PhD project summary & Invitation to participate in research
1. Study on Individual and Team performance: how workplace environment and
individual competencies affect performance?
Introduction
How do you assign staff to work teams for projects? Do your managers treat employees in a right
way? Does this provide systematic and sustainable business outcomes and performance level? The
HK Polytechnic University is conducting a research on linking individual and team performance with
competencies and workplace environment to solve these issues.
What is it about?
Competencies in practical way are some underlying personal characteristics (personality,
knowledge, skills, etc.) manifested in typical behaviors that produce key business outcomes. Thus,
they are causally related to individual performance and business results. Employees’ competencies
are affected by personal characteristics and social context as well. Social context at workplace is
created by corporate culture, climate in the team, values and beliefs shared by team members and
manager, as well as real practices (skills) of manager.
The study purpose is to align these factors to enable key competencies that provide higher
performance and business results.
Value for your organization
You will receive a description of overall results and for your organization. These include:
1. Which of the three context variables is most impactful on competencies?
2. How does each variable impact competencies. For example, for the manager variable, what
do managers do that strengthens their impact on competency improvement. What
behaviors hinder that? What do teams do that impact competencies the most.
3. What competencies are the most important drivers of performance?
4. How all these results may be applied to improve performance in your organization?
How to participate?
1. Define teams you want to analyze competencies/improve performance. (Team size: at least
4 employees and a manager. Focus on teams in product development, R&D or other
technology and innovation related job.)
2. Prepare a name list of members and manager for each team. (It will be used to prepare
questionnaires)
3. Manager and team members of each team will answer 3 questionnaires in 3 phase process.
(Questionnaires are in electronic form. Each includes 50-60 questions. Duration of each
phase is 1 week.)
4. Feedback and description of overall results will be prepared. (In 4 weeks after collecting
data)
The most useful results for your organization can be provided by involving around 20 teams.
However, even for 1-2 teams good feedback and useful applications will be obtained.
Please, contact me:
MIKHAIL ROZHKOV
PolyU, Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
mnrozhkov@gmail.com
Tel.: (852) 5414 0507
2. WORKPLACE CONTEXT AND ITS EFFECT ON
INDIVIDUAL COMPETENCIES AND PERFORMANCE
IN A WORK (PROJECT) TEAM
Chief Supervisor: Prof. C.F. Cheung (ISE)
Co-supervisor: Prof. Eric Tsui (ISE)
Mikhail ROZHKOV
Hong Kong, 2014
4. Background
• Many things impact employees’ competencies – upbringing, education,
past experiences, etc. But, once a person is on a job, what are the most
effective ways to improve competencies?
• This study is designed to determine how, in your company, daily behaviors
are impacted by: organizational culture, team climate and manager skills.
– Maybe manager assignment is the most important way to strengthen
competencies. Or, maybe belonging to a strong team is the best way.
– What is the relative impact of culture, climate and manager skills to the daily
behaviors (competencies) of employees?
• The purpose of this study is to find out these questions.
• The results will help your company understand how to best increase
competencies of their staff. For example, if the answer is being on a high
performing team, then how can teams operate to accelerate individual
competency development?
3
6. What competencies are studied?
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We have focused on seven competencies that impact success in
an innovations, R&D and product development environment:
1. Achievement Orientation (ACH)
2. Concern of Order and Quality (CO)
3. Initiative (INT)
4. Information Seeking (INFO)
5. Innovation Orientation (INNOV)
6. Team Working (TW)
7. Team Leadership (TL)
9. How to participate?
1. Define teams you want to analyze
competencies/improve performance. (Team size: at least
4 employees and a manager)
2. Prepare a name list of members and manager for
each team. (It will be used to prepare questionnaires)
3. Manager and team members of each team will
answer 3 questionnaires in 3 phase process.
(Questionnaires are in electronic form. Each includes 50-60 questions.
Duration of each phase is 1 week.)
4. Feedback and description of overall results will be
prepared. (In 4 weeks after collecting data)
8
10. Value for your company
9
You will receive a description of overall results and for your
company.
These include:
1. Which of the three variables is most impactful on
competencies?
2. How does each variable impact competencies? (For example,
for the manager variable, what do managers do that
strengthens their impact on competency improvement. What
behaviors hinder that? What do teams do that impact
competencies the most?)
3. What competencies are the most important drivers of
performance?
4. How all these results may be applied to improve performance
in your company?
