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Competency frameworks can support public procurement capacity development and performance. However, literature on connecting professionalisation with national procurement contexts is limited. This paper aims to explain and conceptualise recent Romanian experience with developing bespoke competency frameworks at national level for public procurement that reflect the features of the Romanian public procurement system. The approach used could guide in broad-brush, mutatis mutandis, other (national) public procurement systems with comparable features, mainly those seeking a shift from a rather administrative function of public procurement towards a strategic function.

This case study reflects on the methodology used for analysing the Romanian public procurement environment in EU context to develop bespoke professionalisation instruments, and on ways to integrate competency management approaches in Romanian public procurement culture. That methodological mix has been mainly qualitative and constructionist, within an applied research approach. It combined desk research with empirical research and included legal research in this context.

A principled, methodological and pragmatic approach tailored to the procurement environment in question is essential for developing competency frameworks capable to resonate to and address the specific practical needs of that procurement system.

Competency frameworks can uphold societal objectives through public procurement.

Using valuable insights into the development of the Romanian public procurement competency frameworks, the paper provides a conceptual framework for instilling competency management approaches to public procurement professional development where the latter is governed by a rather distinct, public administration, paradigm. This conceptual framework can guide other public procurement systems and stimulate further research.

Competency frameworks can support public procurement capacity development and performance. However, literature on connecting professionalisation with national procurement contexts is limited. This paper aims to explain and conceptualise recent Romanian experience with developing bespoke competency frameworks at national level for public procurement that reflect the features of the Romanian public procurement system. The approach used could guide in broad-brush, mutatis mutandis, other (national) public procurement systems with comparable features, mainly those seeking a shift from a rather administrative function of public procurement towards a strategic function.

This case study reflects on the methodology used for analysing the Romanian public procurement environment in EU context to develop bespoke professionalisation instruments, and on ways to integrate competency management approaches in Romanian public procurement culture. That methodological mix has been mainly qualitative and constructionist, within an applied research approach. It combined desk research with empirical research and included legal research in this context.

A principled, methodological and pragmatic approach tailored to the procurement environment in question is essential for developing competency frameworks capable to resonate to and address the specific practical needs of that procurement system.

Competency frameworks can uphold societal objectives through public procurement.

Using valuable insights into the development of the Romanian public procurement competency frameworks, the paper provides a conceptual framework for instilling competency management approaches to public procurement professional development where the latter is governed by a rather distinct, public administration, paradigm. This conceptual framework can guide other public procurement systems and stimulate further research.

Effective leaders have emerged as the cornerstone of project success. The major purpose of this paper is to propose a framework to categorize and prioritize leadership competencies for project managers in megaprojects.

In the first stage, this study utilizes PMBOK 6th Edition, IPMA ICB 4.0 frameworks to develop a hierarchy-based four clusters of leadership competencies. In the second stage, a Fuzzy-AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) approach was employed to prioritize the leadership competencies for an organization dealing in megaprojects. Finally, using ordinal priority approach (OPA), the results of Fuzzy-AHP method are validated.

Based on PMBOK, IPMA and literature, the proposed framework deduced twenty-four leadership competencies and grouped them in four clusters. The Fuzzy-AHP results indicate that among clusters, people competencies cluster is ranked most important, followed by perspective, practice, and innovation competencies. Considering the sub-categories and global weights, culture/values, governance, interpersonal skills, and development and growth emerged as the most important leadership competencies. The results from OPA corroborate the findings of Fuzzy-AHP method.

Megaprojects are characterized by massive investments and extensive economic and social impact. The proposed framework would be an important aid for policymakers to develop suitable strategies and programs to inculcate leadership competencies that would lead to successful project managers and improved project performance.

The need for this research stems from the need to integrate popular project management frameworks in leadership competencies development in project based organizations. The proposed integrated framework, based on PMBOK 6th Edition and IPMA ICB 4.0 competency frameworks, is an original contribution to understand and prioritize leadership competencies for megaproject success.

Healthcare providers are under pressure due to increasing and more complex demands for services. Increased pressure on budgets and human resources adds to an ever-growing problem set. Competent leaders are in demand to ensure effective and well-performing healthcare organisations that deliver balanced results and high-quality services. Researchers have made significant efforts to identify and define determining competencies for healthcare leadership. Broad terms such as competence are, however, inherently at risk of becoming too generic to add analytical value. The purpose of this study is to suggest a holistic framework for understanding healthcare leadership competence, that can be crucial for operationalising important healthcare leadership competencies for researchers, decision-makers as well as practitioners.

