Abstract:

The demands on managers are constantly increasing, as they are under constant pressure to achieve results. Managers working in public administration units stand out as a specific group. The public manager as a leader with knowledge and a concept for development should have a remarkable ability to reconcile social orientation in the choice of objectives and market-based methods of action. Very often, it is the case that a manager’s knowledge and sometimes the hermetic nature of the public institution itself leave existing competencies of little use. Hence, managers of public institutions have faced the need to improve their own competencies in response to the socio-economic environment. Globalization, economic integration, the growing importance of international cooperation and the entry of increasingly younger generations of workers into workforce mean that managers are attaching increasing importance to managing cultural differences. Intercultural competence of managers plays a special role in managing multicultural teams of employees and in the managers’ cooperation with culturally diverse customer groups. This is also an increasingly important aspect in public administration, as we are dealing with the formation of teams from different cultures, but also with the emergence an increasing number of customers with different cultural backgrounds (e.g. Ukrainians or national minorities in Poland).

The aim of the article is to demonstrate the importance of intercultural competencies of contemporary managers from the point of view of the Polish public administration. The author makes a point that it is precisely these competencies of public administration managers that are increasingly important, although still underestimated. This is because the quality of team work in a multicultural environment, the ability to understand and accept the cultural diversity of coworkers, on top of building positive relationships with employees and customers who come from different cultures depends on them.

The first part of the article explains the concept of competence, including managerial competence, and describes its relevance in contemporary management. The next section describes intercultural competencies and their importance in a multicultural environment. Next, the competence of contemporary managers functioning in public administration necessary to build positive intercultural relations are presented. The last part of the article presents research on the importance of intercultural competencies of contemporary managers in public administration, which was carried out among the managerial staff of Polish public offices, both local government and government administration.