Personal Ethics

“How Personal Can Ethics Get?”

Wynter Graham

Leadership and Organizational Behavior

Professor Carlene Graham

April 24, 2011

Personal differences are just that, personal! Everyone in this world is different. No two people operate the exact same way in the work place. Managers are responsible for recognizing this aspect. Business ethics can be both a normative and a descriptive discipline. As a corporate practice and a career specialization, the field is primarily normative. In academia descriptive approaches are also taken. The range and quantity of business ethical issues reflects the degree to which business is perceived to be at odds with non-economic social values. Historically, interest in business ethics accelerated dramatically during the 1980s and 1990s, both within major corporations and within academia (www.associatedcontent.com).

Individual differences are the physical, personality, attitudinal, and emotional attributes that vary from one person to another (Hellriegel & Slocum, 2009).Individual behavior is determined by many factors such as environment, culture, beliefs and the quality of life. Attitude is expressed in either satisfaction or dissatisfaction and the interaction between them. If a person has a feeling of unhappiness on the job, it can have an affect in other areas as well such as personal life. In some circumstances, some people have power over other people. For example, a therapist has more power than a patient. In a situation in which people are not equal in terms of their power, it may be important not to treat people as if they were morally equal.

An individual may have discontent on the job due to stress, frustration or feeling alienated. Management would rate a quiet or shy person as an introvert and a person that is outgoing, assertive and sociable as an extrovert personality.

Ethics is motivation based on ideas of right or wrong. The “right conduct” has nothing to do with being...