In the present study, a critical interpretive synthesis (CIS) was conducted to analyse competency descriptions for healthcare leaders. The descriptions were retrieved from peer reviewed empirical studies published between 2010 and 2022 that aimed to identify healthcare services leadership competencies. Grounded theory was utilised to code the data and inductively develop new categories of healthcare leadership competencies. The categorisation was then analysed to suggest a holistic framework for healthcare leadership competence.

Forty-one papers were included in the review. Coding and analysing the competence descriptions resulted in 12 healthcare leadership competence categories: (1) character, (2) interpersonal relations, (3) leadership, (4) professionalism, (5) soft HRM, (6) management, (7) organisational knowledge, (8) technology, (9) knowledge of the healthcare environment, (10) change and innovation, (11) knowledge transformation and (12) boundary spanning. Based on this result, a holistic framework for understanding and analysing healthcare services leadership competencies was suggested. This framework suggests that the 12 categories of healthcare leadership competencies include a range of knowledge, skills and abilities that can be understood across the dimension personal – and technical, and organisational internal and – external competencies.

This literature review was conducted with the results of searching only two electronic databases. Because of this, there is a chance that there exist empirical studies that could have added to the development of the competence categories or could have contradicted some of the descriptions used in this analysis that were assessed as quite harmonised. A CIS also opens for a broader search, including the grey literature, books, policy documents and so on, but this study was limited to peer-reviewed empirical studies. This limitation could also have affected the result, as complex phenomenon such as competence might have been disclosed in greater details in, for example, books.

The holistic framework for healthcare leadership competences offers a common understanding of a “fuzzy” concept such as competence and can be used to identify specific competency needs in healthcare organisations, to develop strategic competency plans and educational programmes for healthcare leaders.

This study reveals a lack of consensus regarding the use and understanding of the concept of competence, and that key competencies addressed in the included papers are described vastly different in terms of what knowledge, skills and abilities they entail. This challenges the operationalisation of healthcare services leadership competencies. The proposed framework for healthcare services leadership competencies offers a common understanding of work-related competencies and a possibility to analyse key leadership competencies based on a holistic framework.

Recognizing, tracking and providing mechanisms for sharing an individual's comprehensive record of learning is necessary and essential for both her agency over and ability to manage sharing her qualifications with parties whom she desires to be aware of her learning record. In doing so, she may capture and present degrees, certifications, microcredentials or badges representing varying levels of knowledge, skill and abilities (KSAs) achieved in both formal and informal educational experiences. This paper aims to discuss the aforementioned ideas.

In the USA, competency frameworks are gaining more solid footing with both higher education institutions and employers as both move to address the changing landscape of education-to-work preparation and the relationships that exist between them. The need to support lifelong learning and the various pathways that individuals traverse in and out of educational pursuits and the workforce require a more personalized approach.

This paper will discuss the drivers of the newfound traction of competency frameworks among higher education and employers within the USA, present examples of the frameworks and how they are being applied to address the common interests of educators, employers and the learner/earners, and explain the role badges and microcredentials play in capturing and recognizing the broad spectrum of learning, skills and competencies achieved by an individual throughout the lifelong learning journey.

The digital badging taxonomy and concept of using badges as a representation of a unit of competency, both introduced in this paper, provide a unique strategy for contextualizing the relationship between levels of cognitive domain recognized in academic settings and the language of KSAs used by employers.

Competency-based human resource management (CBHRM) is a key component of all organisations but needs to be regularly reviewed and evaluated to ensure the quality of healthcare professionals. One common taxonomy of competency domains for health professions is from Englander et al., where this paper aims to conduct a large-scale analysis based on topic modelling to investigate the extent to which the competency framework for the healthcare sector is applied in the German job market of health professions.

The quantitative NLP analysis of a dataset consisting of 3,362 online job advertisements of nurses and doctors was scraped from a German job portal. The data was pre-processed according to Miner et al. For the analysis, the authors applied unsupervised (e.g. HDP, LDA) and supervised (BERTopic) methods and content analysis. Based on the extracted topics a word list was created and these words were coded to existing dimensions of the competency framework of Englander et al. or new dimensions were created.

Comparing methodologies, HDP (unsupervised) and BERTopic (supervised) were the best performing while the BERTopic algorithm outperforms HDP. For the doctor dataset 46% of one main dimension was identified but with an overall coverage of 69%, for the care dataset is weaker with 30.8% but an overall coverage of 100%. Additionally, the taxonomy was enhanced with supplementary competencies of “personality/characteristics” and “leadership” as well as two facets of job description which are “place of work” and “job conditions”.

