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Competency development and management are widely regarded as vital tools to enhance competitiveness for organizations. A number of studies have suggested a variety of competency models, including a list of required competencies for use by organizations that wish to enrich their employees' competencies. However, all these required competencies do not necessarily share the same importance. To effectively implement competency development, it is desirable to distinguish the differences of perceived competency levels between high-performers and others. In doing so, a large number of required competencies can be reduced into a compact set that focuses on significant competencies of high-performers. To this end, this paper proposes a method based on the rough set theory to explore high-performers' required competencies. An empirical study is presented to illustrate the application of the proposed method. Based on our findings, conclusions and implications for management are presented.

For ensuring the successful implementation of knowledge management, here raises a critical issue of how companies can better evaluate and select a favorable knowledge management strategy before that implementation. However, selecting a proper knowledge management strategy is a kind of multiple criteria decision-making (MCDM) problem required to consider a large number of complex factors. Unlike many traditional MCDM methods that are based on the independence assumption, the analytic network process (ANP) is a relative new MCDM method which can deal with all kinds of dependences systematically. Since the ANP has these advantages, in this paper, we develop an effective method based on the ANP to help companies that need to evaluate and select knowledge management strategies. Additionally, an empirical study is presented to illustrate the application of the proposed method.

Modern global managers are required to possess a set of competencies or multiple intelligences in order to meet pressing business challenges. Hence, expanding global managers’ competencies is becoming an important issue. Many scholars and specialists have proposed various competency models containing a list of required competencies. But it is hard for someone to master a broad set of competencies at the same time. Here arises an imperative issue on how to enrich global managers’ competencies by way of segmenting a set of competencies into some portions in order to facilitate competency development with a stepwise mode. To solve this issue involving the vagueness of human judgments, we have proposed an effective method combining fuzzy logic and Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) to segment required competencies for better promoting the competency development of global managers. Additionally, an empirical study is presented to illustrate the application of the proposed method.