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The purpose of this paper is two-fold: to identify the reliability and content validity of two popular managerial coaching scales – the Ellinger Behavioral Scale and the Park Skills-based Scale – to determine the extent to which the construct, coaching, is more accurately measured as a behavioral construct or a skill-based construct from the perspective of the coach, and from that of his or her direct reports using a single data set.

This research utilized survey research which tested the reliability and validity of two existing coaching scales. Analyses included correlation matrices, principle axis factor analysis, and confirmatory factor analysis.

Results of this research indicate that neither scale is perfectly reliable and valid. However, given the results of the analysis, the authors recommend the Park scale for leaders and the Ellinger scale for team members.

This research indicates that investment in valid scales for use by direct reports to measure the coaching expertise of their managers is warranted.

There are several implications that are evident as a result of this research. First, there are implications for the training and development of employees. Too, many organizations look to coaching and coaching skills as a benchmark for selecting future leaders – the understanding of how current scales are able to identify coaching expertise is important to the manager selection process.

This research offers one of the first comparative analyses of currently available coaching scales. It contributes to the literature on coaching by providing a clear and thorough review and analysis of scales currently available for testing managerial coaching expertise. Practitioners and scholars can benefit from this research by developing a better understanding of the contexts in which these two coaching scales are most reliable and valid.

Based on the theoretical development by House et al. (2004), the purpose of this paper is to investigate the cross-cultural differences of internal auditors’ perceptions on the importance of internal auditor skills.

The authors developed a survey based on the competency framework for internal auditing and collected data from the UK (Anglo cultural cluster) and Korea (Confucian cultural cluster). In total, 231 internal auditors participated in the study.

The results showed that UK auditors perceived behavioral skills as more important than cognitive skills, while Korean auditors had an opposite perception. Not surprisingly, UK auditors rated each sub-category of behavioral skills higher than Korean auditors; Korean auditors gave higher scores than UK auditors for each sub-category of cognitive skills.

One limitation of the study is that two different data collection methods were used for the study: online for the UK and paper-based for Korean auditors. Another limitation of the study is that the authors did not analyze the possible impact of each participating auditor’s background knowledge.

The findings of the study contributes to professional practice by providing culturally adaptive criteria for regulators’ policy-making, organizations’ employee hiring and training, and educators’ curriculum design across various cultural environments.

The findings of the study can provide some insights on cultural impacts to help academic researchers develop models regarding the internal auditor selection and training in different nations.

This paper reports on a study of the efficacy of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of New Zealand's (the Institute) Professional Accounting School (PAS) programme in developing a set of competencies in candidates. The study surveyed Institute candidates' perceptions of their competence levels for 16 specified skills at the commencement and conclusion of the 1999 PAS programme. The findings indicate that candidates perceived their levels of competence, for both cognitive and behavioural skills, to have been significantly improved by the PAS programme. Tests of two secondary hypotheses in the study indicate certain gender‐ and firm‐based differences in the perceived level of competence of candidates. The results of the study provide the Institute with feedback on the PAS programme and facilitate the further development of the programme. Other professional accounting bodies may consider replicating this study using data collected on similar programmes. The results of such studies may then be compared to enhance the existing knowledge of competency development in professional accounting education.

The purpose of this paper is to consider how simulations are increasingly used in training programs for the development of skills such as leadership. However, the requirements of leadership development go beyond the development of task specific procedural knowledge or expertise that simulations have typically been used to develop. Leadership requires flexibility in the application of knowledge developed through simulations and the creation of linkages to behavioral execution skills needed to utilize that knowledge effectively in real world settings.

The successful acquisition of flexible expertise and the related execution skills requires instructional techniques that manage cognitive load, delay automatization of responses, and provide diversity in simulated experiences to ensure richness of the mental models developed while working on simulations. The successful transfer of that knowledge to real world settings requires supplemental instructional techniques that link the use of the mental models developed on simulations to the contexts and behavioral requirements of the trainees' roles in real world settings.

If simulations are going to be used effectively for the development of dynamic skills such as leadership there is a need to go beyond their traditional use. The execution of leadership skills requires flexible expertise. The successful acquisition of rich schemata and versatile mental models as the goal of leadership development programs calls for instructional techniques that also facilitate the successful manifestation of flexible expertise.

The paper shows that, when embedded in deliberative processing, application of knowledge developed though simulations and the creation of linkages to behavioral execution skills facilitates successful performance in complex and dynamic real world challenges.

The purpose of this empirical research was to investigate the individual effects of three dimensions of flexible human resource management (HRM) practices – skill flexibility, behavioral flexibility and human practice flexibility on firm performance and to what extent these relationships are strengthened/weakened when there was the moderation of empowering leadership in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) of the Kingdom of Bahrain.

The data were collected from chief executive officers (CEOs) through a questionnaire survey method to test the hypothesized relationships. A final dataset of 315 valid responses was utilized for data analysis, and results were analyzed using the Smart partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) technique.

The findings revealed positive effects of skill flexibility, behavioral flexibility and human practice flexibility on firm performance. The moderating role of empowering leadership further strengthened the effects of employee skill flexibility and employee behavioral flexibility had on firm performance. However, empowering leadership did not pose any moderating effect on human practice flexibility and firm performance relationship.