On the one hand selected dimensions of the taxonomy could be clearly identified but on the other hand, there is a documented gap between the taxonomy and the competencies advertised. One cause may lie in the NLP algorithms but applicants may also have the same difficulties when reading the OJAs. Thus, practitioners should carefully review OJAs regarding better separating explicit competencies they are searching for. For the scientific development of new competency frameworks, our data-driven approach exemplified an extension of a given taxonomy.

The author aims to develop an employee competency framework for a volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA) environment and propose learning and development (L&D) interventions for organisations and employees to develop competencies for thriving in a VUCA environment.

The framework synthesis method was used to determine employee competencies that are essential in a VUCA world.

The author identified 10 competencies that are essential for employee development in a VUCA world. The author categorised these employee competencies as cognitive (cognitive flexibility, agility mindset and personal ambidexterity), cross-cultural (cross-cultural intelligence and cross-cultural collaboration), analytical (creativity and complex problem solving) and personal effectiveness competencies (personal resilience, continuous learning and adaptive mindset).

The proposed competencies could be used for the personal development of employees and organisations. The VUCA competency framework developed in this study includes behavioural dimensions for each competency, which could be used in self-assessment, recruitment and selection and talent and performance management. Furthermore, the author proposes L&D interventions required for developing these competencies. Overall, this study contributes to human resources (HR) development in the VUCA era by proposing the development of specific individual competencies as necessary conditions for survival and growth.

VUCA competencies empower employees to not only survive but also thrive in an unpredictable and rapidly changing world. By incorporating these competencies in L&D interventions, organisations can help employees develop the necessary competencies to thrive in a VUCA environment, thus contributing to their personal and organisational success.

For business and management higher education (HE) to transition graduates to digital workplaces and careers, it’s crucial they develop competencies (digital and traditional, soft and technical, new and old) that are relevant and applicable.

Insights are obtained from 60 comprehensive interviews with HE business students, educators and industry practitioners.

Six synergistic competencies are described that leverage synergies of (often) divergent competencies in the digital age of business, integrating them with a recently emerged multi-disciplinary competency framework. Each synergy states its target application, purpose and is aligned with specific HE practices.

Scholarship of competencies is re-oriented away from clusters and towards synergies, with a new inter-disciplinary competency framework validated to business in the digital age, with directions provided for HE.

The purpose of this paper is to review and provide propositions about survey assessment tools of the key sustainability competencies (KSCs) of education for sustainability. UNESCO points out how education plays an important role in transforming societies towards a sustainable future and achieving the United Nations’ sustainable development goals. To plan education for sustainability, teachers need to know the students’ competencies for sustainability before they come to class. Thus, a formative assessment about student competence for sustainability is needed.

Firstly, a structured literature review of assessment tools used to measure sustainability competencies by questionnaire survey is presented. Secondly, the authors’ conceptualise how the competencies influence each other and provide propositions for future research.

The literature demonstrates that there is much ambiguity between prior research about the scales used and what they represent. A lack of validation across disciplines is apparent and an assessment tool that includes all eight KSCs could benefit education for sustainability. Future research could investigate how the competencies influence each other and which drivers are stronger for each discipline across different countries. A formative assessment tool can address this need.

The findings provide a new analysis about questionnaire assessment tools used in prior research to measure sustainability competence. The authors’ offer a discussion about the strengths and weaknesses found in prior research and propose suggestions for future research. Their conceptualisation also provides propositions for validating the KSCs presented in a recent framework.

This study has two objectives: (1) to identify gaps in the citizen scholar framework by comparing and synthesizing the relevant pedagogical literature and (2) to illustrate how 21st century graduate capabilities can be cultivated through teaching practices using the citizen scholar framework.

We briefly synthesize the relevant citizen scholar pedagogical frameworks and approaches. We use two case studies in two large classroom settings in Ireland and Australia to demonstrate how the citizen scholar attributes can be developed through curriculum design and multiple forms of assessment.

We identify that there is a need for digital literacy to be placed as a fifth attribution cluster in the citizen scholar framework. We also demonstrate that these graduate competencies can be developed at scale by embedding the citizen scholar framework in teaching practices.

We offer a practical implementation mechanism for cultivating 21st century graduate competencies, which will help further embed citizen scholar in pedagogy strategies, thus empowering learning at scale in business education.

The current study makes the first attempt to identify significant attribution gaps in the citizen scholar framework by synthesizing and mapping the relevant approaches. Detailed examples of curriculum design from the two countries also offer new insights into the implementation of a citizen scholar framework.