Challenges in Implementing Competency-Based Management in the Brazilian Public Sector: An Integrated Model

Abstract

Studies have identified the interference of contextual factors that inhibit the effective implementation of Competency-based Management (CM) under the National Personnel Development Policy (NPDP) in the Brazilian public sector, though organizations have overcome these factors through various initiatives. This article proposes an integrated model that relates the factors that interfere with CM implementation with the initiatives adopted by public organizations to circumvent and overcome them. This qualitative study through documental research and interviews with those responsible for implementing CM in six organizations within the Brazilian public sector. Pre and post-categorical analysis have enabled the establishment of a relationship between the 20 categories identified and divided into four kinds of interfering factors and the 20 adopted initiatives identified in seven categories. It was identified that the organizational and departmental factors are the ones that most interfere with the implementation of CM in the public sector. The strategic role of the HR unit, capable of carrying out structural changes, was identified as the most important initiative to induce the implementation of CM. This study provides a model that integrates strategic, political, and instrumental thematics, showing how these aspects impact the effective implementation of CM, which helps HR managers to recognize the factors that are under their control and how to face them.

1. Introduction

Competency-based Management (CM) has been implemented since 1990 in public organizations around the world. In the Brazilian public sector, CM was selected to orient the strategic restructuring of training and development (T&D) processes performed by the Brazilian public sector within the executive branch in Decree nº 5707 of 2006, which instituted the National Personnel Development Policy (NPDP). In 2019, this decree was superseded by Decree nº 9991 of 2019. The current decree, which regulates the contents of Law nº 8112/1990 in terms of licenses and absences due to development activities, continues to administrate the NPDP; however, it no longer makes the adoption of CM mandatory, and instead gives preference to the diagnosis of competencies.

Even 15 years after the beginning of the NPDP and recent changes, there are a series of studies that indicate that this policy has not been effectively implemented due to a variety of contextual factors (e.g., [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9]). There are signs that these factors are consistent with the current literature in the field and belong in a generical way to the following environments: external, from the legal, economic, and political points of view; organizational, within the strategic, structural and cultural dimensions; political, in terms of inter- and intra-organizational power relationships among groups and members affected by or interested in personnel policies; and the human resources department, encompassing the management of personnel and the resources and capacities that they possess [1,2,4,5,10,11,12].

Despite these findings, with the literature about CM being eminently prescriptive, especially in Brazil [13], a general premise continues to reign that the alignment between personnel management processes and organizational strategy is sufficient to obtain better individual and collective results. The contextual factors in CM implementation have been neglected by the technical–scientific field, and, as a result, difficulties have arisen and it has become impossible to have an effective implementation of HR strategic models [14,15,16,17].

In order to keep current models relevant, it is, therefore, necessary that they incorporate dimensions, factors, and variables related to the overall context and, in particular, that of organizations, especially public ones, which have been less studied in Brazilian research [8,11,18,19]. Some studies, which are dedicated not only to the identification of the difficulties noted in the implementation of HR strategic policies, have also addressed initiatives designed to induce the implementation of CM (e.g., [1,2,5,20,21]).

Despite this, there is a lack of research that identifies specific initiatives adopted to overcome the influence of these factors. So, this study aims to integrate these coordinated efforts and to propose an integrated model which relates factors that interfere with the implementation of CM with initiatives in public sector organizations designed to circumvent or overcome them.

The proposition of an integrated model seeks to contribute to the exploration of challenges and possibilities that inhibit the effective implementation of CM. The public sector is a rich environment to identify the interfering factors that are and are not under the control of the HR department. This identification can help HR managers to know the challenges and how to face them.

In the context of the Brazilian public sector, along those years of implementation of NPDP, that is the opportunity to broaden the discussion of this subject and provide inputs to future studies about organizations around the world. The expectation is that the results below will be of some use in the understanding of the implementation process for the recent policy and other norms that may be issued on this subject. Additionally, considering that Brazil is an emerging country where the CM models in the public sector are still incipient and embryonic, this study can inspire the implementation of CM in the public sector in other emerging countries.

Theoretically, considering incipient studies of personnel policy implementation initiatives, this article should stimulate the inclusion of this point in the technical–scientific field agenda.

Implementation of CM

In the 15 years since the enactment of the PNDP in Brazil, scientific production has tried to understand the CM implementation process in public organizations (e.g., [2,4,6,7,22,23,24,25,26,27]). The results of these implementations have included difficulties and challenges, and there is a visible discrepancy between the formulators’ proposals for personnel policies and what really has been realized; in this crop, the presence of contextual factors, constantly ignored by personnel management policies, is responsible for this gap.

