Appliance of public senior executives competences for municipality activity efficiency development

Abstract

Globalization, economic crisis, political changes, increasing expectations of society and dissatisfaction with policy implemented by the government visibly increase the changes in civil service institutions as well as condition the necessity of strategical thinking and active senior executives in civil service. The performance results of public sector mostly depend on senior executives` professionalism, competences in leadership, ability to focus and motivate civil servants so they can achieve set goals. Therefore, one of the most important tasks in every country is to create a professional and competent civil service, which would be able to function effectively in a rapidly changing and complex environment. The necessity of well-prepared and competent public senior executives in present modern institutions is increasing. There are many classifications of competences in the scientific literature. Summarizing these classifications of competences, the authors distinguish two main groups of competences: common and strategic. The group of common competences, which are required to take a particular position, consists of the following: personal, social, professional and managerial. Meanwhile, the group of strategic competences consists of: cooperation, single-mindedness, possession of vision and leadership. According to respondents’ statements it was determined that in the group of common competences (which consists of personal, social, professional and managerial competences) the least demonstrated competence of senior executives of Lithuanian self-government administrations is the managerial one (involves logical, analytical, systemic thinking and so on). In the group of common competences, social competence oriented towards cooperation, partnership, training and development was assessed as the most positive. During the assessment, it was determined that all criteria of strategic competences group (cooperation, single-mindedness, possession of vision and leadership) were assessed by the respondents as important.