Abstract:

The current economic system has developed an increasing need of change and adaption in companies. A modification of the enterprise policy, merges, acquisitions or changes in the legislation are examples of activity of the current economy. This dynamic situation may affect the conditions through which personnel selection was made inside the company and therefore, affect the reallocation of personnel in the company. Moreover, companies need to deal with the ambiguous nature of the applicant’s competences and the existence of several experts evaluating those attributes. In this way, through the pedagogical proposal addressed to first-year Business Administration undergraduates that we present, we attempt to assess the acquired skills in subjects with quantitative nature used in the business management context.

In this work, several scenarios are considered in order to show the different possibilities about personnel reallocation: changes in the way of valuating the staff competences and modifications of the new ideal workforce competences.

Using some distance functions we will assess the difference between each worker profile and the ideal employee profile and we will finally select the employees who have less distance to that idealized one (employees are ranked based on their similarity to the ideal one). Consequently, the worker who has less distance to the ideal one (adding all the competences selected for a specific job position) will possibly be reallocated. Eventually, we will have several lists with several personnel rankings that will illustrate the dynamic situation that companies might have to face up.

The activity we propose consists of understanding the problem of a current personnel reallocation and its multiple approaches. To perform this task, the students must use quantitative techniques and business management knowledge that should have acquired previously. In addition, they should use their teamwork and synthesis skills in an integrated way.

Keywords:

Quantitative methods in management, competences, human resources management, decision making.