Ethical Values
Each of us has an internal system of values and beliefs that are used to develop our moral character being, these are our ethics. These values and beliefs not only shape individual character, but impact how each of us are perceived by other people and play a role in the development of ethical business practices within an organization. Personal ethics influence our understanding of other people and the decision making process in the business environment. Gaining an understanding of different ethical beliefs and values will provide insight into other people and how they reach decisions.
Ethics
One tool used to measure ethics is the Williams Institute Ethics Awareness Inventory. The Williams Institute Ethics Awareness Inventory uses four perspectives to create an ethical profile for each individual that takes the inventory. The perspectives are: Character, Obligation, Results and Equity or C.O.R.E. I recently took the Williams Institute Ethics Awareness Inventory and found that my ethical profile is most aligned with the Character perspective. The Williams Institute (2008) states,” you tend to base your ethical perspective on what it is good to be, rather than what it is good to do. You believe that ethics should focus on ways to help people achieve moral excellence. When asked to judge whether an individual’s actions are ethical, you look beyond the actions to examine the individual’s character. Uprightness and integrity are key factors in your assessment. You look for evidence of virtue in people, including such traits as honor, justice, and benevolence, believing that a virtue is not just an abstract principle. Rather virtue is reflected in the quality of an individual’s character, and character is more important than an individual’s actions. In your opinion, mere compliance with rules, no matter how well-intentioned, does not make anyone an ethical person without being accompanied by consistent voluntary striving to be a morally good person....