Cultural Values and Personal Ethics

Authors Avatar

Cultural Values and Personal Ethics

Cultural Values and Personal Ethics

     As individuals, we typically develop a set of ethics and values that governs the way we operate on a personal level, then in our professional lives there is another set of ethics and values to be upheld.  Postner (n.d.) notes that organizations have core values in the same way that individuals do.  Occasionally, we are required carry out activities in our professional or personal lives, which are in direct conflict to our personal ethics and values.  The differences in personal and professional values and ethics sometimes lead to challenging decisions, and maintaining composure or professionalism in these situations can be difficult.  I will use this paper to talk about what some of my personal ethics and cultural values are, and explain how these guide decision making in my personal and professional life.

      Encyclopedia Britannica Online (n.d.), defines ethics as “the discipline concerned with what is morally good and bad, right and wrong,” and culture is described by Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary (n.d.) as being “the set of shared attitudes, values, goal, and practices that characterizes an institution or organization.”  My ethics and values were developed mainly from what I was taught from birth through adulthood by my parents, the church, school, and to a lesser extent, my friends.  The value system is said by Brown (2002) to be a container of all individual values, inclusive of work and cultural values.  Over time, I have adopted what I consider my own personal value system, which serves as a guide in the way I operate daily.  My value system is not always shared by each person I encounter; but, I accept and respect the diversity of everyone.

Join now!

     From an early age, I realized (and so did my mother) that I had a strong conviction for truth and found it difficult to be untrue, regardless of my situation.  Although I enjoyed the rewards, telling truth was also very costly at times, to me and my sister, since my mother used this knowledge of me to keep informed of our childhood mischief, which contributed to a few spankings.  Tied closely to my strong belief in truth is the issue of trust, as I want to be trusted by those I meet; likewise, I must feel a certain ...

This is a preview of the whole essay