This paper offers implications for theories on HRM and leadership. It also provides valuable insights for organizations and leaders seeking to boost firm performance across SMEs.

This paper offers implications for theories on HRM and leadership and also contributes in the understanding of the modern managers.

This paper investigated the effects of flexible HRM practices on firm performance and the role of empowering leadership across SMEs in Bahrain. It also explored how the performance of SMEs can be improved using flexible HRM practices followed by the presence of empowering leadership.

The present study is an attempt of identifying the human capital skills and HR-related challenges faced by top management in the perspective of industry 4.0 in emerging economies. In addition, the importance or key resources related to human assets that help in attaining competitive advantages while adopting newer digital technologies are also identified.

For identifying the dimensions of human capital skills in the perspective of industry 4.0, an extensive review of literature was performed. Along with that, feedback from the expert was used to conceptualize the importance and relationship of the skills in the context of industry 4.0. After that, a qualitative survey was launched and triangulate method was applied for identifying the skills. AHP and DEMATEL was used to analyze the relationship among the skills and subskills and to rank them based on their importance.

The qualitative survey resulted in skills such as “Cognitive, Emotional and Behavioural skills” and subskills of them. AHP results indicated that “Cognitive skills” was found as the most important skill followed by “Emotional skills” and “Behavioural skills”. In addition to this, DEMATEL was applied for seeking the inter-relationship and identifying the “Cause” and “Effect” relationship of skills and sub-skills.

This study prioritizes factors in a coordinated manner and also finds the relative importance in the context of industry 4.0. It will help further in identifying and deploying human capital with the right skills and will play a significant role at the time of formulating organizational and HR level strategies.

With supply chains expanding in scope and scale globally, the academic literature underlined the increasing role and importance of soft skills. Traditionally, the supply chain literature geared towards hard skills including functional and technical skill sets with limited discussion on soft skills. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to assess and explore the soft skills demand in supply chain management arena.

This study has utilised a mixed methods study in two phases, with the first stage including a questionnaire distributed to 120 supply chain employees in the UK, followed by six interviews with supply chain experts in the UK.

The results suggest that soft skills, especially behavioural skills such as communication, planning, initiative and negotiation, were seen to be more important when compared to decision making, negotiation and management skills. The findings indicate that the changing supply chain scope encourages the requisition and development of different supply chain soft skills with varied levels of emphasis in relation to 15 soft skills identified in the literature.

This study employs a mixed-method approach to establish the perceived importance of soft skills in the UK supply chains. This limits the generalisability of the results to other contextual settings.

This paper presents soft skills impact upon the supply chain. Specific soft skills are critical to supply chain employees compared to others (e.g. behavioural and people management skills), which may lead to articulation of supply chain soft skills training initiatives.

This paper contributes to the soft skills discussion in the supply chain context and discusses the role of soft skills. Topical gaps in the literature are identified as areas for future research. The findings have generated additional supply chain skills to the academic literature as well as provided an understanding of the weighting of soft skills in terms of their importance and application to industry needs.

The paper aims to examine to what extent and why parental involvement as well as characteristics of ethnic school population influence social skills scores (social position, behavioural skills) of students.

The study used the COOL5-18 database (2010) that included 553 Dutch primary schools and nearly 38,000 students in Grades two, five and eight (aged approximately 5, 8, 11, respectively). Multilevel regression analyses were used for analysis.

The findings indicate that parental involvement has a positive impact on the social skills scores of the students; behavioural skill scores are higher in ethnically homogeneous schools and lower in schools with a high share of non-Western ethnic minority students. There is no impact of characteristics of school population composition on social position scores.

A possible disadvantage is the way in which social skills and parental involvement were measured. These measurements are possibly negatively influenced by the teacher’s judgement of the language skills of the parents.

Existing research focuses on the impact of parental involvement and the composition of ethnic school population on cognitive skills. This study shows that parental involvement has a positive impact on social skills. This study also shows that in schools with a homogeneous ethnic composition or a high share of native Dutch children, behavioural skills scores are higher, but social position scores are not impacted.

There is a large body of literature suggesting that students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) lack appropriate social skills, including deficits in building and maintaining interpersonal relationships, prosocial behaviors (e.g., sharing, helping, cooperation), and self-management strategies. While the literature shows small to modest effects of social skills training, these results can in part be contributed to how instruction is delivered. Best practice in social skills instruction includes screening when selecting students for intervention, identifying targeted skills and competing problem behaviors, conducting a functional assessment, and evaluating the effects of intervention. Current issues and perspectives related to social skills training for students with EBD are addressed.

Many instances of maladaptive behaviors are due at least in part to a lack of social skills. Although there are effective interventions for teaching social skills, generalization of trained social skills remains a challenge. One promising way to enhance generalization may be to use functional behavior assessments to select social skills to teach that can meet individuals’ specific needs. This chapter describes a process for embedding function-based support into social skills interventions that may generalize to untrained settings. The chapter concludes with a case study demonstrating generalization of positive peer interaction from recess to a classroom setting for a grade two student. Results indicated that the student’s behavior during recess and during classroom instruction both changed upon implementation of the recess intervention, and these behaviors maintained over three months after the intervention was withdrawn.