A Model for the Assessment of Management Competencies of Masters in Management

Abstract

The article presents the authors’ model for the assessment of management competencies (MC) of masters in management, based on expert evaluation of the MC level by 28 criteria, broken into three groups of management functions: effectiveness of management decisions, organization and monitoring of work, and motivation and development of personnel. Six MC levels are set depending on the intensity of manifestation of each group of management functions: strong, medium, and weak. A binary matrix is constructed for each level by the method of paired comparisons. The distances between the measured MC level of a master in management and the benchmark matrices are proposed to be calculated as the Hamming metric, because it allows to employ Boolean values and accounts for the sequence of the measurements. The model application is demonstrated by field experiments with master students of the specialty “Management” in the second academic year. To confirm the adequacy of the model and results of its testing, the consistency of expert opinions is estimated by the concordance factor; the statistical significance of the latter is confirmed by use of Pearson statistics; the input data for an assumed student with a high level of MC formation are simulated, with demonstrating through calculations that the minimal distance will be the one between the matrix of this student’s data and the benchmark matrix for the high MC level. The calculations were made using MathCad software. The consistency of expert opinions was evaluated by use of Statistica software package. The proposed model can be applied to assess any kind of competencies, for students of various specialties. It will require only changed assessment criteria.

Keywords

• management competencies, assessment of management competencies, benchmark matrix, hamming metric, method of paired comparisons.