A fuzzy approach to the strategic development of human capital in the electric sector
Introduction
Increasingly, due to technological advances and competitiveness, companies have to invest in their employees to gain a competitive advantage. With this, organizations seek to involve their employees by identifying, training, improving, and maximizing their skills to achieve the objectives required by the market. In this way, human capital management has become a key skill among an organization's managers and leaders to identify weaknesses, opportunities for improvement, interactions with other organizations, and improve operational techniques (Rodríguez, 1998, Golec and Kahya, 2007, Stith, 2018).
Managers must train, motivate and encourage employees in the pursuit of continuous learning. However, this is not a simple task due to a large number of variables in this context (Navarrete & Hernandéz, 2014). Thus, companies seek positive and consistent results by training and developing the skills of employees to perform tasks efficiently and effectively (Liker and Meier, 2007, Cailhol et al., 2013).
With a suitable environment that stimulates the subordinates' abilities and supports the creativity of the people, one can generate the knowledge necessary for the continuity of the tasks in the best way. To do this, information that generates knowledge must be stored, transferred, assimilated, and applied as inputs into the production process (Massingham, 2014, Chavan and Agarwal, 2016). Therefore, the learning paradigm requires the company to develop the skills of its staff by acquiring and assimilating new knowledge bases. Thus, the information needs to be available to creative people to turn that information into knowledge (Yam and Chan, 2015, Tchanturia et al., 2015).
Given this context, the research investigates two electric power companies because it deals with a representative and relevant sector in the country. According to ANEEL (Brazilian Electricity Regulatory Agency) (2019), Brazil has 4912 projects in operation, totaling 158,146,917 KW of installed capacity, and an additional 18,103,360 KW of capacity is expected for the coming year’s generation of the country, coming from over 600 projects in progress. According to agency data, distribution is a segment of the electricity sector dedicated to lowering the voltage from the transmission system, connecting power stations, and supplying electricity to the consumer.
The distribution system is composed of the electric grid and the set of electrical installations and equipment that operate at high voltage levels (above 69 kV and below 230 kV), medium voltage (above 1 kV and below 69 kV) and low voltage (1 kV or less). Currently, Brazil has 114 electricity distributors, of which 63 are concessionaires and 38 permissionaires, in addition to 13 rural electrification cooperatives, which are in the process of being regularized to be concessionaires or permissionaires (ANEEL, 2019). The number of employees in 2017 reached 237,200 employees and has a projection of more than 241,000 employees in 2019, according to ABINEE (Brazilian Association of Electrical and Electronics Industry) (2019).
Taking into consideration the importance of this sector for the country, this paper presents a study to bring contributions to all those involved. In view of the above, a work was developed that has theoretical consistency on the basic themes of the research, both for the academic and professional environment, presenting utilities for the daily life of companies. Thus, this research aims to analyze human capital as one of the main factors of competitive advantage through the Model for Human Capital Development with Support in Changing the Training Paradigm for Learning proposed by Calábria et al. (2018) integrated to fuzzy set theory.
The Model for Human Capital Development with Support in Changing the Training Paradigm for Learning developed by Calábria et al. (2018) presents through its three vertices (Strategic vertex, Operational vertex, and Provocative vertex) an overview of employee behavior that will help develop people management bringing significant improvements to internal processes. Despite being considered a robust model, Calábria et al. (2018) did not take into consideration characteristics such as the subjectivity, the ambiguity, and the inaccuracy of the employees' evaluation of the answers obtained, which are the most intense characteristics in the human capital evaluation.
Therefore, the Theory of Fuzzy Sets is an adequate tool to reduce the subjectivity present in the individual's perception about a certain theme (Ozdemir and Tekin, 2016, Jianping et al., 2018, Hasheminasab et al., 2018). This importance is related to the ability to deal with data that is not accurate and that is based on the subjectivity of the respondent. In the context of this research, it is possible to transform the subjective evaluation of the employee who will determine how much is being influenced by the training in relation to the indicator in question. And, by the degrees of pertinence, to group at various levels to determine the relevance degree of the objective indicator of the model (Ouyang & Pedrycz, 2016).
In this way the fuzzy theory proposed by Zadeh (1965), was applied because it is allowing greater flexibility in the data analysis, seeking to translate the human reasoning process by considering aspects such as imprecision when analyzing the employee’s behavior of an organization. The preference for adopting this theory is because the data is treated differently from the classic set theory, in which the elements are classified, according to their pertinence, by a binary system. Considering the data from this cloudy environment, the analysis of human capital based on the model proposed by Calábria et al. (2018) comes close to the human judgment that, in its individual rationality, is characterized by imprecision. In addition, it presents benefits such as the possibility of using relevant functions during the analysis, which facilitates the expression of human feeling and the processing of data, or evaluation expressions, continuously.
Therefore, in order to reduce the subjectivity present in the employees' evaluation and a more reliable way to evaluate the human capital of the organization, the fuzzy set theory was employed. This work presented the application of the model and data analysis in two companies of the electric sector. The first company is from the energy distribution sector and the second from energy generation.
This paper has six sections. Section 1 presents the context of the theme, the justification, and objectives of the paper. Section 2 reports in the literature review, concepts to Training and Development, Organizational Learning, Cognitive Processes, and Fuzzy Set Theory to evaluate the impact of training on the human capital of companies in the electric sector. Section 3 shows the research methodology while Section 4 illustrates the results and discussion of the paper. Section 5 describes managerial practical implications and finally, conclusions are drawn from the research findings and their implications are discussed in Section 6.
Section snippets
Literature review
This section presents an application of the concepts of Training and Development, Organizational Learning, Cognitive Processes, and fuzzy set theory to evaluate the impact of training on the human capital of companies in the electric sector.
Methodology
The objective of this paper is to analyze human capital as one of the main factors of competitive advantage. For this purpose, the Model for Human Capital Development with Support in Changing the Training Paradigm for Learning proposed by Calábria et al. (2018) will be integrated into the fuzzy set theory. The model proposed by Calábria et al. (2018) provides, through its vertices, a holistic view of the organization's employee's behavior that will help the development of this personnel on the
Results and discussion
The research presented the analysis of the data collected in two companies in the electric sector. The first company is from the energy distribution sector and the second from power generation.
Managerial practical implications
When analyzing the integration of the model applied with the theory of fuzzy sets in the development of human capital, it is concluded that the model proved to be able to understand the main aspects that must be improved in order to develop human capital in the company. With this, organizations can seek significant solutions so that the necessary improvements can occur, following the indicators and encouraging feedbacks to promote the correct investment of companies.
The benefits of investments
Conclusion
The present research aimed to analyze human capital as one of the main factors of competitive advantage between companies. In order to do this, a tool of great power in data processing was applied, which does not fit into the common theories, where the boundaries between the distinct elements of a set are quite clear: Fuzzy Set Theory.
This theory reflects the human reasoning process, considering the reduction of the subjectivity present in the individual's perception about a certain theme. As
Acknowledgements
This study was financed in part by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - Brasil (CAPES) - Finance Code 001, the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico – Brasil (CNPQ) and the Fundação de Amparo a Ciência e Tecnologia de Pernambuco (FACEPE).
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