The purpose of this paper is to establish the relevant competencies possessed by engineering lecturers and the relationship between those competencies and the exhibited organisational citizenship behaviours (OCB).
The study was carried out in two phases. Phase one was qualitative using a competency interview guide that was administered to ten engineering lecturers, selected using a purposive sampling design. From this interview, seven key result areas, competencies and critical outputs were obtained. Phase two was quantitative following the development of a questionnaire from the established competencies, key result areas and critical outputs. The questionnaire was administered to 110 engineering lecturers.
The study revealed that those lecturers who have the relevant competencies do exhibit discretionary behaviours at work. The model could be useful in deriving employee competencies and critical outputs.
A cross‐sectional study using a small sample in a single institution could not warrant generalisability of the findings.
Competency‐based recruitment and selection has the potential to improve the ways in which universities could manage engineering lecturers.
The paper presents a new approach to competency profiling, the need for competent engineering lecturers.
