The purpose of this article is to define and explain a trend that has caused a great deal of confusion among HR researchers, practitioners, and consumers of HR‐related services: competency modeling. The Job Analysis and Competency Modeling Task Force, a work group jointly sponsored by the Professional Practice Committee and the Scientific Affairs Committee of the Society For Industrial and Organizational Psychology, has recently concluded a 2‐year investigation into the antecedents of competency modeling and an examination of the current range of practice. Competency modeling is compared and contrasted to job analysis using a conceptual framework (reflected in a 10‐dimension Level of Rigor Scale) that practitioners and researchers may use to guide future work efforts, and which could be used as a basis for developing standards for practice. The strengths and weaknesses of both competency modeling and job analysis are identified and, where appropriate, recommendations are made for leveraging strengths in one camp to shore‐up weaknesses in the other.

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Previous thought and research on criterion development emphasize measurement problems related to scaling and analysis, problems created b> the sponsor, values of the researcher, aspects of deriving a composite criterion, and the dynamic character of job requirements related to incumbent learmnq There is an additional variable (s) to be considered, organization change and the effect of changing need* on the nature of the criteria of individual job 1 ' Job duties may remain static under these circumstances, only the relevance of performance changes

The in-basket test is a frequently used assessment tool for predicting job performance and, to a lesser extent, as a technique for research and development in various human resource applications. While the in-basket test has obvious attractive features for application in the business setting, there is a great degree of uniqueness in each application and relatively little research focusing on critical issues involved in construction or evaluation. In this paper, the literature focusing on the psychometric properties of in-basket measures of performance are reviewed and evaluated. The compiled evidence provides only modest support of the usefulness of the in-basket test as a measurement tool. We would like to express our appreciation to four anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on an earlier version of this article.Correspondence and requests for reprints should be addressed to Jeffery S. Schippmann, now with Performance Management Associates, Poplar Towers -Suite 1103,6263 Poplar Avenue, Memphis, TN 38119. COPYRIGHT 0 1990 PERSONNELPSYCHOLOGY, INC.

Job analysis is invariably mentioned as a part of industrial/organizational activities, but the treatment rarely matches the acknowledged importance. While the amount of research on job analysis methods has increased dramatically in the past decade several critical issues remain unresolved. The EEOC Selection Guidelines have increased the dependence on the process and results of job analysis with respect to personnel selection and especially content validation. In the absence of research which defines the necessary and sufficient job analysis method a multi‐method approach using both task‐and worker‐methods is strongly recommended.