Role of competencies in performance management in Turkey

Human Resources Management has continued its development in the light of different names and perspectives since Industrial Revolution. This function, which has been entitled as Personnel Management and carried out some duties like keeping records of employees at first, has begun to perform different duties as a consequence of globalization, improvement in information technologies and hence increasing competition. The ultimate in Human Resources Management which is discussed within the framework of academic studies as well as its importance in practice is Competency Based Human Resources Management.To give importance not only to ?what it is done? but also to ?how it is done?, in other words to focus the characteristics which distinguish an excellent employee from an average employee is the driving force behind drawing attention of competency phenomenon. Reflections of the Competency Based Human Resources Management, whose foundations have been laid in the United States of America, occur as a new field in our country recently. Accordingly, it is aimed to contribute to the Turkish literature related to this issue by means of both theoretical analysis and investigation concerning its conditions in large scale companies.In the first part of the thesis consisting of three parts the process of transition from Personnel Management to Competency Based Human Resources Management, the concept of competency, competency groups, the process of developing a new competency model in organizations; in the second part of the thesis performance management approaches and competency based performance management are discussed theoretically. In the last part of the thesis results which were attained thanks to a survey application on the top 500 industrial organizations in the list of Istanbul Chamber of Industry are explained and the results include the issues such as the aims of performance ratings, people who evaluate performance, the methods of performance ratings, performance development practices, the roles of competencies in performance ratings and management.