Values, Ethics and Morality

The Ethics Challenge will help leaders strengthen their core ethical behavior and develop personally and professionally."-Dr. Charles B. Reed, Chancellor, California State University System

At the simplest, ethics is a system of moral principles. They affect how people make decisions and lead their lives.

Ethics is concerned with what is good for individuals and society and is also described as moral philosophy.

The term is derived from the Greek word ethos which can mean custom, habit, character or  disposition.

Ethics covers the following dilemmas;

How to live a good life our rights and responsibilities the language of right and wrong moral decisions – what is good and bad?

Definition of Ethics

Ethics is a branch of philosophy concerned with the study of what is good and bad.

 Ethical behavior is based on written and unwritten codes of principles and values held in society.

           ·  Ethical principles and values serve as a guide to behaviors on a personal level, within            professions, and at the collective organizational level.

           · Business ethics involves personal, professional, and corporate behaviors. 
Ethics

•     The study of principles relating to right and wrong conduct.

·  Behavior

•         The way a living creature acts.

·  Values

A collection of guiding principles; what one deems to be correct and desirable in life, especially regarding personal conduct.

EXAMPLES

·   Corporate Social Responsibility is a form of ethical behavior that requires that organizations understand, identify, and eliminate unethical economic, environmental, and social behaviors.

 Moral Reasoning and Ethics

 

Moral reasoning allows us to make good decisions even in the absence good data, experience, or precedent.

To be Ethical or not to be...

I know what is right, but feel no inclination to follow it, I know what is wrong, but cannot desist from it.

Where does ethics come from?

God and Religion

Human conscience and intuition a rational moral cost- benefit analysis of actions and their effects the example of good human beings a desire for the best for people in each unique situation political power.

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.

According to Richard W.  Paul of the foundation for Critical Thinking. “Most people confuse ethics with behaving in accordance with social conventions”. Religious beliefs and the law and don’t treat ethics as a stand-alone concept. Paul and Elder define ethics as “a set of concepts and principles that guide us a determining what behaviour helps or harms sentient creatures.

Richard W. Paul

Ethics make you more successful. You may think that ethics can hold you back in all kinds of ways. But the truth is a opposite. Ethical people embody traits that unethical people have to work at to fake they’re honest, trustworthy, loyal, and caring. As a result, ethical people are perfectly suited not only on interpersonal relationship generally. But also more specifically for the kinds of interactions that make for thriving business. Unethical people don’t do so well at these things.

According to the discussion of my instructor during classes why ethics is important? —Ethics is important because the risks associated with inappropriate behavior have increased

—Organizations have at least five good reasons for encouraging employees to act ethically

¡To gain the good will of the community

¡To create an organization that operates consistently

¡To foster good business practices

¡To protect the organization and its employees against legal action

To avoid unfavorable publicity

Ethics and people

Ethics is about the other

Hand holding and supporting another hand Ethics is concerned  with other people. At the heart of ethics is a concern about something or someone other than ourselves and our own desires and self-interest.

Ethics is concerned with other people’s interest, with the interests of society, with God’s interest, with “ultimate goods”, and so on.

So when a person ’thinks ethically’ they are giving at least some thought  to something beyond themselves.

Ethics as source of group strength

One problem with the ethics is the way it’s often as a weapon.

It a group believes that a particular activity is “wrong” it can then use morality as the justification for attacking those who practice that activity.

When people do this, they often see those who they regard as immoral as in some way less human or deserving of respect than themselves; sometimes with tragic consequences.

Good people as well as good actions

Ethics is not only about the morality of particular of  courses of action, but it’s also about the goodness of individuals and what it means to live a good life.

Virtue ethics is particularly concerned with the moral character of human beings.

Searching for the source of right and wrong.

At times in the past some people thought that ethical problems could be solved in one of two ways:

By discovering what God wanted people to do. By thinking rigorously about moral principles and problems If a person did this properly they would be led to the right conclusion.

But now even philosophers are less sure that it’s possible to devise a satisfactory and complete  theory of ethics – at least not one that leads to conclusions.

Modern thinkers often teach that ethics leads people not to conclusions but to ‘decisions’.

Values

Our values are the qualities or ideas which each of us cares about and considers important. They can be morally or ethically based, or simply based on natural want or need. They can be good or bad, reasonable or unreasonable. Values are the elements on which we base our actions.

Morality

Morality is one’s individual perception of right and wrong, good and evil. While one’s perception of morality does not directly affect others, it does influence the attitudes and values of a society.

Ethics

The word ethics refers to a set or system of moral ideals. Just as it takes the thoughts and ideas of many people to make up an ideology, ethics are a product of society. Being so, it is not surprising that many ethical issues deal with the relationship between the individual and the group. It is in this area that the most change has occurred in ethics throughout times.