Identifying and Explaining Effective factors and outcomes of Competency Trap; Applying Fuzzy Delphi methodology

Aim and IntroductionOrganizations locked in the iron fence of rules and regulations require their members to act only within the delineated limits so as to be less involved with intellectual challenges. Over time, this issue leads to the formation of presuppositions and attitudes in the minds of employees and, as a result, behaviors that show resistance against any kind of disruptive change in the existing conditions; And without thinking and understanding the change of conditions, they act according to what they have learned so far. In such a situation, people will be inflexible against new events and even their abilities will act as potential obstacles. In addition to the fact that this method of action is the result of consecration of laws and regulations, protection of job security and fear of closing job career for promotion, as well as taking care of the safe margin around oneself and fear of failure; The result is getting caught in the competence trap.In the category of degenerate competences, employees with rusty beliefs, frozen thoughts, improper context and familiar actions are watching their office life pass. The captives insist on their path as if the only way to achieve excellence is to flow through it, and any look other than theirs is met with visible and hidden resistance. Therefore, the present research aims to scrutinize the antecedents of the competency trap and reveal its consequences from the experts' point of view.MethodologyThis research is exploratory in nature, and in order to understand the antecedents and consequences, it has explored the experiences of 16 employees of public organizations in Ilam city by using a random sampling method until reaching theoretical saturation. The data is based on the open, axial and selective coding method, combining the terms used by the participants themselves; Analysis and finally the categories and components are obtained. In this way, after conducting the interview, open codes are extracted and then by merging and integrating the open codes, the axial codes are determined. MAXQDA 2020 software was used for data analysis. Then, the components were prioritized using the fuzzy Delphi method. FindingsThe components identified in the interview stage are provided to the experts in the form of a questionnaire, and according to the proposed option and the defined linguistic variables, the results of the examination of the answers given in the questionnaire are analyzed to obtain the fuzzy average of t