Ethics & Morals in a Global Setting

Ethics and Values in a Global Setting

Jason Bokesch

CMGT530

March 22, 2010

John Zupan

Ethics and Values in a Global Setting

This week we were asked to write a paper examining how we reconcile our personal, professional, and cultural values, and our ethics in a global setting. Personal values are individual beliefs that determine individual decision making. These values are not only inherited from our parents, but we also modify them as we experience different events in life. Personal values affect our attitudes toward people, cultures, and society. Professional values are our attitudes toward work, our conduct at work, how we are rewarded, and expectations of our employers. These values ultimately determine who will work for, how hard we will work for them, what we will work for and how we interact with our coworkers. Each group, society, and culture has their own set of beliefs and norms about what is right and wrong, just, or unjust. Ethics are defined as a set of values that determines an individual’s conduct when it comes to making sound decisions regarding what is right and what is wrong.

Now that we have looked at how each term is defined, we need to examine today’s global setting in three different terms: cultural differences, economic conditions, and family backgrounds. Now more than ever, there are greater cultural differences in all areas of life. It used to be that cultures were divided by things such as sections of a town, positions in a company, type of company worked for, and religion. Today these boundaries are crossed. When I was growing up in Youngstown, OH there were certain sections of the town where certain cultures and nationalities lived. There was one area where mainly Italians lived, another where African Americans lived, and still another where the Polish community lived. Today these subdivisions are not nearly as numerous. I have especially noticed this here in Oklahoma City. Every one of my neighbors is of a different cultural...