Linguistics

Creativity

Philosophy

Public relations

Government (linguistics)

Civil servants

Economics

Computer science

Business

Corporate governance

Human resource management

Black box

Politics

Management

Political science

Sociology

Artificial intelligence

Public administration

Public management

Public Management Review

Employees' competencies are key to understanding individual performance. In this article, we investigate which competencies are considered important in government using the results of a survey among civil servants. Respondents listed 248 competencies they deemed necessary for their current and future job. To some degree, these competencies can be linked to three major governance philosophies, traditional Public Administration, New Public Management, and New Public Governance, but several other meaningful clusters of competencies can be distinguished as well, including creativity-related competencies and self-development skills. Based on our results, we draw lesson for civil servants and public (human resource) managers.

Opening up the black box of civil servants’ competencies