| “How Personal Can Ethics Get?” | Frank Gladden | | Strayer University | |

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1. Discuss how personal differences and preference can impact organizational ethics.
Personal differences and preferences impact organizational ethics due the fact that we all have a different set of ethics at some level. These differences will lead to conflict at times. This is where an organization’s need to create its own sort of ethic, which some organizations refer to as a Code of Conduct, can blend the individual employee’s personal code into that of the organization. Ethics can be defined as a set of values and principles that help us determine what is right and wrong1. It can also be described as a moral code.
Lawrence Kohlberg’s model of moral development points out how a person’s moral code (ethic) can begin and grow. It can be shown as a step progression: 1) Obedience and Punishment. 2) Instrumental. 3) Interpersonal. 4) Law and Order. 5) Social Contract. 6) Universal.2 If a person never progresses to the top of the model, they may or may not do certain things in an organization that they may or may not have done whether someone knows about it or not.
A person’s ethic, most agree, start at home. We are raised with our parents’ own opinions of what is right and wrong. Then, as we grow, our ethics are further molded and adjusted by our peers in school, places of worship, and other social organizations. For example, in some cultures, it is considered rude to look someone in the eye when speaking. So you can imagine when someone who was raised to show respect this way has to learn to interact with someone who was raised that it is disrespectful not to look someone in the eye.
Another example of this is people whose cultural ethic says family comes first above all others. If the organization suddenly advises the individual that they are now required to work 8 hours overtime per week, due to the needs of the business, that employee will most likely become disgruntled and make the whole department they work in either unpleasant or hostile.

An organization has to make sure its guidelines and policies make it possible for these personal ethics to not cause problems in the work place.
At its core, an organization’s ethic must try to incorporate the highest level of the developmental model (the universal principle stage) which is based in the ideas of justice and respect for everyone’s basic rights as human beings. A person’s level in the moral development model also indicates their level of “Moral Intelligence”. Moral Intelligence is defined as the mental capacity to determine how universal human principles that cut across the globe should be applied to personal values, goals, and actions.3

2. Discuss how organizational policies and procedures can impact ethics.
As state above, an Organization has to develop its own policies and guidelines as close to the top level of the moral development model as it can to encompass as much of the many different individual’s ethics as possible without impeding individual expression. It is important to note that an organization cannot enforce morals so to speak, only make the work place as friendly and productive as possible with so many different viewpoints and individual ethics. In many companies and organizations, this means the individual must adjust their own personal ethic in some cases. This is where what is known as the Big Five Personality Factors come into play.
The Big Five Personality Factors are openness, emotional stability; agreeableness, conscientiousness, and extraversion; 4where an individual ranks in these categories have shown to predict how well they will do in an organization. Very few people are going to rank high in all these areas. We all have areas we need to work on. For the most part, however, those individuals who have a good overall score in these areas are the most productive. They are also the ones who will have a high Emotional Intelligence score or EQ. Psychologist Daniel Goldman hypothesizes that those who are good leaders have a high emotional intelligence, also known as Emotional Quotient (EQ) EQ is made up of: a) Self esteem. b) Social empathy. c) Self motivation and d) Social skills; 5 they are the ones usually with the best attitudes and the best production.
Leaders in an organization have to understand these factors and be careful not to put too much weight on them when it comes to judging job performance.

3. Discuss the ethical dilemmas that Valerie is facing.
Valerie is facing something that every employee fears facing; an instant when they find someone else they work with or under, especially someone they work under, whose own personal ethic is opposed to their own and the organization they work for. Almost everyone has that ingrained ethic of not wanting to be the tattle tale, rat, stool pigeon, etc…; commonly known in the business circle as a whistle blower.
The next dilemma she faces is also on a personal level. She is working here on a provisional basis. She has no green card. If she loses her job, she has 30 days to get another one or she has to leave the country. Not to mention the fact that most companies shy away from hiring non US citizens of her type, with no green card, due to the time and paperwork required. Also on the personal level is the fact that her company is paying for her Masters of Science degree. If her boss lost his job, her whole department may be done away with.
This would also mean that the people in her small department, which has been very close on a personal and personal level, may lose their jobs as well. She must eventually decide if she should really do anything at all. If she says nothing and it comes to light later, she me be held accountable for what she knew earlier and why she continued to let it go on. This could be worse than blowing the whistle. She could be linked to any wrong doing and could keep her from working anywhere else in the industry. Even worse, she could be immediately deported.

4. Recommend what Valerie should do. Provide a detailed explanation.
In my opinion, Valerie has overlooked the best option. She has the documents she found in the copier. I would just get a copy of those documents to her boss’s boss. This way no one knows who the whistle blower is. She could also make copies and leave them out for all on the team to see, including her boss, during the next department meeting that he shows up for. This would also give her boss a chance to explain what the documents are and what they mean. It is possible that there is nothing going on at all against policy. There may be some level of conflict of interest, but it still is possible that nothing wrong is going on.

REFERENCES 1. Hellriegel/Slocum. Organizational Behavior. Cengage Learning. 2010 2. Kohlberg, L. The Psychology of Moral Development: The Nature and Validity of Moral Stages and the Idea of Justice. New York: Harper & Row. 1984 3. Lennick, D., and Keil, F. Moral Intelligence for successful leadership. Leader to Leader, Spring 2006, 13-16 4. The discussion of the personality characteristics has been drawn from Big Five personality traits. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits (February 2009); Barrick, M.R., and Mount, M.K. The big five personality dimensions and job performance: A meta-analysis. Personnel Psychology, 1991, 44, 1-26; Mayer, D., Nishii, L., Schneider, B., and Goldstein, H. The precursors and products of justice climates: Group leader antecedents and employee attitudinal consequences. Personnel Psychology, 2008, 60, 929-963; Hirschfeld, R.R., Jordan, M.H., Thomas, C.H., and Field, H.S. Observed leadership potential in a team setting: Big five traits and proximal factors as predictors. International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 2008, 16, 385-403. 5. Goldman, D. Working with Emotional Intelligence. New York: Bantam Press, 1998.