Guidelines for Developing the SMART Competencies in Army Non-Commissioned Officer School

Abstract

The objectives of this article were to study: 1) Individual characteristics relating to the SMART competency of personnel in the Army Non-Commissioned Officer School (ANCOS); 2) The causal relationships between core competency and SMART competency; and 3) Guidelines for developing the SMART competencies in the ANCOS. The research applied mixed methodologies, including quantitative and qualitative research. Data were collected by using a questionnaire. For the quantitative research, stratified random sampling was used to select 130 participants from commissioned officers and non-commissioned officers working at the ANCOS. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, which were percentage, mean, standard deviation, chi-square test, and multiple regression analysis. For qualitative research, 8 commanders and staff officers were interviewed in-depth, and content analysis was used.

Research findings were as follows: 1) The personal characteristics of age and time in service correlated with the SMART competency of officers at the statistical significance level of 0.01; 2) There were causal relationships between core competencies of knowledge, character, motives, and attitude and the SMART competencies at the statistical significant levels of 0.001; and 3) ANCOS should continuously develop its personnel to maintain the SMART competencies, especially in the areas of self-sacrifice, morality, accountability, result oriented, and teamwork to maintain SMART competencies at a high level.