Overview of Ethics

The Manager's Role in Ethical Conduct

Employees can more easily make ethical decisions that promote a company's values when their personal values match the company's norms.

Personal values provide an internal reference for what is good, beneficial, important, useful, beautiful, desirable, and constructive. Over time, the public expression of personal values has laid the foundations of law, custom, and tradition. Personal values, in this way, exist in relation to cultural values, either in agreement with or divergent from prevailing norms.

We develop our personal in different ways:

• The most important influence on our values comes from the families we grow up with. Families teach children what is right and wrong long before other influences. Thus, a child is a reflection of their parents.
  
  
• Teachers and classmates help shape children's values during the school years.
  
  
• Religion (or a lack thereof) also plays a role in teaching children values.

Personal values take on greater meaning in adulthood since they influence how we carry out our responsibilities to others. This is true in the workplace, especially for managers and leaders who oversee resources for the benefit of others. Because of their authority structures, social norms, and cultures, organizations can powerfully influence their employees. Employers do their best to hire individuals who match the organization's norms and values. In this way, they seek to promote their standards of ethical behavior.

Conversely, conflicts can occur between an individual's moral values and what they perceive to be those of others in their organization. Since moral judgments are based on analyzing the consequences of behavior, they involve interpretations and assessments. You might be asked to do something that violates a personal belief, but others consider appropriate. To make ethical and moral choices, we need to have a clear understanding of our personal values. Without that awareness, it can be difficult to justify a decision on ethical or moral grounds in a way others would find persuasive.

Example

If you value equal rights for all and work for an organization that treats its managers better than its workers, you may find the company is an unfair place to work. Consequently, you may not produce well and eventually leave the company. If the company had a more egalitarian policy, your attitude and behaviors would probably have been more positive.