Constructs are pivotal to the study of social sciences for numerous reasons. Firstly, in their purest form and most basic function, constructs form the basis of man’s3 attempts
to provide meaning and make sense of the daily occurrences that occur in his or her World 1 (Babbie & Mouton, 2001) through his fluid intelligence or abstract thinking ability. Without constructs, everything that occurs in the world would be experienced as a bewildering, meaningless, chaotic cacophony of sensations and man would be unable to operate in or with the world he lives in. Constructs are abstractions of one or more common (or shared) themes shared by a collection of observable phenomena or experiences in World 1 (Kerlinger & Lee, 2001; Mouton & Marais, 1985).
Consequentially, as man creates constructs as thought objects to intellectually bring order to his experience of World 1, they do not physically exist (Kerlinger & Lee, 2001). Constructs exist as abstract thought objects in Babbie and Mouton’s (2001) World 2. However, that in nature, which the construct is created to represent, is very real and present. This notion of representation is easy to conceive in more simple representations such as water or wind. However, when constructs are considered on more of an abstract level, the level of complexity and difficulty of understanding greatly
3 The term man and the phrase working man is used in the current study as a gender neutral term to refer to any
increases. This aforementioned complexity is especially prominent in the social sciences when topics such as adaptability or innovation are considered. Nonetheless the observable denotations of constructs created by man’s fluid intelligence in World 2 (Babbie & Mouton, 2001) exist in World 1 even for these more abstract constructs. The researcher in the social sciences has the objective of explaining phenomena that occur in human functioning in World 1 in terms of the structural relations that exist between constructs in World 2 (Babbie & Mouton, 2001). The manner in which this is achieved is through employing these constructs in the process of theorising to develop hypotheses on the nature of the structural relationships that exist between these constructs that determine the phenomenon as a whole. Thus, the process of structural modelling (Diamantopoulos & Siguaw, 2000) is key in the attempt to discover and express these complex relationships.
In the process of forming a nomological net of relationships between constructs that forms the phenomenon as a whole, the two dimensions of meaning of constructs must be understood and applied correctly. These two dimensions of meaning are the connotative and the denotative dimension of meaning (Mouton & Marais, 1985). Firstly, the connotative meaning of a construct refers to that in which a person has in mind when using a construct. It is the intellectual idea that constitutes the construct that is represented by words that refer to the construct (Mouton & Marais, 1985). To fully explicate the connotative meaning of a construct it is necessary to look at the various definitions of the construct via a literature study and to review the manner in which people use the construct in language in relation to other constructs. The connotative meaning of a construct is captured in (or explicated by) a constitutive definition. The constitutive definition should clarify the internal structure of the construct and the manner in which the construct is embedded in a larger nomological network of constructs (Kerlinger & Lee, 2001). It is important to emphasise that constructs do not have an absolute meaning. There is no universal dictionary that provides the definitive constitutive definition of constructs. Constructs are constructed by the abstract thinking capacity of man and are attributed a specific connotative meaning that can differ across individuals. The manner in which constructs are
constitutively defined constrain/restrict the manner in which the construct is used in language.
The creation of a comprehensive organisational work unit performance model4 in
essence, therefore, entails explicating the connotative meaning of the performance construct by describing the internal structure of the organisational work unit performance construct. The creation of a comprehensive organisational work unit competency model in turn further explicates the connotative meaning of the performance construct by describing the manner in which the organisational work unit performance construct is embedded in a large nomological network of latent variables characterising the unit and the broader organisational context.
Secondly, the denotative meaning of a construct is an important consideration in the creation of a comprehensive organisational work unit performance model. The denotative meaning refers to the observable events or behaviours that represent a construct as it is constitutively defined and the conditions or situations that affect the level of the construct (Kerlinger & Lee, 2001). The denotations of a construct are those observable behaviours, events or situations in which the construct observably expresses itself or it represents the situations or conditions that affect the level of the construct.
The denotations of a construct are used in a practice that is commonly referred to as operationalisation. This process creates operational definitions indicating the operations or activities necessary to obtain an empirical grasp on the construct as constitutively defined. An empirical grasp can be obtained on a construct either through experimental manipulation or through measurement. Experimental operational definitions specify how an empirical grasp can be obtained on a construct by experimentally manipulating situations or conditions that affect the level of the construct. Measured operational definitions specify how an empirical grasp can be obtained on a construct by eliciting, through stimuli, observable behaviour in which the level of the construct expresses itself (Theron, 1999). Naturally, as the
4 The term organisational work unit performance model will be reserved to refer to the partial competency model
that explicates only the competencies and outcomes that constitute organisational unit performance. The term
organisational work unit competency model will be reserved to refer to the model that describes the psychological
multidimensional work unit performance construct needs to be measured to provide empirical evidence on units’ standing on the construct, operationalisation is a vital process by which a construct is measured indirectly through the appropriate denotations of the construct. It therefore follows that the explication of an adequate denotative meaning of the organisational work unit competencies and performance constructs is a necessary condition to allow the operationalisation of the construct and to obtain the necessary success in gaining empirical evidence on organisational work units’ standing on the performance construct (Kerlinger & Lee, 2001).