In this sense, studies (e.g., [2,4,11,28]) have proposed the organization of these factors based on previous results about the environments, as mentioned before, dividing into institutional, organizational, policy, and departmental factors, and this structure in some form reflects empirical evidence in each of these studies. Considering the need to update the works of these authors to provide a foundation for their elaborated proposals, it was necessary to continue the review undertaken by Côrtes [28], adding searches for studies of initiatives designed to induce the implementation of personnel policies. With these results, it has become possible not only to update the cited review but also to propose a categorization structure for these initiatives and apply these two organizational proposals during the empirical phase of this study.

Initially, the database compiled by Côrtes [28] was revised through the formal solicitation of access to the researched articles, considering only those about CM. Then, new bibliographic research was undertaken to identify recent studies of CM or those that were not found before in Brazilian and international magazines covering the fields of Administration, Psychology, and Public Administration. To accomplish this, the searches were made during 2021 in Google Scholar, the Capes Periodical Portal, Scopus, and the Web of Science, using a combination of descriptors in Portuguese and corresponding terms in English: “competency-based management”, “public sector” “implementation”, “interference”, “difficulty”, “challenge”, “initiatives” and “overcoming”.

The bibliographic review made it possible to incorporate new references, complementing the previous findings of Côrtes [11]. In total, 29 articles were reviewed that dealt with CM implementation. The selected articles were read in their entirety to identify interfering factors and initiatives designed to induce the implementation of CM.

The interfering factors were categorized and defined (

Table 1. Factors that Interfere in the Implementation of CM.

Factors	Categories	Definition	Recurrence
			Categories	Factors
Institutional	Norms/Legislation	Coherence, constancy, wholeness, and completeness of the group of laws, decrees, and norms produced outside the organization that regulate subjects related to HR	16	19
	External Context	External economics, macro-politics, and society	9
Political	Support from Upper Management	Level of decision-making support and the supplying of the resources needed to conduct HR activities	10	14
	Political Configuration	Relationships of power and influence and political criteria in the formation of the organization’s upper management agenda	6
	Administrative Discontinuity	Instability of coalitions, short public mandates, and manager turnover	5
	Influence of Interest Groups	Effective influence of actors and interest groups	4
Organizational	Structural Context	Configuration of organizational structure involving hierarchical levels and departmentalization and the presence of governance mechanisms	16	28
	Cultural Aspects	Predominant values and the degree of resistance to change	13
	Engagement with Civil Servants	Involvement and participation of line managers and civil servants in the implementation of CM	8
	Existence of Strategic Planning	Intentional and objective planning process which culminates in a strategic plan for the organization	8
	Role of Line Managers	Receptiveness of the managers responsible for the instruction, guidance, and awareness of implementing CM	7
	Institutional Communication	Level of transparency in the availability of information to the external and internal public	5
	Coherence of the Model within the Organization’s Context	Presence of a coherent MC model within the organization’s context	2
	Financial and Budgetary Resources	Quantity and quality of the human, technological and financial resources controlled by the organization	2
Departmental	CM Implementation Methodologies/Tools	Degree of appropriateness and complexity of the adopted strategic CM model	17	29
	Internal Consistency of the HR Unit Subsystems	Interdependence between the HR subsystems and their consistency with organizational strategy	10
	Structure of the HR Unit	Structural configuration of the HR unit, involving its position and organizational structure and its levels of hierarchy and departmentalization	9
	Autonomy of the HR Unit	HR unit’s freedom of action to conduct its activities	6
	Strategic Role of the HR Unit	Closeness of the HR unit to the decision-making upper echelon; Discarding a vision based on jobs and tasks and focusing the image on pursuing the organization’s strategy	4
	Political Influence of the HR Unit	Participation of the HR unit manager in power negotiations	3
	Leadership Characteristics of the HR Unit	Presence of leadership characteristics in the HR unit	2
	Coexistence with the Functional Role of the HR Unit	Proportion of time and effort of the HR unit devoted to its functional and strategic activities	1

Source: Adapted of Côrtes [28].

) in accordance with Côrtes [28]. The Recurrence of Categories refers to the number of reviewed articles that address the interference of that category, and the Recurrence of Factors also presents the number of reviewed studies; however, in this case, in relation to the factors.

To focus on the factors and their respective categories that interfere the most in the implementation of CM, those which have the most recurrences in the realized review were listed [29]. First of all, the Organizational and Departmental factors were the most recurrent and were mentioned in all 29 of the reviewed articles; they were followed by 17 studies that mentioned Institutional factors, while Political factors appeared in 14 articles in the review. In terms of the most recurrent category, it was CM Implementation Methodologies/Tools (17) (Departmental Factors).

