Assessing Frontline Management Competence. How the `Inferential Leap' Can Reach Olympic Proportions (2001)

Keywords: Frontline Management, Competency, Assessment Earlier in 2001, I stopped teaching and assessing hospitality management students in the university sector. I now teach and assess hospitality managers studying in the technical and further education sector (TAFE). At face value it seemed like a simple transition. In fact I confidently expected that my experience in the tertiary sector would equip me to be a proficient teacher and assessor in the technical arena. In the 1990s, universities had made great improvements in teaching and assessment practices and, as part of that process, I felt my level of expertise should serve me well. What could be further from the truth? I first worked in technical education twenty-five years ago before moving into a college of advanced education, which Dawkins sent the way of the dodo in the late 1980s. We were metamorphosised in 1990 as part of the University system. In the intervening years there have been many changes in further education, the most striking of which are the concept of `competence' and the assessment of that competence in students. In my new position, I am now required to assess whether managers are practicing key management skills in a competent manner. These managers are invariably experienced hospitality practitioners. They include restaurant managers, bottle-shop managers, crew leaders in gaming areas and housekeeping supervisors. They are managers, not university students. Every year in Australia, there are about one thousand students graduating from universities with a business degree in hospitality or tourism management. There has never been any pretence that a degree in hospitality management equipped the holder to be a competent hospitality manager. Occasionally, an over-exuberant departmental copy writer and photographer may have sent out slightly misleading messages via advertising brochures but academics were generally pretty consistent regarding what they were assessing. To be awarded a degree, the student has to show that she or he has demonstrated the learning outcomes of the twenty-four or so subjects studied during the degree. Demonstrating learning outcomes via written and oral presentations plus an examination, does not equate with demonstrating managerial competence. In many ways they are a different set of skills. They are the skills of the professional student rather than the practising manager. That may sound like heresy to the average Australian taxpayer but generations of university hospitality and tourism graduates have shown that a degree gives the ability to access information, think critically and get a tool kit of knowledge coupled with a few motor skills. These knowledge and skills need to be developed and honed through years of managerial practice before true competence can be achieved. Even if hospitality programs have an industry placement period whereby students work in industry, few students ever get an opportunity to work at a frontline managerial level. The skills and knowledge attained are at operational rather than managerial level. Industrial placement can give students a range of benefits including improved operative skills and a deeper understanding of how organisations function. Rarely do they develop managerial competence per se. So universities assessing hospitality/tourism and `management' conveniently sidestep the issue of competence. What does the term mean in practice? Competence in frontline management can be measured at different levels depending on the qualification being sought by the trainee. The higher the level of qualification, the greater the degree of complexity in content and assessment. Competence at level four involves the application of knowledge with depth in some areas and a broad range of skills. There is a wide range of tasks and roles in a variety of contexts with complexity in the range and choice of actions required. …