Problem of Language Used to Describe

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ScienceDirect Procedia Engineering 182 (2017) 679 – 686

7th International Conference on Engineering, Project, and Production Management

Problem of Language Used to Describe Competences in the Management of Acceleration in the Creation of Knowledge Resources in Businesses Maciej Szafrański* Poznan University of Technology, Strzelecka 11, Poznan 60-965, Poland

Abstract As a result of his scientific researches, the author proposed to distinguish a new process in businesses, i.e. the acceleration. He emphasized the role of using information systems in order to accelerate access to information about competences. In this article, the author presents an example of an information system (the Professionals System). The difficulty in understanding the language used to describe competences in businesses and by job candidates turned out to be a significant problem to develop the communication by system users. The scientific objectives of this article are to diagnose the causes of the problem and an attempt to determine a possible scope of its solution. Limitations in the language were identified, which will be difficult to eliminate if one wants to create competence dictionaries used in information systems meant to accelerate the remote communication between job seekers and employers. The article leads to the expansion of knowledge about the influence of language used to describe competences on the fastness and accuracy of obtaining them for the purposes of efficient business operation. ©2016 2016The TheAuthors. Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license © Published by Elsevier Ltd. This (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer-review under responsibility of the organizing committee of EPPM2016. Peer-review under responsibility of the organizing committee of EPPM2016 Keywords: acceleration; competences; knowledge; language; process

1. Introduction Competences, including knowledge and skills, are among the key resources which make it possible to effectively reach goals in businesses [1, 2]. Their influence on the level of innovativeness [3, 4] and the quality of work and products [5] is continuously perceived and researched. Both the author of this article as well as other researchers has

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +4-869-769-5847; fax: +4-866-533-75. E-mail address: [email protected]

1877-7058 © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer-review under responsibility of the organizing committee of EPPM2016

doi:10.1016/j.proeng.2017.03.179

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been analyzing the influence of various management tools on the changes in the level of competences in businesses [1, 6]. Their management in businesses [1], including measurement of their level [18], has become a paradigm of knowledge-based economy (KBE). This article has been prepared by basing it on understanding of competences within the meaning of the European Qualifications Framework (EQF), [7]. Temporarily omitting details of the nature of competences, Tuomi’s view that in a business they can be treated as resources (at the entry to the business/process/activity) or as products (at the exit from the business/process/activity) [8] seems uncontroversial. This topic has also been developed by the author in other publications [1, 9]. This article focuses on competences treated as a resource which conditions undertaking of actions for effective reaching of goals defined in businesses. The values of competences, particularly of knowledge, include it inexhaustibility [10, 11], however, on the other hand, limitations resulting from the finite number of people with whom competences are closely connected is its weakness. It means that at a given time and place, there might be a shortage of the competence resource which leads to a slowdown in the speed at which objectives are reached. That shortage is one of the features of KBE. The experience of the Author in the fields of industry, higher education, projects researches, contacts with business and the educational system, confirms the constant problem with competences in business. In the conditions of the growing shortage of both professional as well as soft competences, their management gains special importance in businesses. 2. Acceleration in the creation of knowledge resources in businesses – the process view Knowing and seeing competence-related problems experienced by businesses, the author noticed that managing competences itself is no longer sufficient [1]. The process view of acceleration in the creation of knowledge resources (which can be referred to the competence resource) has been presented on Fig. 1. As it can be seen on Fig. 1, there are at least a few thematic areas within which one can discuss the possibility of acceleration in the creation of competence resources, to subsequently manage that process. The IT systems area is one of them. The author has carried out exploratory studies (group interviews combined with the random employee survey method) on the sample of 59 businesses (detailed characteristics have been included in [1]), in order to elicit responses to questions if and what activities from the knowledge management area, including those connected with application of IT solutions, are result in the acceleration in the creation of knowledge resources in business. The activities listed on Fig. 2 were taken into account in the set of activities connected with the use of IT solutions. The numbers next to the activities mean the numbers given to them in the studies. Some activities in the answers asked to the respondents were described in the abbreviated form. For instance instead of “application of an ERP class system” (name of activity), “ERP class system” was used (name of the system used in the activity). Such an approach made it easier to communicate with respondents during the studies. It can be seen on Fig. 2 that only some, often simple, IT solutions are universally used in the studied businesses (researches from 2014). It is obvious given that a big number of the studied businesses are SMEs (80%). SMEs dominate even more in the structure of all registered business entities. It is an important observation that if businesses do use an IT solution, its positive influence on the speed of acquiring knowledge understood as a resource at the entry to the work processes is most often perceived. Among those IT solutions there were decision-enhancing systems whose influence on the speed of acquiring knowledge was evaluated very highly in the tests.

