A Measurement Model for Ethical Competence in Business

Iordanis Kavathatzopoulos; Georgios Rigas

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A Measurement Model for Ethical Competence in Business

Iordanis Kavathatzopoulos

Uppsala University, Sweden

Georgios Rigas

Swedish National Defense College, Sweden

Volume 3: 2006, pp. 55-74: ABSTRACT

Ethical Competence Questionnaire-Working Life and Business (ECQ-WLB) is an effort to build an instrument that measures ethical competence in business as a psychological problem-solving and decision-making skill. The questionnaire is constructed in a way that aims to avoid connection to any particular moral philosophical theory. Its theoretical base is the autonomy hypothesis of Piaget. Autonomous reasoning as measured by the questionnaire correlated positively to the level of organizational hierarchy. ECQ-WLB demonstrated satisfying psychometric properties and reasonable reliability properties. A confirmatory factor analysis showed that the measurement model is compatible with the data.