Competencies and skills are important issues today in a variety of settings like education, business organizations, and practitioner groups in human resources management and so on. Competence is about performance that results in valuable accomplishment. Achieving valuable accomplishment while reducing the costs of performance represents an increase in competence. Clearly, the competitive features of competence are hereby reflected. Competence is derived by accomplishment. Behavior such as effort, motivation, and interest is important, but accomplishment is what matters (Allen, 2000).
The concept of competency has been defined differently by various experts in management but one of the most acceptable definitions of competency is:
Competency is a combination of observable and applied knowledge, skills, and behaviors that create competitive advantage for an organization. It focuses on how an employee creates value and what he actually accomplishes.
Management competencies are categorized as technical or behavioral. Some technical competencies are unique to a business or sector such as knowledge of the regulatory requirements of many manufacturing and financial services industries. There are also other occupation-specific competencies such as a sales manager may have specific competencies related to advertising, industry and competitor analysis. The human resources manager has specific competencies like knowledge of recruitment, compensation, and training practices. There are other technical competencies which are common to all managers irrespective of the organization to which they belong or their area of expertise. Behavioral competencies may also be categorized as common or specific. The specific behavioral competencies relate to the profession or the organization to which the individual belongs such as innovation, creative thinking and leadership. The common behavioral competencies are those that all managers should possess such as communication, team work, coordination and ability to work with others.
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