Abstract
Bahrain is heading towards building a knowledge-based economy which primarily
depend on providing a superior and a high-quality education that will produce a world
class skilled future employee. To ensure the quality of education and graduates,
universities need to ensure the quality of its human capital in particular “faculty
members”; that they are competent and have the right set of skills and knowledge to
perform their job effectively. Competency model is a descriptive tool that lists the
required skills, knowledge, abilities, and traits that are essential to perform a certain
job. Different industries have been utilizing competency models to find the best fit when
recruiting new staff, identifying training and development needs and performance
assessments. Unfortunately, none of the existing universities in Bahrain or in the region
are using such a significant model. This study proposes a university faculty competency
model to be adopted by universities. A competency model that includes five clusters
which are: cognitive, functional, management, personal characteristics, and social
skills. A qualitative methodology has been employed to face validate the proposed
model, using focus groups with 12 faculty seniors (PhD holders with a post-doctoral
minimum of five years of experience), and structured interviews for concurrent
validation, with a sample of 30 faculty seniors (PhD holders with a post-doctoral
minimum of five years of experience). the researcher used different analytical methods
using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 25 in order to reach
the outcome that supports the study’s objective. The results of this study have shown a
strong agreement of the proposed competency model and the suggested applications.
Based on those findings a university faculty competency model that includes 29
competencies is recommended to be adopted and utilized by universities as tool for
recruitment, training and development, and performance assessment of faculty.
Limitations of the study were, the time constraint, the virtual form of focus groups and
interviews and the sample size. For future work, the areas of specific competency model
for different colleges or types of university needs to be explored.
Keywords: Competencies, Competency Model, Faculty, University, Higher Education.