How to Measure Management Skills: Systematic Review

1. Introduction

The objective this article was to identify appropriate ways to measure managerial skills based on a systematic review of the literature. The importance derived from the development managerial skills lies in the fact that these characteristics are the main condition required by current organizations to lead the processes for institutional improvement and achieve successful results, as they are differentiating factors for productivity in any business sector, since they have an impact on profitability and also on employability and job stability [1,2].

In this regard, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) points out the need to achieve the fourth Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) on Quality Education in its education target 4.4 to significantly increase the number of youth and adults who have the necessary skills, particularly technical and vocational, to access employment, decent work and entrepreneurship by 2030 [3].

Management skills are developed on competencies that are built and learned through education, where the limits and potential of individuals are expanded; therefore, detecting talents, resources and skills in intellectual capital is important for continuous improvement, job performance, sustainable development and growth in organizations [2,4,5].

So they can be classified into technical, computer (technological or digital) and cognitive (intellectual) skills, to work according to new trends at the global level [6]. The skills are also divided into hard skills, which are knowledge, and soft skills, which are attributed to personality characteristics that are more difficult to develop [7].

On the other hand, there is the proposal of seven core managerial skills focused on 1) interpersonal skills, 2) conceptual, 3) technical, 4) time management, 5) diagnosis, 6) communication and 7) decision making [8]. There is also a model with ten essential managerial skills that are classified into three main groups, firstly personal-technical skills that include 1) self-knowledge, 2) problem solving, 3) time and stress management, secondly interpersonal-social skills related to 4) conflict management, 5) motivation, 6) communication and 7) leadership; finally group skills related to 8) delegation management, 9) change management and 10) teamwork [9], these skills are complemented by other specific fundamental communication skills such as interviewing, oral and written presentations and meeting management [10].

In that vein, the Corporate Council on Education, in a program of the National Center for Education and Business of the Conference Board of Canada, has developed the Employability Skills 2000+ skills profile, which proposes a classification of core skills that lead to eleven management skills: fundamental ones include 1) communicating, 2) information handling, 3) use numbers, 4) thinking and problem solving; people management skills highlight 5) positive attitudes and behaviors, 6) responsibility, 7) adaptability, 8) learning, 9) working safely and finally, collaborative skills encompassing 10) teamwork and 11) participation in projects and tasks [11,12].

These classifications show that there is no universal consensus regarding a specific set of managerial skills, as Callohuanca and Tanta-lean, [13], state, although these skills have been widely studied as isolated dimensions or as a whole, but only for descriptive purposes, since it is assumed that they change depending on the different contexts. Additionally, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD, 2016) [14], very few countries assess skills directly, both because there is often no agreement on the definitions of many of the innumerable skills relevant to jobs, and because such measurements are costly and difficult. This makes it necessary to identify instruments that measure job skills for successful performance in management functions and that can be acquired or expanded through professional training.

Nowadays, economic, technological and social changes modify work structures, as well as the requirements for employability [15]; jobs have changed in the functions performed by workers and job stability, and this explains why the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) [14] insists that generic and specific competencies are increasingly important in the future employment [16,17]; demanding training and development of different skills that are compatible with the supply in the current labor market [18,19].

Companies aim to turn efforts in dynamic capabilities and organizational learning experiences into a competitive advantage [20]. For this reason, organizations invest in management development programs whose purpose is to improve the managerial skills of individual managers through education, training and systematic development of management members within the organization, enabling standardization of managerial approaches and procedures through corporate guidelines and programs [21].

In that order of ideas, workers who participate in management development programs and obtain the highest qualifications in management competencies are identified for employability, successful career transitions and inclusion in corporate succession planning, as they represent a measure for success in many organizations, since they have the potential to assume greater management responsibility for the future for the organization. [21,22].

Therefore, management development is a strategy used to promote human talent to higher level positions, leading to an increase of managerial talent level as well as employability capital for human talents, which refers to the combination of obtaining and retaining a job [23]. A key element in the management development process is the assessment of specific educational needs for the development of managers and senior executives, as well as measuring managerial skills, which will also be useful in identifying training needs and potential problems for various management styles in order to improve competitiveness [21,24].

Thus, the need arises to establish a construct explained in a valid and reliable evaluation instrument, in which indicators are identified that can measure management skills and employability attributes in order to improve the value chain in the professional training process so that human talents are better prepared for the needs of today’s labor market. However, according to a study by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development - OECD [14], in very few countries skills are assessed directly, because there is often no agreement regarding the definitions for many of the innumerable skills relevant to jobs, as well as because these measurements are costly and difficult [14].

