5b (continued) Ethics in the Workplace

When doing research into what ethics in the workplace entails so that I could establish my own within my professional practice, I came across a very interesting article that discusses what the benefits are within any organisation to having strong ethical conduct throughout.

Article Link:
http://www.asaecenter.org/Resources/articledetail.cfm?ItemNumber=13073
"Ethics in the Workplace"
By; Joshua Joseph
Published: October 2000

The article argues the importance of everyone within an organisation having the knowledge and guidance within their profession of its ethical standards in order to create a strong company. When looking at my own professional practice I can agree that finding and ethical common ground within my ballet company is beneficial to the improvement of the company, and although not all colleagues will agree with every issue that arises, having a strong ethical base makes the company work much better as a team. I believe teamwork is an important aspect within every organisation which is expressed throughout this article;"...leaders who want to establish practice of positive workplace ethics within their organizations should develop written ethics standards, provide ethics training, and ensure resources are available for employees in need of ethics advice."

Although this article was written in the year 2000, and therefore slightly outdated, particularly because of the constant evolving of the professional world and all the boundaries within, it seems to be that this article shows the rising attention that is given to ethical conduct in the workplace that is now of the highest importance. I do not believe that every organisation has the correct amount of guidance given as with my own. I explained in a previous blog that many of the ethical standards I have for my profession have come from my own upbringing and experiences which is more related to personal ethics that professional. However, I do not necessarily blame my company for this but more I feel this is how many other within my profession have also come to their ethical conclusions, as it is the nature of the profession to take the relatively small amount of guidance given and developing it throughout our career.

What I particularly like about this article is it defines organisational ethics in a very straight forward way that would apply to every professional practice:

"Organizational ethics: Sets of formal and informal standards of conduct that people use to guide their behavior at work. These standards are partly based on core values such as honesty, respect, and trust, but they also can be directly from the actions of others. For example, what people see their organizational leaders, managers, and coworkers do on the job can influence their own views of what is acceptable or unacceptable behavior.

Throughout my research of ethics during this module, I have found the above definition to be the most appropriate when referring to my own professional practice in terms of how I have created my ethics standards so far far and how they will develop in the future.