The Influence of Employment on Core Values

1415 Words3 Pages

This essay will investigate the effect of of employment upon a person's core values and ethics. Values and ethics are socialised into a person through institutions such as family, education and religion. Workplaces are encountered later in life once a persons identity with values has already developed. I choose this area of research because within my micro world I was surprised about how diversely people with different occupations behave as with peoples with the same occupation behave similarly.

I hypothesis that workplaces will have a positive or negative influence upon a person’s values dependant on the culture of the workplace and that adults will be more susceptible to this influence than a teenager. An adult’s identity and socialisation is deeply interconnected with their occupation which is why I believe that they will cooperate more with a change of values even if it conflicts with their own due to pressure from management or social pressure to be accepted into the culture of their co-workers. Workplaces aren’t the main institution of socialisation for teenagers so the influence will be lesser but still existent.

I have employed an interview and a questionnaire and intend to conduct a focus group as a part of my research. An interview explores the idea or experiences of an individual through the guided direction of planned questions and obtains qualitative data. A questionnaire is a series of pre-determined questions, both open-ended and close ended to gain quantitative and qualitative data. A focus group is a group where a topic is given and the researcher coordinates the discussion. A focus group will provide qualitative data and information on personal experiences. These methodologies are advantageous to my resea...

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...cs Be Taught?. [online] Retrieved from: http://www.scu.edu/ethics/practicing/decision/canethicsbetaught.html [Accessed: 2 Nov 2013].

This article articulates the theories of moral development of Kohlberg and how ethics can be taught. The article is in response to a Wall Street Journal article that deemed ethics courses useless and proves said statement incorrect. The article is presented from an expert view and is helpful to my research.

University, C. (2013). HSC Online - Nature of Work and Leisure. [online] Retrieved from: http://www.hsc.csu.edu.au/society_culture/work_leisure/nature/nature_work/natureofworkandleisure.html [Accessed: 17 Oct 2013].

This article presents the basic meaning of the Protestant work ethic. The source is reliable however the information is presented in a minimal rather simplistic manner and is not overall useful for my research

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