional connect of employees and organizations. Indeed, majority of the corporate training programs focus upon knowledge based skills pertaining specifically to performance of jobs with little to limited emphasis on transferable skills, metacognition skills and affective domain skills (Kumar, 2020).

To a large degree an individual’s approach towards metacognition is a result of their motivation, attitude and values, components of affective domain (Miller, 2005). Affective domain deals with feelings, emotions, motivations, values and attitudes and is extremely important to ensure effective learning. Affective domain can enhance, inhibit or even prevent learning from taking place. The affective domain as proposed by Bloom consists of five levels. These five levels are hierarchical in nature. Table 2 explains each of the five levels of the affective domain.

Table 2: Five Levels of the Affective Domain

Taxonomy Level	Description
Characterization (highest level)	when the learner consistently acts within the value system.
Organization	when the learner demonstrates internalization of a value system;
Valuing	when the learner demonstrates a voluntary commitment to the instructional event or content;
Responding	when the learner reacts to the instructional event or content;
Receiving (basic level)	when the learner is aware and attending the instructional event;

Note: Adapted from “Measuring learning in the affective domain using reflective writing about a virtual international agriculture experience” by B.L. Boyd, K.E. Dooley, andS. Felton, 2006, Journal of Agricultural Education, 47(3), 24.

When a learner develops positive disposition towards receiving, responding, valuing, organization, and characterization; than that learner can be classified as a motivated learner. Motivation also plays a instrumental role in employee loyalty (Rajput, Singhal and Tiwari, 2016). Closely related to the concept of motivation is learner attitude. How a learner receives and responds to the learning process is largely dictated by attitude of the learner towards what is being taught. An attitude refers to our opinions, beliefs, and feelings about aspects of our environment (Albarracin and Shavitt, 2017). Already we have seen several literature mention attitude as an integral component in capability development (Stephenson and Yorke, 1998) (Heckman and Corbin, 2016) (SkillScan, 2012) (Sayankar, 2015) (Hillage and Pollard, 1998) and hence considered to be one of the key recruitment metrics used by firms in evaluating potential new recruits (Barma and Gupta, 2015). Attitude strongly influences job satisfaction and organizational commitment, two very important elements directly impacting employee motivation and hence employee performance. According to Sharma and Jain (2018), attitude is a fundamental determinant in workplace happiness which in turn closely relates with productivity and performance. Hence, it is of extreme importance for organizations to first initiate programs and practices to bring about a positive change in the employee’s attitudes. Yet vast majority of the corporate training and learning programs are viewed as irrelevant in the immediate context, misaligned to the jobs, and teaching redundant skillsets with little opportunity for application (Glaveski, 2019). With such a view, it is of little wonder that employees develop a negative attitude towards learning and development which may in turn translate into high attrition rate as employee’s higher personal aspiration needs go unmet (Madipelli and Chinappa, 2014). Very few corporate programs focus on promoting workplace spirituality which according to multiple authors plays a instrumental role in shaping work place attitudes (Mitroff and Denton, 1999) (Khatri and Gupta, 2017). If corporate training programs focused on providing relevant skillsets which can substantially impact employee output, employee satisfaction tends to rise resulting in a positive attitude towards learning and development (Kaushik, Mehta, Srivastava, and Mehendale, 2018).

CONCLUSION:

Organizational capabilities dictate the success of a firm. Organizational capabilities has its roots in individual capabilities. All organizational capabilities are an outcome of individual capabilities. Hence, building up individual capabilities will result in improved organizational capabilities. Individual capabilities are a sum total of skills, knowledge, personality and attitude of individuals. Traditionally organizations have focused their training and learning programs on imparting occupational specific knowledge and skills. They have to a large extent ignored building up general transferable skills, desired personality traits and building positive attitude towards learning and growth. Yet these factors have an immense impact on individual capability development. By focusing equally if not more on these factors, organizational learning programs are very likely to significantly improve their outcomes.

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Received on 20.03.2022 Modified on 31.05.2022

Asian Journal of Management. 2022;13(3):209-214.

DOI: 10.52711/2321-5763.2022.00037