Identifying the Career Path Anchorages of Knowledge Workers on the Basis of Competency Model(Case Study: Petroleum Industry Research Institute)

Knowledge employees are the intellectual capital and the most important asset of organizations. Hence, their development and maintenance in the organization is vitally important. Because of this, special attention should be paid to the development of their competencies. The competency model is the essence of all human resource processes. So, this research is intended to identify the path career anchorage of knowledge workers on the basis of competency model in the Petroleum Industry Research Institute. Career anchorage in this study refers to a situation in which an employee establishes her/his position in the current job and tries to acquire the qualifications for the next position in her/his career path. Accordingly, with the help of experts and review of the theoretical literature, all of the competencies of the knowledge groups were classified into qualitative questionnaires in three different groups: management, researcher and faculty members. The research method involved a case study, and the data was analyzed by quantitative method. The statistical population of the research consisted of various groups of senior managers, experts, researchers, faculty members and advisors of the Petroleum Industry Research Institute. Purposeful sampling method and focus group was used for selecting the sample group. The validity of the research tools was confirmed as content validity. The stability method and internal correlation coefficient were used to measure the reliability which turned out to be 0.87. The results indicated that each group of knowledge workers have their own specific career path anchorage and the employees of each knowledge group have to gain the necessary points to stabilize themselves in the current position and upgrade to a higher level.