Finally, even though some studies address isolated initiatives, any specific studies about initiatives or strategies were identified to overcome implementation difficulties, making it impossible to categorize them. As a result, there was a lack of studies that identified specific initiatives adopted to overcome the influence of interfering factors. The incipience of studies that indicate strategies to counter contingencies highlights the fact that the formulation process for public HR policies, especially those in keeping with CM theoretical–methodological guidelines, does not consider the context of public administration and organizations, given that their precepts are restricted to strategic and horizontal alignment mechanisms.

It is not surprising that there is no consolidated evidence of the implementation of CM in Brazilian and international public administration, and in many cases, it has not even begun. Since CM models do not consider the influence of institutional, political, organizational, and departmental aspects in the consolidation of personnel management practices, they end up restricting the tool’s potential to guide and sustain organizational and individual performance; and the absence of studies about initiatives designed to induce the implementation of personnel policies, and ways of overcoming these aspects, diminishes its potential even more.

2. Materials and Methods

This is a theoretical–empirical study of an exploratory nature, which adopts a transversal and qualitative approach, bearing in mind the lack of specific studies which relate initiatives designed to encourage the use of CM and the factors that interfere with its implementation in the public sector.

For this study, public organizations within the Brazilian executive branch regulated by Decree nº 5707/2006 were considered, which effectively implemented CM because it assumes that they have adopted specific actions to circumvent interfering factors. Thus, the initial option was to consult the Personnel Governance and Management Report elaborated by the Federal Accounting Court (FAC), which calculates the index of personnel governance. In this phase, the selected organizations were considered “advanced” in the implementation of CM; however, in initiating contact with those with the highest indices, however, unlike the report’s findings, they did not have a structured CM process.

As an alternative, formal support from the Secretariat of Personnel Management (SPM) of the Ministry of Economics (ME) was sought. The SPM was indicated as the source of reliable information as a representative of the Managing Committee of the NPDP in the decree, thereby occupying a central position in the implementation of public organization policies within the federal executive branch and having developed relationships with these organizations.

The indication of the organizations that have effectively implemented CM occurred after the presentation of the research project to the Secretary and other members of the SPM; during this opportunity, the criteria of heterogeneity in the composition of these organizations were followed. As a result, a list made up of six organizations, all headquartered in the Federal District, was received, which have different natures and classifications, which was useful for exploring this research subject based on a great number of comparisons [30]. In the development of the research, it was applied the theoretical saturation criterion, with there having been no request for other organizations in addition to the provided list when the obtained information did not permit the generation of new information [30]. The method, participants, and proceedings of the study were inserted in

Table 2. Method, participants, and procedures of the study.

Steps	Procedures
Method	Case of multiple studies
Universe	Public organizations within the Brazilian executive branch regulated by Decree nº 5707/2006 which effectively implemented CM
Phase	1º 2º
	Identification of interfering factors of CM implementation and the initiatives adopted by public organizations to circumvent and overcome them	Validation of the proposed model that integrates relates the factors that interfere in CM implementation with the initiatives adopted by public organizations to circumvent and overcome them
Participants	Participants responsible for or participated in the implementation of CM	Participants of the previous phase of interview
Collection technique	Interview	Collective interview
Instrument	Semi-structured interview script	Semi-structured interview script composed of a figure of the proposed model
Analysis technique	Pre- and post-category	Post-category Social network analysis (SNA) technique

.

There were six interviews in each organization with authorities and other actors who were responsible for or participated in the implementation of CM in their respective organizations, totaling seven individuals, as displayed in

Table 3. Organizations and Individuals that Participated in the Interviews.

Organization	Classification	Position of Study Participant	Quantity
Organization 1	Autarchy	Competency-based Management Coordinator	1
Organization 2	Ministry	Overall Coordinator of Corporate School	1
Organization 3	Autarchy	Coordinator of Competency-based Development	1
Organization 4	Autarchy	Overall Coordinator of Institutional Development Institutional Development Civil Servant	2
Organization 5	Regulatory agency	Assistant Superintendent of Personnel Management	1
Organization 6	Regulatory agency	Technical Manager of the Process Office	1

.

