title: Leadership competencies in the context of health services.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  In a rapidly changing health-care environment, clinicians are increasingly called upon to assume complex leadership responsibilities. The research was undertaken to develop an understanding of the limits to the conceptual and methodological basis of leadership competency modelling in health services context.
  
  
  METHODS
  Data were collected from all of the clinicians in a Psychiatric Hospital, Bahrain using a researcher-developed questionnaire. Data were gathered to critically assess the validity of the competency-based approach to leadership on the basis of subjects' capacity to discriminate in terms of importance and accomplishment between the items featured in a research tool containing a comprehensive list of 124 leadership competencies.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The results of the analyses indicate a weak identification with the competencies in the sense of revealing low levels of discriminatory sophistication on the part of subjects.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The study design was limited to participants working in single hospital; therefore, the conclusions made cannot yet be regarded categorically as generalizable. Leadership selection, development and education activities may not achieve their ultimate outcomes due to the subject identification problem associated with the competence approach. It might be necessary to reconsider the efficiency of human resource activities that rely solely on the competency approach. The conceptual basis of leadership competence in health services has been previously neglected. This research casts doubt on competency approaches to leadership if based on subject identification with pre-defined items.
authors.affiliation: Occupational Therapy Psychiatric Hospital, Ministry of Health, Kingdom of Bahrain, Manama, Bahrain. jahrami@hotmail.com
authors.forename: Haitham
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Jahrami
authors.forename: Gordon
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Marnoch
authors.forename: Ann Marie
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Gray
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001445:Bahrain; D005260:Female; D006282:Health Personnel; D006778:Hospitals, Psychiatric; D006801:Humans; D007857:Leadership; D008297:Male; D011361:Professional Competence / Q000592:standards*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires