Author(s):
Rato, Helena 
; Ferraz, David ; Baptista, Conceição
Date: 2009
Persistent ID: http://hdl.handle.net/10782/624
Origin: REPAP: Repositório de Administração Pública
Subject(s): MANFOP; Capital humano; Human capital; Formação profissional; Professional training; Gestão da formação; Training management; Administração pública; Public administration
Description
Comunicação apresentada na 17ª Conferência Anual da Network of Intitutes and Schools of Public Administration (NISPA) em Birdua, Montenegro de 14 a 16 dem Maio de 2009. The fundamental role of human capital in economical and social success of individuals,
organizations and nations is broadly recognized. In a context of globalization,
dominated by innovation, accelerating technological progress and, subsequently, a
constantly changing worldwide economy, the awareness of scientists and political
decision-makers that competences and skills are an essential factor for both sustainable
economic growth and social cohesion has contributed to this recognition.
Naturally, investment in human capital is therefore a priority in public policy, mainly in
the fields of education and training. However, this type of investment has not always
brought the desired results. When this happens, the deficit in human capital tends to
worsen due to the fact that social demands, in terms of knowledge, are incompatible
with the waste of opportunity and public budget.
This problem has been the object of concern and analysis by scientists and international
organizations. Amongst these, OECD deserves special attention, for carrying out studies
and identifying indicators capable of measuring, as objectively as possible, human
capital and benefits from investing on it. In terms of training success, one of the most
important criteria is the organizational context in which one works, including the
consistency between individual and organizational performance. Consequently, training
plans must be founded on an ex-ante analysis of human capital competences necessary
to the organization and there must be an ex-post analysis, after the training, concerning
the results obtained and the contributions of individual competences to the improvement
of organizational performance.
In the Portuguese Central Public Administration case, evaluation studies on the training
cycle demonstrate that current training design and planning practices are casuistic and
are not preceded by any needs assessment, which makes the ex-post evaluation
impracticable.
The purpose of this paper is to overcome this deficiency by providing public
organizations a simple, clear and effective methodology to manage competences and
training processes, in order to valorize human capital and to improve organizational
performance.
The developed methodology as been tested on a several number of public organizations
in Portugal and consists on a linkage between the strategic goals of public
organizations, according to the public policies, and the needed competences in order to
achieve that goals.
