Abstract
Like many local governments, Los Angeles County has been re-shaped profoundly in recent years by a series of external forces such as economic downturns and technological advances. At the same time, the value of strategic human resources management has been increasingly recognized by practitioners and management researchers. Partly to help respond to the external forces, the Los Angeles County Training Academy instituted a “Building a Strategic Human Resources Partnership” program designed to build the competencies needed for HR managers to serve as true strategic partners. This article (a) reports on the decision to build a strategic human resources competency model — rather than to modify or adopt an existing competency model — as a basis for the design of the training program, (b) details the methodologies used to build a reliable, customized list of strategic HR competencies and a categorization structure, (c) describes the outcomes and (d) reports on implications for other local government agencies.
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