Business Ethics Competencies Research: Implications for Canadian Practitioners

This paper describes a proposed framework of knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics (KSAOs) that 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 training program. The focus in this paper is on the management problem of ‘What competencies are important for job performance of business ethics practitioners’. Phase I consisted of developing a provisional taxonomy of business ethics competencies and Phase II involved academic and industry practitioners implicated in business ethics to validate the conceptually developed provisional taxonomy of business ethics competencies to eventually make recommendations regarding the selection of business ethics training content. The contribution to the business ethics competency-based management knowledge that is presented in this paper is a proposed business ethics competency model and the implications of this model for Canadian practitioners are discussed.