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Fig. 1. The process view of the acceleration in the creation of knowledge resources in businesses and its sub-processes in connection with: (1) key processes in businesses, (2) management of knowledge resources, (3) aspects of acceleration of activities. The issue of the quality of knowledge has been signaled. Source: [1].

Fig. 2. Declared undertaking of activities connected with knowledge management with the use of IT solutions and evaluation of their influence on the acceleration in the creation of knowledge resources in businesses – results of exploratory studies (N=59). Special emphasis put on IT decisionenhancing systems. Own study based on data collected in researches conducted in 2014.

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3. Language as the cause of a problem in communication between the users of the Professionals System The Professionals System (PS) is an example of a system whose use can firstly facilitate access to information about competences on the market in businesses and secondly it supports decision-making with respect to choosing competences on separate work positions. On the one hand, the system can be treated as an IT tool while on the other hand it can be considered an innovative organizational solution for improving communication between parties which exchange the competence resource, including knowledge and skills. Seen as a tool, the PS was developed by a team of employees of the Poznań University of Technology, headed by the author of this article. In the years 2010-2012, it was developed and tested while in 2013 it was implemented and then developed further and improved. By 2015, the total of over 21,000 users from Wielkopolska registered in the system, including approximately 1,200 business entities, mainly companies. The system and its value can be analyzed from the point of view of various user groups to which it is dedicated. Entrepreneurs as well as those looking for work, training and internships are the key user groups. Simplifying things, it could be said that it is a system which supports job brokerage services, however, it is an oversimplification. The key difference between the PS and recruitment-supporting tools lies in the fact that in commercial systems, communication between the parties which create supply and demand for work happens on a very general level. In the Professionals System, the employer’s offer is created on the level of specifying required skills (competence category) while the person who looks for work, training or internships needs to create their competence profile after registering. The Professionals System is an example of a system enhancing decision-making in businesses with respect to managing the competence resource and managing the process of acceleration in acquiring that resource. Acceleration of reaching competences is important because:  the speed of changes in the environment is increasing, hence one of the features of competences, i.e. impermanence, is more visible  due to the population decline in Poland, the limited nature of competences can increase (although it cannot be ruled out that this negative phenomenon will be minimized thanks to further automation of the processes of work and migration of population from other states)  in the conditions when access to competences is limited, faster reaching the people who have their higher level allows one to obtain higher quality of work, processes and products in the company, hampering the same effects for one’s competitors. In order for a communication-enhancement system to function efficiently, it is necessary to provide a proper language of communication. Despite a number of strengths of the Professionals Systems which have been confirmed by its users, several weaknesses have been identified during its functioning. The two basic ones concern the following:  the dictionary of competences (including skills) used in the system  the process of segmenting and distributing information to users. The article focuses on the issue connected with the dictionary of competences. The PS focused on the competences of staff with vocational education, hence a dictionary of competences from the vocational education core curriculum was implemented in the system [12]. Despite the fact that the dictionary was accepted by future users during tests carried out in the designing phase, during the exploitation phase users started voicing two basic comments: the dictionary was too extensive and names of competences were incomprehensible. Such comments were especially made by SMEs (Fig. 3 – “too much detail or difficulty in use”).

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Fig. 3. Comments about the Professionals Systems made by representatives of business owners from: small, midsize and big companies (NSMBC = 24) and micro businesses NMicro = 51) – based on data collected in researches conducted from 2010 to 2011. Source: [1, p. 223].