The participants responded to the questions in a semi-structured interview script, which had been previously tested by the researchers, and was organized in the following manner: (i) an open question about the CM implementation process in the organization; (ii) a specific question to indicate the categories in a table with a brief definition of what had interfered with the CM implementation process; (iii) a semi-structured question to comment on the interference of the factors in the table, indicating initiatives designed to circumvent the mentioned interferences. The resulting information from the interviews was verified using a triangulation strategy as recommended by [31] through organizational documental analysis, which involved strategic plans and organization charts, and specific information about the CM policy made up of booklets, manuals, internal norms, and institutional videos.

The obtained results were submitted to thematic category content analysis, in which a group of identified categories was established and identified for later counting [29]. The identification of the interfering factors was realized before they were categorized, based on the categorization resulting from the bibliographic research mentioned above; the identification of the initiatives, on the other hand, occurred after their categorization.

After the identification of the categories that resulted from the analysis of the interfering factors and the initiatives designed to induce the implementation of CM, it was analyzed which initiatives were adopted to overcome the cited interferences. With this, all of the relationships related by the interviewees were established and represented graphically in a single logical model and submitted to validation by interviewees in order to give it greater validity and reliability [32].

The round of validation occurred through an interview script composed of a figure of the logical model. There were six interviews in each of the organizations with a total of ten civil servants; four individuals were distinct from the initial contacts due to schedule conflicts or their leaving the organization. A list of these participants appears in

Table 4. Organizations and Individuals Who Participated in the Interview of Validation.

Organization	Classification	Position of Study Participant	Quantity
Organization 1	Autarchy	Competence Management Coordinator Competence Management Analyst	2
Organization 2	Ministry	Overall Coordinator of the Corporate School	1
Organization 3	Autarchy	Competence Development Civil Servant	1
Organization 4	Autarchy	Overall Coordinator of Institutional Development	1
Organization 5	Regulatory agency	Personnel Management Civil Servant Personnel Management Civil Servant Personnel Management Civil Servant	3
Organization 6	Regulatory agency	Technical Manager of the Process Office Technical Manager of Personnel Management	2

.

To realize alterations in the initially established relationships, recurrence in the majority of organizations was necessary [30]; therefore, as a result, there were not any alterations in the initially proposed model.

To point out the factors that exercised the greatest interference with CM implementation in the studied organizations, Ucinet software was used for a better graphic representation of the results. Thus, the social network analysis (SNA) technique was used to identify the factors that most interfered in the implementation of CM, based on the application of the following indicators [33]: degree of centrality, which consists of the number of actors which an actor is directly linked to; intermediation, pointing out the possibility that a node intermediates with other nodes; and the eigenvector, which indicates the most influential node in the network, using not only the number of established relationships but also the quality of these relationships.

To orient the discussion of the results, it was considered that those that attained the same position in the centrality, intermediation, and eigenvector indicators, as well as those that attained different positions formed a sequence for all of the indicators. Thus, it was not considered the factors whose appearances in the three indicators could not be sequenced without jumping positions.

Then, the initiatives designed to induce the implementation of CM that were best able to circumvent or overcome the most relevant interfering factors due to the belief that they play the most significant roles in the effective implementation of CM were selected. From the outset, it was possible to establish a hypothetical model of the relationships between the interfering factors and the adopted initiatives designed to induce CM implementation.

3. Results Analysis

3.1. Identified Interfering Factors

The results demonstrate 20 categories of interfering factors in the implementation of CM. In

Table 5. Interfering Factors in the Implementation of CM.

Factors	Categories	Recurrence of Reports		Organization Frequency
Institutional	External Norms and Legislation	17	36	6
	Political-Economic and Social Context	10		5
	External Body Control Mechanisms	9		3
Political	Administrative Turnover	6	11	5
	Interest Group Conflicts	3		2
	Organization’s Political Configuration	2		2
Organizational	Cultural Aspects	28	84	6
	Organizational Structure	15		6
	Financial and Human Resources	10		6
	Engagement of Civil Servants and Managers	10		5
	Upper Management Support	9		5
	Organizational Strategic Guidelines	8		4
	Institutional Communication	4		4
Departmental	CM Tools	17	45	6
	Internal Consistency among HR Subsystems	10		4
	Structure of the HR Unit	5		4
	Political Ability of the HR Leadership	4		4
	Autonomy of the HR Unit	4		4
	Reputation of HR	4		3
	Coexistence with the Functional Role of HR	1		1

, the first column of Recurrence of Reports indicates the number of recurrences of each category in the interviews; in many cases, the participants, during their interviews, referred to the same categories as having different degrees of interference; in the second column of Recurrence of Reports, the recurrences are summed for each category and factor; the Organization Frequency column displays how many organizations reported these factor categories.

