Designing the Dynamic Capabilities for Sepah Bank staff; Competency Approach

Establishing a dynamic capability with a merit approach will earn and retain the competitive advantage of employees to work and organization. Paying attention to dynamic capabilities can help the bank's human resource areas in issues related to recruitment, promotion and appointment of staff at various positions, especially management. The purpose of this study was to investigate the design of a dynamic capability model for Sepah Bank employees with a competency approach. To do this, after extracting the components of dynamic capabilities from authoritative management texts, using the Delphi method and gaining an opinion from the experts, a dynamic empowerment model for Bank Sepah employees was identified with a suitability approach. Then, in field surveys conducted at Sepah Bank, the effect of dynamic capabilities for Sepah Bank employees was questioned by competency approach and for testing the questions, the exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis was used. Finally, based on the priority of indicators in nine areas of entrepreneurial orientation, intellectual capital, organizational performance, organizational agility, innovation, empowerment, meritocracy, knowledge management, market intelligence, a model of a suitable model for dynamic capabilities for Bank Sepah employees with a merit approach was presented.

Dynamic capabilities are a novel approach in the area of management. Wang et al. (2014) define dynamic capabilities as a firm’s behavioural orientation to constantly integrate, reconfigure, renew and recreate its resources and capabilities and upgrade and reconstruct its core capabilities in response to the changing environment to attain and sustain competitive advantage. Therefore, dynamic capabilities are organizational processes and their role is to change the firm’s resource base (Barreto, 2010). These capabilities are built within the organization and cannot be bought, are path-dependent (Eisenhardt & Martin, 2000; Danneels, 2002), and are embedded in organizational processes (Shaker et al., 2006). A dynamic capability is not an ad hoc problem-solving event or a spontaneous reaction and must contain some patterned element, i.e. it must be repeatable. Dynamic capabilities are persistent (Zollo and Winter,2002) and the use of dynamic capabilities is intentional and deliberate (Shaker et al., 2006). They consist of tangible and intangible assets, as well as the knowledge and processes needed for sensing new business opportunities and orchestrating the resource portfolio in conditions of change (Ellonen et al., 2014).Given the importance of dynamic capabilities, different organizations in Iran, including public and private organizations, have addressed these capabilities in recent years. In service organizations such as banks, employees are the most valuable asset and extremely important for gaining sustainable competitive advantage. Employees with dynamic capabilities can help banks achieve its goals and increase its market share. Dynamic capabilities are a valuable, rate, inimitable, and non-substitutable that can help organizations attain and sustain competitive advantage.The purpose of the present research is to identify and rank the factors that affect dynamic capabilities in a sample of Sepah Bank employees. Dynamic capabilities in both individual and organizational dimensions can be a source of competitive advantage in today’s rapidly changing environment.

This study was a mixed methods research with both qualitative and quantitative analysis. The initial content for interviews and the Delphi method was prepared based on the literature on dynamic capabilities. 20 experts and managers provided their inputs about factors affecting dynamic capabilities. 27 components with 240 items were extracted for the questionnaire. After reviewing and refining expert opinions and removing redundancies, a final list of factors related to dynamic capabilities was constructed with 13 components and 69 items. Reliability of the instrument was measured using Cronbach’s alpha, and the results indicated high levels of reliability.
Discussion and

In this study, 13 components of dynamic capabilities with 69 items were identified using literature review and the Delphi method. The modified model consisted of 9 components, including entrepreneurial orientation, intellectual capital, organizational performance, organizational agility, innovation, empowerment, meritocracy, knowledge management, and market intelligence. Intellectual capital had the highest standardized coefficient (0.77) and knowledge management had the lowest standardized coefficient (0.15). The path coefficient between empowerment and dynamic capabilities (0.701) was ranked second in importance.

The results of the present research suggest that Sepah Bank has incorporated empowerment and employee excellence in its vision and goals; therefore, implementing the present findings and observing its short-term effects can help this bank realize its vision and goals. Items related to intellectual capital were the most important factors in the dynamic capabilities of Sepah bank. These included: increasing employees’ skill levels, developing a comprehensive hiring plan, ensuring continued relations with customers, providing access to information systems, performing transactions in the shortest possible time, ensuring trust in the workplace, having a high level of ability in the workplace.