The too extensive dictionary results from the principles used for developing the classification of professional competences in the aforementioned core curriculum. Skills are differentiated within each competence (each competence is a set of skills). Skills are also classified in three groups: common to all professions (C), common to separate spheres of education (S) and professional (P). From the point of view of a specific profession, it is over 100 skills, among which the entrepreneur who creates the job, training or internship offer should choose. Moreover, the entrepreneur does not create such an offer analyzing the profession which was learnt by the job candidate; instead they take into account the skills needed at a given position and that position often requires skills attributed in the core curriculum to more than one profession. Thus, the dictionary of competences for work positions started to become more and more different in the system from the dictionary modeled on the core curriculum for vocational education. Moreover, the core curriculum dictionary includes names of competences and skills which are unaccepted by businesses. In the opinion of the business owners, some of the names are too general (e.g. ability to use computer software). On the other hand, as it has already been noted, the core curriculum cannot be accused of having a low number of distinguished skills. If users decide that dictionaries are too general and at the same time too extensive, it might seem that their opinion conceals a contradiction. After all, the user would like to have a simple dictionary which will enable them to find the required information. It would be ideal if the set of names of competences and skills was empty and the information returned to the system’s user was precise (of the expected quality). Moreover, although this article does not focus on that issue, the information would reach the user itself and thus the user would not have to devote their time to reach it. Therefore, a problem arises how to improve the system in order to adjust it better to the expectations of the users, particularly business owners. If the skills dictionary in the PS was adjusted to the dictionary used in the businesses, perhaps the number of names of skills in the dictionary would decrease. Thus, the problem of not only the incomprehensiveness of names of competences or skills would be solved, the problem of the too extensive dictionary would be ended too. However, the users might return to dictionaries used on commercial websites for linking employers with employees (professionbased analysis) while it is postulated that this level of details in communication between the parties is becoming insufficient [1]. On the other hand, introduction of a standard dictionary is expected to standardize names, facilitating communication. However, the dynamics of technological and economic changes is so high that it might be difficult to keep up on the market with introduction of standard names in the processes of exchanging information about competences (knowledge and skills). Undoubtedly, the used language of communication is one of the problems in the analyzed IT system. One might undertake activities popularizing the language of the core curriculum among business owners, however the costs of such actions would be very high. One might organize periodical studies in order to catch