The results showed the predominance of organizational factors (84 recurrences), followed by departmental factors (45), institutional factors (36), and political factors; the political factors, which were reported less, had one of their categories relocated given the perception that it dealt with an organizational aspect, which could justify its lesser prominence in this review than the previously performed review.

All of the interfering factor categories were mentioned by at least one participant in at least one organization, with the most cited being: Cultural Aspects (28), CM Tools (17), External Norms and Legislation (17), and Organizational Structure (15). The participants mentioned these factors:

• Cultural Aspects (28):

“Here is a very technical institution, with a lot of engineers, so the very technical courses have a demand and a huge interest in participation” (Organization 5).

“We had a bit of a problem, yes, because whenever you implement a new thing, there is a little discomfort and that is exactly why you need sponsorship, otherwise things don’t work out. it’s really a change in culture” (Organization 6).

• CM Tools (17):

“You bring a lot of complexity by bringing the methodology complex enough that people cannot understand why they are doing it here. So, when you go to senior management, you also can’t capture the guys, because you come with an inadequate methodology. I say complex, and you cannot explain the whys of things. In view of this, you cannot involve the top management and it is the one who sets the example” (Organization 4).

“I think that in the beginning we had inadequate methodology. It is certainly a big hindrance” (Organization 5).

“It is a practice that came from the private sector because it is difficult to implement. Competency-based management is complex. It is outside the mental model of the public organization” (Organization 6).

• External Norms and Legislation (17):

“It was as if the central body had said ‘let’s launch the Decree and see if it sticks and what emerge’. The CM methodology was sort of being created over time” (Organization 1).

“Because the decree does not say method or step-by-step” (Organization 2).

• Organizational Structure (15):

“The structure 1 is vertical. It makes communication very difficult between what comes out at a higher level and what comes out here at the base” (Organization 1).

“Because here it is very big! We are all over Brazil, different positions, doing different things, so it’s quite complex. It is one of the biggest difficulties. We have a very unfavorable structure. […] So, you don’t have a structure of positions and functions to set up a decentralized structure favorable for you to consistently run the entire HR system, it’s a fact” (Organization 3).

“Applying the diagnosis throughout the organization made the process very complicated because it was large” (Organization 6).

Identifying the central factors, not in terms of their recurrence, but based on their relationships as noted in the interviews, the extracted results indicate 59 interactions among the categories of interfering factors (Figure 1). The Institutional factors are represented by blue circles; the Political for the yellow squares; the Organizational ones by the red triangles; and, finally, the Departmental ones by green diamonds.

Based on the position and size of the icon in the network, it is possible to identify the factor categories which established more relationships; the more central they are, and the larger the icon, the more interactions this category established with others.

The network demonstrates the predominance of relationships between organizational and departmental factor categories, keeping in mind the peripheral position occupied by institutional and political factors, which have relationships with other factors but do not have a significant number of interactions.

The category that stands out with the most interactions is CM Tools (Departmental Factor). The position occupied by the categories Upper Management Support and Engagement of Civil Servants and Managers deserves to be highlighted, given that they are the next two that most interacted. Among the most peripheral factors, the category administrative turnover, referring to the political factor, and, finally, the institutional factor category that had the most interactions was External Body Control Mechanisms.

Given the number of established relationships, there were parameters to make a deeper analysis viable to identify the most relevant factors in the implementation of CM. To accomplish this, the SNA indicators listed in

Table 6. Most Relevant Interfering Factors according to SNA Indicators.

nº	Centrality	Intermediation	Eigenvector
1º	CM Tools	CM Tools	CM Tools
2º	Engagement of Civil Servants and Managers	Engagement of Civil Servants and Managers	Support of Upper Management
3º	Support of Upper Management	Financial and Human Resources	Engagement of Civil Servants and Managers
4º	Cultural Aspects	Support of Upper Management	Financial and Human Resources
5º	Financial and Human Resources	Cultural Aspects	Reputation of HR
6º	Reputation of HR	Administrative Turnover	Cultural Aspects
7º	Institutional Communication	Conflict between Interest Groups	Organizational Structure

were applied. As mentioned above, the factors that stand out are those that are in bold in the Table 6 and that: attained the same positions in the centrality, intermediation, and eigenvector indicators, which were only CM Tools; then those that attained the same positions in two indicators, with the third indicator being in the next position, which consisted only of Engagement of Civil Servants and Managers; then those which attained different positions for all three indicators, but in a sequence without gaps, which was the case for Support from Upper Management, Financial Resources, and Cultural Aspects. The other factors, whose positions did not consist of a sequence without gaps, were not considered, such as the Reputation of HR, which on the eigenvector attained the 6th position, in centrality, the 6th position, and in intermediation, the 9th position; if this last indicator had attained the 7th position, it would have been considered for the discussion.