2. Materials and Methods

In this review, the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guideline [25] and the PICOS (population, interventions, comparators, outcomes, and study) tool were used to establish eligibility criteria for articles [26,27] being also used by [28].

The initial search for articles was strengthened with the use scientometrics for a systematic review [29] that focuses on knowledge production, spatiality for knowledge production and knowledge relationships within the global network actors [30,31], which allows refining the initial selection articles based on a vector search using field labels and Boolean operators as well as incorporating the mixed sequential use with the PRISMA guideline that in the publications of [32,33,34] have been used.

Articles with the search vector TS = (management NEAR/0 skills) were identified using the Web of Science Core Collection (WoS) databases: Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE), Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) and Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI), which contain journals indexed in the WoS Journal Citation Report (JCR), which are considered high quality journals whose impact is calculated annually according to the average number citations received. With respect to Scopus, the journals indexed in SCIE-WoS, SSCI-WoS and ESCI-WoS had high indexing duplicity with this index. Through the PRISMA guide, the selection of articles was specified based on eligibility criteria: the target population, the interventions in this population, the elements of comparison for these studies, the results to which these studies were oriented, as shown in Table 1.

3. Results

The bibliometric search identified a total 6,803 documents from three different databases of the Web of Science - WoS Core Collection (i.e., SCIE, SSCI and ESCI). A total 6,345 unique titles and abstracts (no duplicates) were identified; however, with the exclusion of documents that were not in English and Spanish (185) as well as documents that were not scientific articles (1,591) resulted in 4,569 re-screening records. In addition, 3,712 non-Economics and Management articles were excluded, reducing the analyzed corpus to 857 full-text articles in English or Spanish retrieved and screened. Finally, we excluded articles that did not include a confirmatory factor analysis (836), those that did not measure managerial skills (6), others without open access (5) and, using the selection criteria defined with the PICOS tool, the selection identified a total 10 studies that met the requirements for inclusion in this systematic review as shown in Figure 1.

3.1. Qualitative Review Analysis

The ten articles that met the eligibility criteria were reviewed at the full-text level to determine precisely whether their characteristics offered homogeneous criteria that made them comparable. Table 2 shows the main identification and retrieval information obtained from the WoS databases.

Table 2 shows a high concentration of articles in journals indexed in the SSCI (Social Science Citation Index) and SCIE (Science Citation Index Expanded), as well as four ESCI (Emerging Sources Citation Index) articles. Out of the 10 empirical cases, six were mainly concentrated in Asia (China, Thailand, Indonesia and Turkey), three in the Americas (United States, Chile and Mexico), plus one in Europe (Spain). In addition to the solid empirical studies, it should be noted that the data come mainly from survey applications.

Thematically, the journals in which these articles were published were associated with WoS categories, mainly concentrated in Psychology, Education, Social Sciences and Business Management. In terms of time, these articles were published between 2004 and 2022.

3.2. Quantitative Review Analysis

The set articles selected were evaluated according to the breadth of topics on the measurement managerial skills, according to the analysis method PRISMA in its quantitative stage. As a method for the analysis of the ten articles, the confirmatory factor analysis used to evaluate the validity and reliability of the instruments applied to measure managerial skills was identified.

Additionally, in this set articles that studied empirical cases where data were collected through surveys were statistically analyzed using several multivariate statistical techniques including exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). These are detailed for each item and the only ones that report a complete validation and reliability for the instruments applied are those that directly use CFA.

Table 3 reports the research that refers to the measurement skills related to this research; ten articles use confirmatory factor analysis as a method to measure managerial skills, a criterion that has been maintained for the inclusion of documents in the next stage in the review.

[According to] Méndez Martínez and Rondón Sepúlveda [43] the Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) is a statistical technique of interdependence, whose purpose is to define new factors from the analysis of a set of variables that are highly correlated with each other or to reduce the number of these by identifying the most relevant ones; it is used in the construction of scales and questionnaires.

In an AFE, correlations can be evaluated by means of Bartlett’s test of sphericity, partial correlations can also be measured through the Kaiser Meyer Olkin index (KMO), as well as the individual sample adequacy index (MSA), both of which take values between 0 and 1. The measure can be interpreted as unacceptable values when they are less than 0.5; poor between 0.5 and 0.59; regular when they range between 0.6 and 0.79, and meritorious from 0.8 to 1.

