A study of Competency-based Approach to Identify High Performers among Disaster Management Professionals

In today’ s times, while measuring an organization’s performance in terms of best results, productivity, and profits, more and more is referred not to the material resources, but to the human resources and their competencies in terms of knowledge, skills and attitudes. Human resource management system is a process of making people and organizations to come together so that the objectives of each other are met with a win-win approach. Competency is an underlying feature of an individual which enables him/her to deliver superior performance in a given job, role or any situation. Competency mapping is one of the prominent human resource management initiative to identify the knowledge, skills and attributes required to perform a job effectively and efficiently in best possible manner. At present, development of competencies has become one of the key priorities of the organizations. It is also important to realize the factors responsible for enhancement of the competencies to ensure high performance of the employees. This calls for the Human resource management to initiate for competency mapping and identifying the skills affecting the employee’s performance at workplace. Now a days, most of the organizations are utilizing the competency mapping as a tool to identify high performers. The present study focuses on identifying the competencies for Disaster management professionals that enhances their performance in the management of disasters. The study describes the main goal of conducting competency mapping and how it influences the performance of the disaster management professionals. The overall objective of the study is to explore the factors which ensure high performance of the disaster management professionals. The study validates that competency-based management and related HR practices are gaining momentum in the field of Disaster Management sector in the context of performance management of the disaster management professionals.

Contextualizing oppositional cultures: The variable significance of gender and ethnic minority status across schools

Different lines of research have argued that specific groups, such as boys or ethnic minorities, are more prone to develop an anti-school culture than others, leading to group differences in the social acceptance of high performers. Taking an ecological view, we ask to what extent the school context promotes or prevents the emergence of group-specific oppositional cultures. Theoretically, we argue that group-based oppositional cultures become more likely in schools with low socio-economic resources and in schools where socio-economic differences align with demographic attributes. We test our hypotheses based on data from a large-scale, four-wave network panel survey among more than 4,000 students in Germany. Applying stochastic actor-oriented models for the coevolution of networks and behavior, we find that group-based oppositional cultures in which students like high performers less are very rare. However, in line with theoretical expectations, the less resourceful a school is, the more boys tend to evaluate high-performing peers less positively than girls do. Moreover, the more ethnic minority boys are socioeconomically disadvantaged in a school, the more they tend to evaluate high performers less positively than majority boys do.

Gamma Oscillations Index Sustained Attention in a Brief Vigilance Task

Sustained attention is an essential behavior in life, but often leads to performance decrements with time. Computational accounts of sustained attention suggest this is due to brief disruptions in goal-directed processing, or microlapses. Decreases in gamma spectral power are a potential candidate for indexing microlapses and discriminating between low and high performers in sustained attention tasks, while increases in beta, alpha, and theta power are expected to exhibit compensatory effort to offset fatigue. The current study tests these hypotheses in a 10-minute Psychomotor Vigilance Test, a context that eliminates confounds with measuring gamma frequencies. 34 participants ( Mage = 22.60; SDage = 4.08) volunteered in the study. Results suggested frontal gamma power declined with time-on-task, indicating reduction in central cognition. Beta power increased with time-on-task, suggesting compensatory effort; however, alpha and theta power did not increase. Additionally, gamma power discriminated between low and high performers, potentially suggesting motivational differences between the groups.

Understanding High Performance in Late Second Language (L2) Acquisition—What Is the Secret? A Contrasting Case Study in L2 French

Adult L2 acquisition has often been framed within research on the Critical Period Hypothesis, and the age factor is one of the most researched topics of SLA. However, several researchers suggest that while age is the most important factor for differences between child and adult SLA, variation in adult SLA is more dependent on social and psychological factors than on age of onset. The present qualitative study investigates the role of migratory experience, language use/social networks, language learning experience, identity and attitudes for high performance among Swedish L1 French L2 users in France. The study constitutes an in-depth thematic analysis of interviews with six high-performing individuals and four low-performing individuals. The main results show that the high performers differ from the low performers on all dimensions, except for attitudes towards the host community. High performers are above all characterized by self-reported language aptitude and an early interest in languages, which appears to have led to rich exposure to French. Also, they exhibit self-regulatory behaviors and attribute importance to being perceived as a native speaker of French—both for instrumental and existential reasons.

Rethinking the notion of the high-performing education system: A Daoist response

This article challenges the dominant notion of the ‘high-performing education system’ and offers an alternative interpretation from a Daoist perspective. The paper highlights two salient characteristics of such a system: its ability to outperform other education systems in international large-scale assessments; and its status as a positive or negative ‘reference society’. It is contended that external standards are applied and imposed on educational systems across the globe, judging a system to be high- or low- performing, and consequently worthy of emulation or deserving of criticism. Three cardinal Daoist principles that are drawn from the Zhuangzi are expounded: a rejection of an external and oppressive dao (way); the emptying of one’s heart-mind; and an ethics of difference. A major implication is a celebration of a plurality of high performers and reference societies, each unique in its own dao but converging on mutual learning and appreciation.