The categories for the most relevant interfering factors were: CM Tools, Support of Upper Management, Engagement of Civil Servants and Managers, Financial and Human Resources, and Cultural Aspects. These results demonstrate the relevance of Departmental and Organizational Factors in the implementation of CM, especially CM Tools, which belong to the former group.

3.2. Identified Initiatives to Induce the Implementation of CM

Now that the section devoted to interfering factors is concluded, it is important to now address the a posteriori categorization of the initiatives designed to induce the implementation of CM.

Table 7. Initiatives Designed to Induce the Implementation of CM.

Category	Category Definition	Initiative	n Interfering Factors Overcome		Organization Frequency
Strategic Role	HR unit in decision-making areas with its goals formalized in the organization’s strategic guidelines and participating in strategic activities	Formalization of strategic alignment	6	7	6
		Formal participation of the HR unit in strategic activities	5		4
Structural Alterations	Formal alterations in the organization’s structure or informal ones in civil servant work processes	Creation of the work group responsible for the implementation of CM	4	6	6
		Creation of the area focused on strategic subjects in the HR unit	3		4
Instrumental Alterations	Actions taken to modify or alter technical or methodological aspects of CM tools	Previous integration with other HR subsystems	4	5	6
		Methodological alteration of CM tools	3		6
		Scaled implementation	3		3
		Identification of possible contingencies in the CM implementation	2		2
		Adoption of a CM information system	1		6
Civil Servant Awareness	Group of informational materials used to raise civil servant awareness	Informative material	4	4	5
		Informal conversations	3		6
		Playful material	2		2
Normalization	Legal-normative imposition of the implementation of CM	Request for norms, ordinances, and internal regulations	4	4	3
Establishment of Partnerships	Association of the HR unit with other organizations or internal units	Intraorganizational cooperation	2	2	6
		Benchmarking	1		5
		Institutional cooperation	1		5
		Bidding and Contracts	1		5
Training	Strategies or institutional means adopted to make employees technically skilled to be able to implement CM	Theoretical-methodological courses	1	1	6
		Manuals	1		5
		Videos	1		4

contains definitions for each category of the adopted initiatives as well as the number of interfering factor categories that each initiative is designed to overcome, as well as the number of organizations that adopted them to implement CM.

The initiative category that overcame the most interfering factors was Strategic Role, which overcame seven of the twenty identified categories of interfering factors. Most (16) of the initiatives were adopted by most of the organizations, which indicates homogeneity among the research participants in seeking similar solutions for these difficulties. In this sense, the initiative that overcame the most interfering factors was the Formalization of Strategic Alignment, referring to the definition of HR goals in Strategic Planning. The documental research analysis showed that all organizations have a goal aiming the CM model in strategic planning.

In accordance with the analysis protocol executed above, Figure 2 displays the relationships between the initiatives and the interfering factors considered to be most relevant to the implementation of CM in this analysis, integrating 30 relationships between the adopted initiatives and the factors that interfered the most. The interfering factors are represented by the squares which the Institutional factors are dark blue; the Political for the yellow squares; the Organizational ones by the red; and the Departmental ones by dark green. About the Initiatives, all are circles which the Strategic Role category are purple; the Structural Alterations are in light blue; the Instrumental Alterations are in pink; the Civil Servant Awareness represented by orange; the Normalization light green; the Establishment of Partnerships are the greenish ones; and Training category are in lilac.

It should be emphasized that the initiatives are always the sources of the established relationships, and the interfering factors are always the destinations. The initiatives that circumvented the most factors have larger icons, as do the interfering factors which were circumvented by the greatest number of initiatives.

Each of the seven initiative categories overcame at least one of the five interfering factors which most stood out, and they were influenced by all of the identified initiatives. However, no initiative directly overcame the five categories of interfering factors that were considered to be the most relevant. More precisely, the initiatives that most established relationships with interfering factors that were considered to be the most relevant were the Formalization of Strategic Alignment and the Creation of the Work Group Responsible for the Implementation of CM. According to the interviewers, they said that:

• Formalization of Strategic Alignment:

“When we went through a process of reviewing the strategic planning, the question of competence alignment was placed as a strategic indicator to be monitored. This made it easier, for example, to improve investments in the tool and awareness-raising actions” (Organization 1).

“Just because it is already in the strategic planning built by the house as a whole, we already understand how the support needed to carry out the actions” (Organization 5)

• Creation of the Work Group Responsible for the Implementation of CM:

“I made a division to work this, so, in my team, we had two or three people” (Organization 2).

