Ethics

ETHICS

Imagine a 15 year old student in philosophy class. After discussing why should you or shouldn't you judge other societies, and getting in depth with ethics, the teacher decides to tell a story to the class. She says"..there is a tribe in the Amazon(Brazil) were they show love and respect by cutting body parts.It would be a good sign if your father cuts a finger of a son...." she then asked the class ".... if you end up in the Amazon, would you stop a father cutting a sons finger because in your society is wrong? Can you imagine how disappointed would the family be if this happens?

Is that ethics?. Before getting into the conclusion, lets first understand what the word ethics means.

By definition from the Webster's third new international dictionary, unabridged

1 ethics plural but usually singular in construction : the discipline dealing with what is good and bad or right and wrong or with moral duty and obligation

2 a : a group of moral principles or set of values b : a particular theory or system of moral values c ethics plural but singular or plural in construction : the principles of conduct governing an individual or a profession : standards of behavior

This discussion about what is good or bad, right or wrong, has gone for thousand of years. One of the great philosophers , Socrates(469-399 BC), already questioned this with the result of being trailed and sentenced to death.

"Looking back on the early history of philosophy, later philosophers traced to Socrates a major turn in its development. As Cicero puts it: 'Socrates was the first to call philosophy down from the heavens... and compel it to ask questions about life and morality' (Tusculan Disputations V 10-11). Previously it had been concerned with the origins and nature of the physical world and the explanation of celestial and other natural phenomena. Modern scholarship follows the ancients' lead in referring standardly to philosophers before Socrates collectively as 'Presocratics'"

COOPER, JOHN M. (1998, 2004). Socrates . In E. Craig (Ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. London: Routledge. Retrieved May 12, 2006, from http://www.rep.routledge.com/article/A108SECT1

Ethics gives you more questions than answers. Can it be, that what i think is right, its actually the opposite in another part of the world?

The bottom line is that we are different.We have different cultures, we are raised with different values and that sometimes we forget we are not the only "culture" in the world.

Ethics at work, specifically applied to employees is one of the most important tasks of the human resources team of any company. Whether it's right or wrong, good or bad, it must be communicated, explained and done from the top of the management team all the way to the employees. Situations were ethics come into play are really common in any given day at work. Are we discriminating because of sex, race, and age? Can we lie to customers just to make business? The list can go on an on. Ethical situations exist and the way we manage them will have a huge impact on the results.

How can we determine the importance of an ethical situation when it appears? Decisions of yes or no are taken every minute at work and most of the times they are ethical. An employee that arrives late, someone that asks as for a day off, bad performance, harassment, they all require an ethical response. So how can we be fair? Ethics in the companies are explained to employees during their training program or orientation. Upper management and or company directors play a big role in explaining to the employee what it's sometimes called "Code of Ethics"; otherwise if this subject is left for the staff to interpret it themselves it can have major consequences.

Throughout our working experience we have come across a few ethical and unethical situations at our work place. In a company one of our team members worked a few years ago, the manager of the department wanted all his employees to work mandatory overtime. One of his employees had just return from maternity leave and her newborn infant was being taken care at a nursery. It was more convenient for this employee to drop of her infant one half hour earlier and do her overtime that half hour in the morning and one hour during her lunch period. When the manager noticed that she would leave everyday at 5:00 pm he called her in the office. She explained to him that the reason for her to do her 1 Ð... hours daily of overtime was because the nursery was open only until 6:00 pm and she needed to pick up her baby on time. He asked her that why couldn't her husband pick up the baby and she explained to him that her husband had the afternoon to midnight shift. To her surprise his response to her was "Well, no one told you to be a breeder", that she either worked her overtime as he requested or that she would be written up. The employee arranged for someone else to pick up her infant from nursery that day, but she took her actions a bit further. She went to the president of the company, explained the situation and the manager got fired.

This example has both, ethical and unethical. Unethical because the manager was forcing an employee to do mandatory