Detecção, identificação e análise de necessidades de formação e aprendizagem, em contexto profissional: estudo desenvolvido no norte de Portugal: uma abordagem estratégica

Abstract

Having as a backdrop the question of knowledge as the resource for the cogoitive society in which we increasingly live in, academic roles and professional know-how are discussed, as well as, the nature of the capacities and skills that a new work contiguration will necessarily demand. In the light of this discussion it is pertinent that one questions the necessity, the role and the objectives of continuous professional training, which especially equips enterprises, enabling their development or restructuring in their search for competitiveness. It encompasses a political question which delves hdamentally into the dehition of the end use of education and training at European, national, entrepreneurial and individual levels, which obliges a generic overview of the many national and European community alternatives, including some of their results. It is, therefore, at the goals dehition, objectives and action strategies level, that in general, the necessify determination problem, and in particular, the determination of training needs arises. It is, thus, indispensable for one to face and operationalise the concept of necessity, when pondering upon the process which clariiies the differences between training needs and knowledge acquisition. This is the appropriate chapter for conceptual grasping and terminology normalisation which, after dealing with the techniques problem and the long used needs analysis methods, will permit one to propose, on a coherent and comprehensible basis, an approach to strategic methodology for the detection of training and knowledge acquisition needs. Based on a questionnaire sent to trainers covering Northem Portugal, the second part of the work enables one to verify that the practice followed in the attainment of the training needs diagnosis that is used as a basis and a justification for plans, programmes and continuous professional training actions, developed in a professional context, manifest lacks of quantity, quality and strategic vision, despite being less in number and depth than the work hypothesis claimed. This verification seems to represent, with some reliability, the state of the art in Portugal, judging by the conclusions that have recently arisen which were also analysed with some detail in the first part of this work. In a professional context, it seems that one can conclude that there is some interest in the development of a strategic training needs and knowledge acquisition model which is presented, described and represented in the third part of this work. Taking the notions of strategic management and the organisations' strategic culture as a point of departure, the development of a strategic model used for the needs determination for training and knowledge acquisition, which is presented, described and represented in the third part, not as a methodology or as a conglomeration of techniques, but rather as a runway that infers a prospective vision of those organisations' reality, as well as, the role their human resources can and should play within that reality.