quired. Conversely managers need expert human resource consultation and leadership. Where the human resource manager is unavailable or too busy due to attending to operational human resource issues, managers often “buy in” human resource consultancy or continue on their own. A further issue for developing competencies is the differing roles that human resource managers can have within an organisation. Tempe (1996, p.52) identified at least four different roles. These were the human resource leaders in executive roles in an organisation, the generalist human resource manager aligned with business units. The specialist human resource manager in the traditional human resource department and the human resource manager with a specific focus such as organisational change, organisational effectiveness, and program design. Each of these areas requires clearly articulated competencies that account for these differing roles. While there are differing human resource roles, research has clearly identified human resource competencies as being generic across sectors and industries. “By all means time must be spent in identifying the critical competencies. However even more time and energy should be devoted to develop these competencies. The secret is: ‘Just start doing it’.” (Tempe, 1996, p.57). Lewis (1997, p.132) points out that intelligently developed competencies can specifically describe worker activities and outcomes, link training and development with reward and promotion. On the other hand poor development of competencies can have significant cost and in return offer vague “Mom-and-apple-pie platitudes about "building value" that could apply to any organization at any time”. SummaryThe transformation of human resource management from one of administrative support function, that is the more traditional human resource operational management model, to a strategic partner in developing vision a...
