Business ethics competencies: KSAOS for business ethics practitioners

This dissertation describes a proposed framework of knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics (KSAOs) of a practitioner who is competent in business ethics, compliance, or integrity should possess. These competencies may be leveraged as key input to selecting content for an institutionalized business ethics (BE) training program. The research problem for this dissertation was: What competencies are important for job performance of business ethics practitioners in industry and how do their perceptions compare with those of academics? Triangulation of research methods and data sources—including industry (public service and private sector) and academics, were used to investigate this problem. Phase I consisted of developing a provisional taxonomy of business ethics competencies through the use of the secondary methodology to help design a survey questionnaire. Phase II involved a survey of academic and industry practitioners implicated in business ethics to empirically validate the conceptually developed provisional taxonomy of business ethics competencies and help identify potentially under or over-emphasized competencies to help make recommendations regarding the selection of business ethics training content by choosing relevant course materials based on competencies and key risks and issues. Several theoretical and pragmatic contributions to the business ethics training, competency-based management, and risk management bodies of knowledge are made that include: Institutionalized BE Program (IBEP) parent theory and body of knowledge A model for content selection for BE instruction is developed to help guide future selection and tailoring of training content based on baseline competencies and organizational context. Competency-Based Management (CBM) parent theory and body of knowledge A conceptually and empirically developed and content validated proposed business ethics competency model that may serve to guide future research in this neglected area is provided. Risk Management (RM) parent theory and body of knowledge Given the rapid pace of technological, social, economic, and other constant changes faced by organizations, future competency identification is made possible by the proposed enhancement of traditional environmental scanning methods to include new dimensions to the risk identification process through the creation of an extended environmental scanning model (STEEP LEDGES). Also, the traditional risk assessment framework is enhanced by adding prevalence, a third dimension to augment likelihood and impact that should help assess current and new risks and issues using the extended risk assessment model (LIP)