Ok, hard skills are relatively easy to evaluate. Most schools give tests on finance, accounting, economics, and even marketing and organizational behavior in the belief that tests are a good measure of knowledge acquired in those subjects. One thing that I saw being severely criticized, however, specially in those threads concerning the Certified MBA test, is that there is no way to evaluate soft skills. That is also a reason while some people don't believe in the possibility of most top schools allowing distance learning, since the interaction will probably be prejudiced. However, I had an interesting experience with "teaching" soft skills. For a few months now I have added a new feature to the paid training of my department's new employees. They are all required to read a few books on Negotiation, Influence, and dealing with people/customers, besides our on-the-job training. Before they start the real work, they must be able to answer general questions and to comment about the books. I've noticed that our new employees (the ones reading the books) are having a much easier time in developing and applying people skills on the job. They are distinctively better when dealing with customers and other departments employees than most of our staff when they started. Therefore, I beggining to think that people skills can be enhanced by books, and can also be evaluated by testing. Of course, an employee will develop his people skills within experience on the job. A trainee on his first job, even with the books, will be more rough with soft skills than more experienced businessmen. However, this remains true for other disciplines as well. People who learnt Marketing, Finance or Organizational Behavior while at B-school will only learn how to best execute with some work experience, in the some way that people can develop better soft skills within time. It might be argued that one might know textbook content for people skills, but are not willing/able to apply this in real life. But it is also true that some people know marketing and organizational behavior theory, and also are not willing/able to apply this in real life (remember your last bad boss). Well, that is my take on it. I would be delighted to hear(well, read) other thoughts on this issue. Thank you very much for your time.
I absolutely agree that "soft skills" can be taught and thereby enhanced. I'm not so sure that testing "soft skills" can easily be done, though.
My take In my PhD research that targeted the skill sets required of IT managers, I actually spent reasonable resources and time investigating requisite non-technical (soft) skills. The results of my data analysis indicated that IT managers require both technical and soft skills. Currently, tools that can be used to evaluate soft skills abound, including SkillView and another tool from IBM. However, none of these tools is completely adequate. I recommended a four-step approach for tackling skills problem. The steps are as follows: Start with a skills-assessment tool that allows self-assessment. This tool shouldcontain profiles of all technical and non-technical skills that will help an IT manager perform her job in the organization. Use IT vendor training to update degraded technical skills. Use corporate trainers to update degraded non-technical (soft) skills. Repeat steps 1 through 3 every two years. [/list=1] One of the areas of thematic importance that I recommended for future studies in my dissertation is development of flexible and easily customizable tools that could meet (technical and soft) skills evaluation requirements in many organizations.
Re: My take I have a difficult time with engineers here at my employer who only think the technical backgrounds (chemistry, mechiancial, electrical, etc.) are the only hard sciences out there. I consider fiance, and any area that can hold to a statistical model a hard science. Ike, do you agree, or what would be your definition? Also, I would not consider organziational behavior a hard science, in most areas (my area of concentration), since it develops the "soft" side, i.e. relationships, learning styles, etc. I know a bit off topic, but would be interested in others thoughts.
Re: Re: My take I agree that any branch of knowledge that employs mathematical and statistical analyses can be viewed as systematic and hence scientific. For example, both quantitative Economics and Finance could be categorized as science disciplines but classical Economic can’t be regarded as a science discipline. Psychology and Organizational Behavior are definitely science disciplines. It is also important to recognize that there are similarities and differences between natural and social sciences.
Re: Re: Re: My take I think that is where I have been struggling to differentiate - good point - thanks.
Re: Re: Re: My take There is a lot of interesting debate on quantitative finance and economics and whether they are true scientific disciplines. Some critics argue that the mathematization of economics was an effort to instill hard science even though there are some serious questions about how well it applies. Certainly economics is not exactly like physics, where you can, in theory, repeat an experiment over and over and get the same results. Economics involves human behavior, which makes the modeling notoriously difficult. Stock returns are assumed to be normally or lognormally distributed because it makes solutions possible even though it may not (always) be a realistic model. My feeling is that mathematical economics is a scientific discipline, but that it is not a "hard" science like physics or chemistry. The fickle human brain makes it so, unfortunately.
Re: Re: Re: Re: My take I concur. As I stated in my earlier post, there are many similarities as well as several differences between natural and social sciences.