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changes in the dictionary and adjust the core curriculum to the remarks voiced by the business owners, as done by the Ministry of National Education, however, changes in the dictionary of the core curriculum which result from such an approach are introduced with much delay, thus the language of the curriculum is permanently unadjusted to the requirements of businesses. Since competences are needed to do work in the business, to reach the objectives formulated in it, the business owner is the client who looks for them while the job seeker is the supplier. The job seeker needs to adjust their language to the language used in the business, and the business needs to make sure the language is understood and precise in its formulation of requirements. The institutions which train future employees, both schools as well as commercial educational entities, should also use the client’s language. The PS should also strive at meeting the requirements of businesses with respect to language. The noticed problem of the language of competences used in the PS does not necessarily have to result from the features of the IT system. The author has noticed that it has a deeper cause which generally stems from the specifics of human communication. 4. Diagnosis of the problem of language used to describe competences in the management of acceleration in the creation of knowledge resources in businesses Language has been a philosophical problem for many ages. It has become the main subject of cognition in the analytical philosophy of language. Analysis of views in that philosophical current and the dynamics of their changes over 120 years make it easier to understand that the problem of the language of competence used in the process of communication between job seekers and job providers is at most an operational problem in a much wider discourse about the language, meanings, speech and notions. In the analytical philosophy of language, the dispute begins with the question whether it is possible to communicate via an ideal language or whether there is the need to develop a method of getting to know the reality or parts thereof with references to the colloquial language. G. E. Moore [13, pp. 71–75] and B. Russell [14] were the precursors of that philosophical current. They as well as other representatives of the analytical philosophy of language such as e.g. G. Frege [13, pp. 75–100] represent the idealistic current of that philosophy. They were looking for models, standards and model language solutions. In the same generation, other philosophers of language were of the opinion that cognition and communication via the ideal language is not possible. L. Wittgenstein was the first philosopher who presented such a thesis, at first having been influenced by the ideal language philosophy but then he came up with the ordinary language philosophy [13, pp. 197–199]. According to that philosophy, “language realizes itself only in the context of activities undertaken within a community [13, p. 197] and an unambiguous determination of meanings cannot be achieved [13, pp. 197–198] because “the meaning of expressions depends on their location in language games and in proper forms of life” [13, p. 198]. Similar views were presented by G. Ryle who was of the opinion that “the bases of sensible notions need to be looked for in the empirical content” [13, p. 199] and that “we need to come to terms with that fact that language in its dictionary and its grammatical structures mirrors historical experience” [13, p. 206]. The development of the analytical philosophy of language which is still underway resulted in ever more advanced studies on its communicative functions and its role in cognition of the reality. E. Rosch was among the authors who developed their studies on the basis of Wittgenstein’s late views on family similarities as results of language games. She focused on the issue of typicality of items with regard to their categories [15, p. 288], often using the notion of features. The level of typicality depends on “features shared with all other items in the category” [15, p. 289]. Developing the issue of similarity led to the development of studies on prototypicality. Here, one must emphasize the studies of L. Barsalou who pointed out that the following needs to be taken into consideration in the development of prototypes: “tendency towards centrality (equal distance from extreme intensities of features of items in a given category), the frequency of appearance in utterances, efficiency in performance of the task for which the given category was distinguished” [15, p. 28]. Further studies on similarities led to the development of “methods for measuring similarities through the cognitive system” [15, p. 289]. Scientific works on estimating similarity were conducted by A. Tversky, D. Medina, M. Schaffer, S. Pinker [15, pp. 289–290]. Along with the prototype theory, developed was the token theory according to which the creation of a category is influenced not by a typical item, i.e. the prototype but by a single token (the observed individual). The token theory does not require creation of an abstract stereotype in order to move from the token to the category [15, p. 291]. Despite development of studies over categorization, it has still not been possible to explain what exactly from the area of our knowledge influences categorization and according to what principles new categories are created.

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A manner of recognizing and explaining the reality coherent with the one adopted in the ordinary language philosophy is used in qualitology, with W. Mantura [16] as its key representative. Here, the system of describing phenomena is based on several basic notions such as: feature, condition of feature, quality, condition of quality, level of feature, level of quality, intensity of feature. Mantura proposes six basic quality operations, including the quality comparison operation. Within that operation, he uses the notions of similarity, diversity, quality category, similarity measures, power of a set of common features, common conditions [16, pp. 78–84]. Using that quality operation, he analyzes language in the context of semantic functions of qualitology [16, pp. 160–163]. Direct references to the analytical philosophy of language can be seen in this case. 5. Conclusion In this article the difficulty to define the language used to describe competences in businesses and by job candidates was diagnosed. It impedes the development of IT systems dedicated to support the exchange of information about competences. On the base of the diagnosis the following conclusions can be drawn:  there are many philosophical currents which might be the starting point for studies on the dictionary of competences  competence-related requirements are formulated in businesses in the colloquial language  the achievements of the ordinary language philosophy could be a stimulus for accelerating works on improving the dictionary of competences  language is very complex, hence the problem of creating dictionaries of competences  minimization of that problem depends on the designers of the tool but also on the intensity of the relation between business, those looking for work and educational system. Acknowledgements 7th International Conference on Engineering, Project, and Production Management (EPPM2016) was financed in the framework of the contract no. 712/P-DUN/2016 by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education from the funds earmarked for the public understanding of science initiatives. 7th International Conference on Engineering, Project, and Production Management (EPPM2016) finansowana w ramach umowy 712/P-DUN/2016 ze środków Ministra Nauki i Szkolnictwa Wyższego przeznaczonych na działalność upowszechniającą naukę. 7th International Conference on Engineering, Project, and Production Management (EPPM2016) was co-organised by the Agency for Restructuring and Modernisation of Agriculture (Poland).

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