Personal and Organizational Values: Making The Best Ethical Choices
strong sense of character grows out of your personal standards of behavior. It
is based on your internal values and your judgment of what is right and what is
wrong. Your values are the personal worth or importance you assign to an object
or idea. People's values systems serve as the foundation for their attitudes,
preferences, opinions, and behaviors.
are largely formed early in life and are influenced by family religious
upbringing, schools, the media, and changes in society's values. Simon, Howe,
and Kirschenbaum suggests you can learn a valuing process to help clarify your
values. This process includes five dimensions: thinking, feeling,
communicating, choosing, and acting. Milton Rokeach has written that values can
be categorized as terminal or instrumental. Most people's value systems are
oriented toward ideas, people, or things.
conflicts involve choices between strongly held values. Value conflicts with
others, often based on age, racial, religious, gender, or ethnic differences,
require skilled intervention before they can be resolved.
act as standards for behavior, goal setting, and strategic decision making.
They also have an impact on human relations within the organization. They are
strongly influenced by top management, which plays a significant role in
setting the corporate climate by exemplifying and communicating it to others.
By establishing strong corporate values, however, organizations may risk
obsolescence, resistance to change, and inconsistencies among various
unify employees in an organization by providing guidelines for behavior and
decisions. Employees can choose the career and the organization that best suit
their needs by ensuring that their personal values are compatible with the
values of the organization in which they work.
and ethics on both the domestic and international levels are receiving
increasing attention. As multinational organizations increase in number, the
individuals involved will need to consciously examine their values and ethical
standards to deal effectively with the differing value structures in each
country. Top management, governments, and the public are holding organizations
more accountable for their actions than in the past.