The Ethical Professional

The Ethical Professional

Professional ethics arise from the knowledge that professionals attained, and how this knowledge is applied when providing a service to the public. Public servants have the responsibility to support this philosophy in the public sector such as in state, governmental, profit, and non-profit organizations. Therefore, they would have to exercise ethics in order to make decisions as the authority of a community. Within the idea to make important decisions for society, we have to consider values and ethics, moral development, individual ethics, and organizational integrity.
Public administrators recognize the importance of ethical behavior. Therefore, they exhibit both their values and their ethics in their leadership style and actions. Ethics and values should be visible because you live them in your actions every single day. Moreover, values are the personification of what an organization stands for, and should be the basis of its members. On the other hand, if members of the organization do not share the same values, there will be a conflict between individual and organizational values causing a dysfunctional effect in the organization. Additionally, each organization portraits a specific set of values in an effort to show a positive image. Consequently, ethics is the way values are practice in an organization when public servants make decisions such as what is right or wrong for the benefit of an organization and a community.
Furthermore, moral development was created by Lawrence Kohlberg to explain the development of moral maturity which is the basis of ethical behavior; it has six developmental stages and grouped into three levels. The pre-conventional level reflects an action by its direct consequences. It consist of the first and second stages of moral development (Stage 1) punishment avoidance or an instrumental orientation (Stage 2) the person is self-interested and either fears or uses others. Conventional level thinking regards right behavior with the...

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