Municipal managers in Italy: Skills, training requirements and related critical aspects

Public Administration in Italy has been experiencing noteworthy transformations necessary to meet citizens’ requirements. Public managers must apply such transformations and so their skills should be redefined. The aim of this article is to identify the skills that public managers should have for a good administration of the local community and to rank them in order of importance. A survey was administered to a sample of public managers operating in the Veneto region of Italy. Then skills and training requirements underlined by the same managers have been analysed. The findings indicate that a rich set of 26 skills is required. Good teamwork, proactive behaviour and authoritativeness are the most important skills for municipal managers, whereas specific and technical knowledge does not characterize the role of managers. This is particularly true in large municipalities, in which internal structures are complex and external relationships even more so.