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The original objective of this study was to discover potential improvement areas for teaching social competencies to university undergraduate students. These competencies, often called “soft skills”, have become the most demanded capabilities from graduates by employers worldwide. The wider scope of the project became evident when the initial research problem turned out to be the very definition of “competency” itself. Different sources offered different approaches to its conceptual definition, its classification into different types and to its operationalization. The authors therefore started with the European Tuning Project, a cornerstone of the Bologna agreement, as their base. Up to 5 different classifications were found in the literature, all of them less than 10 years old, and all of them were analyzed, compared, compiled, fused and finally refined into a set of 9 core Interpersonal (Social) Competencies that were established as a “competency framework”. A second research problem was how to evaluate performance: What can be considered an “acceptable” level of achievement? Among the existing options, the Comparator Organizations system was chosen, where the benchmark would be the globally recognized United States Educational system. Parting from these premises, the authors conducted an empirical study of a valid sample of 225 students in Spain (original sample size above 400) who were studying in either the Spanish or the United States educational systems. Statistically significant differences were found among their behaviors and self-perceptions around certain interpersonal competencies. The survey sought to measure both the students’ self-perception (13 questions) and their “real behavior”, measured as a declared intention in different hypothetical, “easily-relatable-as-realistic’ situations (21 more questions). The reason for choosing this combined methodology, which to the Authors’ knowledge had never been used before, lies in the very concept of competency itself, understood to be: a “dynamic combination of knowledge, understanding, skills and abilities”. This means that, beyond theoretical knowledge and understanding, competencies are dynamic: they must be put into practice, thereby moving beyond the purely cognitive (at the level of descriptive, self-perception statements, intending to measure qualities respondents believe themselves to have) and into the behavioral arena (at the level of behaviors and/or intents, thereby seeking to measure indicators showing that respondents actually put these behaviors into practice). The differences found between American-system and European-system students led to a series of interesting conclusions about the status quo of teaching and training social competencies to Business students in Europe, and more specifically in Spain.

EDUCATING FUTURE MANAGERS IN SOCIAL COMPETENCIES, IN SPAIN: HOW FAR HAVE WE GOT, 20 YEARS AFTER THE BOLOGNA DECLARATION?