Who is ethical

Personal values take on greater meaning in adulthood as they are meant to influence how we carry out our responsibilities to others. This is true in the workplace, especially for managers and leaders, who are charged with overseeing resources for the benefit of others. Because of their authority structures, social norms, and cultures, organizations can have a powerful influence on their employees. In this way they seek to promote their standards of ethical behavior.

Since moral judgments are based on the analysis of the consequences of behavior, they involve interpretations and assessments. One might be asked to do something that violates a personal belief but is considered appropriate by others.

Without that awareness, it can be difficult to justify a decision on ethical or moral grounds in a way that others would find persuasive. If you value equal rights for all and you go to work for an organization that treats its managers much better than it does its workers, you may form the attitude that the company is an unfair place to work; consequently, you may not produce well or may even leave the company.

It is likely that if the company had a more egalitarian policy, your attitude and behaviors would have been more positive. Ethical decisions involve judgments of facts and situations that are subject to interpretation and other influences.

Analyze the gray areas of ethical expectations within the context of corporate decision making and ethical business practice. Law and ethics are not the same thing.

Both exist to influence behavior, but complying with the law is mandatory, while adhering to an ethical code is voluntary. Laws define what is permissible, while ethics speak to what is right, good, and just. Lawyers and judges are responsible for clarifying the meaning of a law when there is ambiguity or when a matter is subject to interpretation. Where ethics are concerned, that responsibility lies with each individual. In organizations, employees can look to the code of ethics or the statement of values for guidance about how to handle ethical gray areas.

Even when an individual has a clear sense of right and wrong, or good and bad, it can be difficult to know what is ethical in a given situation. One analyzes ethical issues by asking questions such as: What could happen? How likely is it happen? What might the harm be? Who might be hurt? The answers are not always clear cut. Individual judgments can be influenced, even clouded, by a number of factors. In addition, there are times when people believe that the ends justify the means.

In other words, if the result of an action is good, then it is okay if the action itself is unethical. There is a saying that a good person is one who does good deeds when no one is looking.

The same goes with ethical decisions. It stops us from simply describing what is likely to happen, and allows us to make judgements about what should happen. Of all the ways you might act, which is the best?

Of all the possibilities, which one should you bring into reality? Of course you can only answer that question if you dare to ask it. Some might see it as the one that advances their own goals and interests, or makes the most money. At the heart of these is a nugget of ethics, but each is a distraction from the questions that matter most. Ethics defines the best option as the one which best achieves what is good, right and consistent with the nature of the things in question.

Ethics is the process of questioning, discovering and defending our values, principles and purpose. There is no ready-made way to deal with ethical challenges. They require us to respond to specific circumstances and relationships as well as the various ethical considerations — purpose, values and principles — at play. Still, there are a few questions you can ask that can help crystalise the ethical issues for you. This is known as the Sunlight Test. Imagine if your decision — and the reasons you made it — were public knowledge.

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The awkward case of 'his or her'. So when someone makes a moral judgement they show their feelings about something. Some theorists also suggest that in expressing a feeling the person gives an instruction to others about how to act towards the subject matter.

So if I say something is good, I'm recommending you to do it, and if I say something is bad, I'm telling you not to do it. There is almost always a prescriptive element in any real-world ethical statement: any ethical statement can be reworked with a bit of effort into a statement with an 'ought' in it. For example: "lying is wrong" can be rewritten as "people ought not to tell lies".

Supernaturalism makes ethics inseparable from religion. It teaches that the only source of moral rules is God. So, something is good because God says it is, and the way to lead a good life is to do what God wants.

Intuitionists think that good and bad are real objective properties that can't be broken down into component parts. Something is good because it's good; its goodness doesn't need justifying or proving. Intuitionists think that goodness or badness can be detected by adults - they say that human beings have an intuitive moral sense that enables them to detect real moral truths.

They think that basic moral truths of what is good and bad are self-evident to a person who directs their mind towards moral issues. So good things are the things that a sensible person realises are good if they spend some time pondering the subject.

This is the ethical theory that most non-religious people think they use every day. It bases morality on the consequences of human actions and not on the actions themselves.

Consequentialism teaches that people should do whatever produces the greatest amount of good consequences. The most common forms of consequentialism are the various versions of utilitarianism, which favour actions that produce the greatest amount of happiness. Despite its obvious common-sense appeal, consequentialism turns out to be a complicated theory, and doesn't provide a complete solution to all ethical problems.

Non-consequentialism is concerned with the actions themselves and not with the consequences. It's the theory that people are using when they refer to "the principle of the thing". It teaches that some acts are right or wrong in themselves, whatever the consequences, and people should act accordingly. Virtue ethics looks at virtue or moral character, rather than at ethical duties and rules, or the consequences of actions - indeed some philosophers of this school deny that there can be such things as universal ethical rules.

Virtue ethics is particularly concerned with the way individuals live their lives, and less concerned in assessing particular actions. It develops the idea of good actions by looking at the way virtuous people express their inner goodness in the things that they do. To put it very simply, virtue ethics teaches that an action is right if and only if it is an action that a virtuous person would do in the same circumstances, and that a virtuous person is someone who has a particularly good character.

Situation ethics rejects prescriptive rules and argues that individual ethical decisions should be made according to the unique situation. Rather than following rules the decision maker should follow a desire to seek the best for the people involved. There are no moral rules or rights - each case is unique and deserves a unique solution. Some philosophers teach that ethics is the codification of political ideology, and that the function of ethics is to state, enforce and preserve particular political beliefs.

They usually go on to say that ethics is used by the dominant political elite as a tool to control everyone else. More cynical writers suggest that power elites enforce an ethical code on other people that helps them control those people, but do not apply this code to their own behaviour.

One of the big questions in moral philosophy is whether or not there are unchanging moral rules that apply in all cultures and at all times. Some people think there are such universal rules that apply to everyone. This sort of thinking is called moral absolutism.

Moral absolutism argues that there are some moral rules that are always true, that these rules can be discovered and that these rules apply to everyone. Immoral acts - acts that break these moral rules - are wrong in themselves, regardless of the circumstances or the consequences of those acts. Absolutism takes a universal view of humanity - there is one set of rules for everyone - which enables the drafting of universal rules - such as the Declaration of Human Rights.

Moral relativists say that if you look at different cultures or different periods in history you'll find that they have different moral rules. Therefore it makes sense to say that "good" refers to the things that a particular group of people approve of.