“We put our internal team together with each person to learn the methodology and then continue” (Organization 3).

“I have a dedicated server to answer questions and provide guidance” (Organization 4).

“With that, we periodically followed up to see if there was any difficulty in the tool, in the methodology” (Organization 5).

4. Discussion

4.1. Relationships between the Interfering Factors

The main objective of this work is to propose an integrated model that relates interfering factors in the implementation of CM with initiatives to overcome them in Brazilian public organizations. To accomplish this, 20 categories of interfering factors were identified in the implementation of CM with the use of SNA to highlight the factors that were considered to have interfered the most.

Thus, the categories CM Tools, Support from Upper Management, Engagement with Civil Servants and Managers, Financial and Human Resources, and Cultural Aspects were identified as those that most interfered with the implementation of CM. These results are, in part, equal to the recurrence of the reports identified in the literature review, described in Table 1, since the category most reported by respondents was CM Tools (17 times). On the other hand, the Norms/Legislation (16 times) is the second most recurrent category in the interviewees’ reports, which did not stand out in network analyses. The recurrence of reports of the Cultural Aspects (13 times) were the third most frequent. Support from Upper Management (10 times), Engagement of servers and managers (eight times), and Financial and human resources (nine times) did not present a significant amount in the review, despite appearing in a prominent position in the network indicators. These divergences demonstrate that, although some categories have stood out for having interfered more often in the CM implementation process, other categories were more relevant for exerting a greater influence when relationships are visualized in a network.

Therefore, the Departmental and Organizational factors are highlighted in the indicators used to analyze the interference relationships. This evidence clarifies to some extent the room that HR units have to maneuver in managing personnel in the public sector, at least those considered in this study. These units appear to have greater autonomy in terms of controlling their own resources and making decisions about their materials but lesser autonomy in affecting other departments and members of the organization; they also seem to have adopted CM Tools as a strategy to influence the organization, especially upper management (Support from Upper Management) and civil servants and managers (Engagement of Civil Servants and Managers), without whose support they cannot succeed in implementing personnel management policies.

The relationship with Cultural Aspects is debatable even though the realized analysis highlighted it (see Table 6), indicating their elevated interference in the implementation of CM, but it is a mistake, when analyzing the results, to consider all of these categories as belonging to the same phenomenological or theoretical level.

This is because it is assumed that culture manifests itself on multiple levels, ranging from the assumptions, values, and beliefs that guide the actions of an organization’s employees to easily manifested and observed aspects [34]. It should be noted that the categories Support from Upper Management and Engagement of Civil Servants and Managers are in and of themselves evidence of the behavior of these actors who favor the implementation of CM management policies, probably in accordance with the above-cited theoretical guidance, which are the result of a system of assumptions, values, and beliefs shared by these individuals which are in some way aligned with the underlying personnel policies. To sum up, this shows that support and engagement are phenomena that reveal the culture of an organization, and they should be examined in future studies on distinct levels to avoid overlapping categories.

Figure 3 displays the results, which consist of five categories of interfering factors that were identified as the most relevant ones in terms of the implementation process for CM.

The findings indicate that CM Tools were fundamental to the implementation of CM policy in these respective governmental bodies. This result also converges with what has already been pointed out in previous studies (e.g., [4,7]) about the initial years of the NPDP in Brazil’s public sector in which technical and instrumental difficulties constituted, in general, a leading role in the implementation of CM, due to the theoretical–methodological confusion of management by competencies.

In relation to the CM Tool, the Upper Management Support and Engagement of Civil Servants and Managers identified that decision-makers, managers, and civil servants, in general, do not appear to support personnel management initiatives that rely on systems, methods, and tools that are not in line with the reality of the organization and public administration [2,4]. Additionally, the mutual relationship between Cultural Aspects and Engagement of Civil Servants and Management talks about how systems require that civil servants assimilate values that are distinct from, and even contrary to, those that have been idealized, generally leading to resistance and a lack of support and engagement.

Another aspect that appears to have contributed to the adaptation of their CM tools to the reality of the studied organizations was a budgetary and financial investment. The relationships of CM Tools, Financial and Human Resource, and Cultural Aspects indicate that a lack of resources or bad financial management in the acquisition or development of germane technologies is a recognized factor that interferes with the implementation of personnel management policies [35]. Investing in adjusting CM tools to organizational realities indicates that their members see the potential of the CM method in supporting important personnel decisions, as well as contributing to the efficient management of the rest of the training and development budget.

