The Concept of Practice in the People Capability Maturity Model

This paper is based on the application of the People Capability Maturity Model (CMM) to the Foundation Bruno Kessler (FBK), a research centre located in Trento (Italy). People CMM is a framework to study the level of maturity of an organization in order to improve workforce's development and to help management to define people's capabilities in the organization. The project is an ongoing project. What we are presenting here is our critical approach to data collection. In particular, our aims is to understand how FBK can modify its practices in order to achieve an higher level of maturity in the management of human resources, that is according to the model: a managed level where "the first step toward improving the capability of the workforce is to get managers to take workforce activities as high-priority responsibilities of their job." In this position paper, we will discuss the implication deriving from the notion of "practice" assumed by the model with respect to a different notion of practice, which is intended to complement it.