| Summary: | In his 2006 State of the Nation Address, President Thabo Mbeki emphasised the need for the development of managerial competencies and other skills to empower the country’s municipalities to meet the needs of the community (Governance and Administration, 2005). In order to meet the needs of the local community, municipalities need to render effective and efficient services. The lack of relevant managerial competencies adversly influences the municipality’s capacity to deliver the required services. In addition, the uneven distribution of capabilities and capacity across different sections within a municipality also poses a great risk to municipal performance and equitable service provision over the medium term. Notwithstanding progress made to date, service delivery backlogs still exist in key areas that affect the daily lives of the community. Where these backlogs coincide with poor municipal capacity, the result is service failure and a government that is incapable of meeting its goals (Governance and Administration, 2005). The objective of the study is to assess the contemporary management competencies that are required to assist municipal management in addressing the challenges of a dynamic, uncertain and complex Local Government environment. A questionnaire was used to gather the perceptions of 26 senior managers. This sample constituted a response rate of 65 per cent of people employed by municipalities within the Eden District Municipality’s service area. The questionnaires were distributed to the senior managers by means of an identified contact person within each municipality. The empirical findings such as the mean, median, standard deviation and pvalues were calculated by means of MS Excel. The main findings of this research indicated that: • Presently the most developed managerial competencies were selfmanagement, strategic action, planning and administration and communication. • The least developed current competency was global awareness. • The managerial competencies regarded as the most important for the next ten years were planning, administration and strategic action. • Global awareness was regarded as the least important competency for the next ten years. This finding points to the need for developing the global awareness competency to ensure that Municipal Managers are more sensitive to cultural cues and are able to adapt quickly in novel situations.
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