According to [44] Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) evaluates models that propose that a set unobserved variable predict the variability of a set observed variables. In addition, it evaluates the extent to which a set theoretically organized set of factors fits the data through an analysis in which the deficiencies inherent to the exploratory perspective are corrected and a confidence level must be established.

In Table 4, the evaluation metrics used in the CFA in this study are defined, based on [43] and [44].

It was necessary to perform an analysis of the indicators and their parameters: Chi-square/ratio of degrees of freedom (χ2/df), root mean square error approximation (RMSEA), adjusted goodness-of-fit index (AGFI), goodness-of-fit index (GFI), comparative fit index (CFI), normed fit index (NFI), non-normed fit index (NNFI) and root mean square root of residuals (SRMR) or (RMSR) to determine the validation and reliability parameters, which are shown in Table 5.

Table 6 presents in detail ten articles, already included in Table 3, which use various combinations of exploratory factor analysis (EFA), confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). For these analyses, the indicators reported by the researchers are presented: Chi-square/degrees of freedom ratio (χ2/df), root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA), adjusted goodness of fit index (AGFI), goodness of fit index (GFI), comparative fit index (CFI), normed fit index (NFI), non-normed fit index (NNFI) and the standardized root mean square residual (SRMR).

Table 7 shows the results for the comparison of validity and reliability indicators, product of the exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), detailing the five articles that report the best indicators in this study. The analysis reflects the comparison of the following indicators: Chi-square/relation of degrees of freedom (χ2/df), root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA), adjusted goodness of fit index (AGFI), goodness of fit index (GFI), comparative fit index (CFI), normed fit index (NFI), non-normed fit index (NNFI) and standardized root mean square residual (SRMR), with respect to the parameters previously established in Table 5.

4. Discussion

La The systematic review presented in this study analyzed different appropriate ways to measure managerial skills without focusing on a specific classification for skills as did the contributions of [41] on soft or emotional skills; [12] concerning fundamental or socio-cognitive, personal and collaborative skills; [40] focused on digital content management skills; [38] on leadership skills; [42] who studied general management skills. Thus, this article provides a broader approach that allowed reviewing common aspects of the articles indicated above, e.g., general management skills, leadership, decision making, communication and teamwork, enabling future studies on a broader set employability skills in different social, geographic and organizational contexts.

Regarding the method for analysis, the data from the articles were collected through surveys or questionnaires that were statistically analyzed using several methods, including exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). In this way, it was possible to compare indicators through updated validity and reliability parameters used in other studies such as that of [28].

It should also be noted that this review followed the PRISMA protocol as other previous reviews on skills [34], showing the systematization the review and advancing it to an objective-quantitative comparison of the analyzed articles. This review incorporated general managerial skills for employability and relied heavily on statistical reports provided in the reviewed literature on common variables and factors within the selected set of articles [12,38,40,41,42].

With respect to the limitations in this study, it can be mentioned that only one database - WoS - was used, which in turn guarantees a high concentration with articles in high impact indexed journals, in addition to ensuring a common comparison base and the same search vector with a high requirement that allowed the identification scales that had been subjected to strict statistical rigor reporting in due form that the stated constructs were effectively measured and, therefore, contributed to a reliable understanding for employability skills. On the other hand, not all studies included measurement instruments such as [40] and [41] in their articles.

Finally, this review has important implications for organizations, educational institutions and other researchers, since the findings identified appropriate scales for measuring managerial skills, which show guidelines on the methods for analysis and parameters of evaluation indicators, which will allow future research their use and application, as well as the generation of new instruments for measuring different types of managerial skills for employability.

5. Conclusions

In summary, this article provides an original systematic review, using the PRISMA protocol, which reviewed articles on the measurement of managerial skills for employability that presented valid and reliable scales that measured confirmatory factor constructs on the topic fundamental, emotional, managerial, leadership, communication, decision-making and teamwork skills, among others.

The results also evidence the interest in the scientific community in the study of managerial skills for employability in America, Europe and Asia, in which the objective of this research to identify appropriate ways to measure managerial skills has been achieved with the finding of a reduced set of five scales that are considered valid and reliable through a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and that also reported the best indicators according to the evaluation parameters.

These measurement scales can be used in public and private sector organizations, as well as in universities to identify, measure and develop managerial skills such as fundamental, emotional, managerial, leadership, decision-making, communication and teamwork skills, which contribute to generate added value for human talents and distinctive competencies for companies in different social, geographical and organizational contexts.