In addition to upper management’s support leading to providing resources to the CM system, it also had an effect on engaging managers and civil servants in the consulted governmental bodies, linking the Upper Management Support with the Engagement of Civil Servants and Managers and vice versa. After all, they are the real users of the services provided by the HR department. In fact, the more support that comes from upper management, the greater the involvement of the organization’s functional corps [9].

4.2. Relationships between the Interfering Factors and the Adopted Initiatives

Finally, to establish relationships between the interfering factors and the adopted initiatives, 21 initiatives were identified that were designed to induce the implementation of CM, which were divided into seven categories, with the initiative category that most often overcame interfering factors being the Strategic Role. Thus, this relevance was the criterion used to systematize the hypothetical model represented in Figure 4. Even if another model were possible, a more parsimonious model was chosen for operationalization and testing purposes.

Due to the almost complete absence of studies about initiatives designed to induce the implementation of personnel management policies, as well as the relationship between them and the difficulties experienced by HR departments, the following paragraphs discuss the identified relationships that constitute the integrated model of CM implementation.

The first relationship Is between the Formalization of Strategic Alignment, which combats difficulties related to Support from Upper Management, Financial and Human Resources, and CM Tools. In the case of Support from Upper Management, the forecast strategic objectives for the HR unit demonstrate to the organization the possibility that the HR unit can contribute to the accomplishment of the organization’s strategic goals. The perception of this possibility helps obtain organizational support, especially from members of upper management. This may also be why the Formalization of Strategic Alignment has overcome the difficulty of obtaining resources.

The Formalization of Strategic Alignment has a demonstrated relationship with the CM Tools category. Since this is vertical alignment, one of the strategic objectives of the organization in terms of individual competencies consists of the methodological precepts of the CM model, and the Formalization of Strategic Alignment makes the organization’s performance references concrete, and CM Tools make it possible to evaluate civil servant learning or competence.

In terms of the Creation of the Work Group Responsible for the Implementation of CM, in addition to contributing to the resolution of issues related to CM Tools, it also has an effect on obtaining Support from Upper Management and the Engagement of Civil Servants, which have already been noted as necessary for departmental policies. These relationships can be explained BY considering the Creation of a Work Group as a form of conferring authority to the HR department, which then assumes leadership of the forces necessary for the implementation and increases the employees’ sense of being a part of this process.

The Creation of the Work Group Responsible for the Implementation of CM is also associated with Support from Upper Management. Since the creation of work groups in governmental bodies occurs with the approval of upper management, this initiative reveals leadership support. Work groups that involve individuals from distinct units in addition to the human resources department permit an implementation that is closer to the organization’s reality because the participants know the contingencies involved, which makes it possible to already identify difficulties during the implementation process.

5. Conclusions

This study proposes an integrated model based on the scientific induction of the findings, which relate interfering factors with initiatives designed to overcome them in encouraging the implementation of CM in organizations within the executive branch. It is possible to conclude that initiatives that favor the strategic role of HR units and promote structural alterations and designate those who are formally responsible induce the effective implementation of CM. This is due to the ability of these initiatives to circumvent or overcome interfering factors, mainly organizational and departmental ones, which were identified as the categories that most interfere with CM implementation.

Academically, the identification of such constructs in an integrated model made it possible to partially fill the gap regarding the interference of interfering factors and, above all, inaugurating an agenda, albeit incipient, on the initiatives adopted to circumvent such interference. Furthermore, this research contributed to the discussion of personnel policies in the context of public policy studies, having the NPDP as a background.

This study considers both elements capable of contributing to professional practices and especially the elaboration of theoretical proposals that articulate interfering aspects and technological ones that indicate ways to overcome these interfering aspects. These proposals flow together to integrate strategic, political, and instrumental models that are treated separately by the field of HR management.

Finally, the results demonstrated that the self-determination and the formation of the Brazilian CM model are not conventional approaches that provide important information to other public administrations of different emerging countries.

In terms of this study’s limitations, it was only able to present the results in a descriptive manner due to the absence of theoretical support. In terms of the factors, it is important to point out the overlapping categories identified after the absorption of certain categories by others on the part of the study’s participants, as well as the existence of categories that do not belong on the same phenomenological and theoretical level.

Thus, future studies should conduct a deeper investigation of each relationship displayed in the hypothetical model of CM implementation in the public sector by focusing on methods that stimulate recognized corporate models and adapt them to national realities.

Another suggestion is the elaboration of a distinct categorization of interfering factors or adjustments to this study’s proposal in order to achieve greater conceptual precision, which can be produced by the expansion to open databases.