Hypotheses concerning the Prevalence of Competencies among Government Executives,According to Three Organizational Variables

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to test the validity of a list of 14 competencies for public managers and develop a series of hypotheses concerning their prevalence, in relation to three basic organizational variables: the executive's reporting level, the location of his or her position, and the type of activity performed by the administrative unit for which he or she is responsible. Twelve executives (selected on the basis of their management experience) were given information about each of the 14 competencies identified in a previous study through a grounded inductive research process. They were then asked to rate the importance of these competencies in relation to each of the 3 variables and explain the reasons for their scores. They were also asked to take part in a 3-hour group meeting a week later in order to discuss their ratings with the other respondents. Executives consider the list of competencies to be valid although not the competencies are equally important for executives to develop to the same level. Our hypothesis, that the prevalence of the competencies is affected by certain variables and situations, was confirmed: of the three variables considered, “type of unit” is the one that has the greatest effect, and “geographic location” the least. This suggests that the desired range of competencies will vary more according to the type of unit for which the manager is responsible than the geographic location of position, as we have defined it. The variable “reporting level” falls between these two schemes. This observation is not devoid of interest, given that some executive development strategies aim to equip managers with a wide spectrum of fairly well-honed skills, not just a broad grounding. For example, some governments have adopted strategies that encourage executive career paths leading, over the course of promotions and assignments, from headquarters towards regional offices, and from policy development towards line operations.