Centres Of Excellence

To focus on new and emerging areas of research and education, Centres of Excellence have been established within the Institute. These ‘virtual' centres draw on resources from its stakeholders, and interact with them to enhance core competencies

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Faculty members at IIMB generate knowledge through cutting-edge research in all functional areas of management that would benefit public and private sector companies, and government and society in general.

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IIMB Management Review

Journal of Indian Institute of Management Bangalore

IIM Bangalore offers Degree-Granting Programmes, a Diploma Programme, Certificate Programmes and Executive Education Programmes and specialised courses in areas such as entrepreneurship and public policy.

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About IIMB

The Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB) believes in building leaders through holistic, transformative and innovative education

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ETHICS IN COMPETENCY MODELS: A FRAMEWORK TOWARDS DEVELOPING ETHICAL BEHAVIOUR IN ORGANISATIONS

Employees’ ethical standards and competency are considered important issues confronting businesses and society. There is an increased drive for ethical competency among employees. Competency models describe desired behaviours, skills, and attributes intended to facilitate the achievement of organisational goals by aligning individual behaviours to organisationally expected behaviours. Including ethical competence in an organisation’s competency model would help employees change past habits and norms, evaluate  situations, and assess the implications of decisions. By including ethical competency in the competency frameworks, organisations can drive the desired coherence and consistency by defining the “how” of effective performance. However, research on developing frameworks to foster ethical competence is scant. Given that employees’ ethical behaviour has become the sine qua non for organisations, it is surprising to see the absence of ethical competency in organisations’ competency models. 

Adopting qualitative research based on two separate studies with the heads of HR in twenty-one industries across  Indian and South-East Asian organisations, we asked the primary research question: Why is ethical competency absent from competency frameworks of most organisations and given the absence, how do organisations inculcate ethical behaviour within their workforce? 

The study identified three core reasons for the absence of ethics in competency models (i.e., ideation, conceptualisation, and implementation challenges). Respondents indicated that ethics was not a competency but a basic hygiene expectation; and ethical behaviour was context-dependent and challenging to conceptualise and assess. Further, the tools to measure ethical competencies are either missing or not robust enough to use on a large scale. Basis our study, we propose a framework for fostering ethical behaviour among employees. Implications of the research for theory and practice are discussed.