Decisions we make everyday are influenced in part by our core values. Our cultural background, individual bias, personal ethics, and past experiences help to form the basis of our value system. "We begin sharpening our values at a very early age. Our parents, teachers, friends, religious leaders, heroes and fictional idols teach us right from wrong" (Deblieux, 1995). These teachings help us to evaluate situations and form conclusions.
We are all individuals, but together we form a society. "Each society develops a different set of assumptions and norms under which to operate, and different professions, functions, and even genders within a society or organization can have different cultures themselves" (Raatikainen, 2002). This holds true for different generations within a society or organization as well.
As we bring our individualism together to form a group, we must recognize the differences within each member. We must overcome any prejudgments formed by past experiences. "We tend to prejudge others in our mind then merely reinforce these prejudices with information we gather. We need to train ourselves to reverse this process. Instead, we must gather the information that disproves our prejudice to overcome the self-fulfilling prophesy inherent in our prejudicial stereotypes. That is we must be ready to make a concerted effort to prove our prejudices and stereotypes are wrongs as a result of the information we gather about people" (Buhler, 1993).
Prejudgment, or bias, can alienate individual members of the group thus preventing active participation by all. Some members may feel reluctant to bring ideas to the table. Feelings of resentment towards other members can start to develop. Conflict may eve...
... middle of paper ...
... We need to embrace our differences and not let bias, or prejudgment influence our decisions.
References
Buhler, P. (1993, July). Understanding cultural diversity and its benefits, 54(7) p. 17. Retrieved on June 3, 2005, from EBSCOhost database.
Deblieux, M. (1995, November). Workplace Ethics: Why be concerned? HRFocus. Retrieved on June 3, 2005, from EBSCOhost database.
DiPiazza, S.A. (2003, January). It's all down to personal values. Global Agenda, 1 (p.116). Retrieved on June 3, 2005, from EBSCOhost database.
Raatikainen, P. (2002). Contributions of multiculturalism to the competive advantage of an organization, Singapore Management Review. Retrieved on June 3, 2005, from EBSCOhost database.
Tinkler, H. (2004, November). Ethics in business: The heart of the matter. Vital Speeches of the Day. Retrieved on June 3, 2005, from EBSCOhost database.
2.Goodpastor, Kenneth. Nash, Laura. de Bettignies, Henri-Claude. Business Ethics: policies and persons 4th edition. Mcgraw Hill Irwin Publishers. Pages 396-405
"Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilized by education; they grow there, firm as weeds among stones."
Trevino, L. K., & Nelson, K. A. (2011). Managing business ethics: Straight talk about how to do it right. New York: John Wiley.
Prejudices shape our perceptions of various people and influence our attitudes and actions toward particular groups and prejudicial attitudes that are negative often lead to hostile relations between domi...
“Prejudices… are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilized by education: they grow there, firm as weeds among stones.”
... human nature to immediately notice why others are different from oneself and because of this, bigotry and segregation will never truly cease to exist and that manipulation over the human genome will only exacerbate this.
Trevino, L., & Nelson, K. (2011). Managing business ethics - straight talk about how to
Seawell, Buie 2010, ‘The Content and Practice of Business Ethics’, Good Business, pp. 2-18, viewed 22 October 2013, .
Ciulla, Joanne B., Clancy W. Martin, and Robert C. Solomon. Honest Work: a Business Ethics Reader. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford UP, 2011. Print.
Everyone is prejudice in some way or another. From a young age individuals observe, or are taught discrimination against others. Whether it is because of religion, sexuality, race, gender, personality, or just someone’s way of life, everyone is biased. In many ways, who we are today, is influenced by our race, ethnicity, and culture, and overall our individual identities. Every experience, positive or negative, has an impact on how we react to something in the future. Decisions others make, can impact the way we interact with others, our personal beliefs, and all together our life experiences. Along our path of life, we meet people with different goals and circumstances they’ve encountered which make them who they are and why they do certain things a certain way. But our experiences
Some of the values that guide me to make decisions are my relationship with God, caring for my family and myself, caring for others, achieving my education, obtaining my career, and my integrity. My relationship with God keeps me focused on what is important. Care for others and myself, I will always try my best to help those in need, like my family, peers, and anyone else. My educational goals will lead to my desired career to be a social worker. My integrity keeps me sincere and honest in everything I do.
In this paper I will discuss what happens when we allow biases and prejudice to affect our actions toward others. I will then conclude my paper with what we can do to prevent or eliminate discrimination.
My mission is to live each day positively in God’s eyes, honestly and passionately so that every day I am one step closer to reaching my dreams and helping others believe in theirs. I will be committed to inspiring others to be more than they think that they can be and I will be a continual learner committed to excellence in all aspects of life.
Culture is about a set of values, beliefs, and norms that affect the behaviors of large groups of people. Whereas, diversity is more than skin color or ethnic heritage. Diversity within a group is about the quality of being different. The differences between values, traits, attitudes, status is what diversity entails. Engleberg and Wynn state that these “characteristics include age, occupation, physical ability, marital status, personality preferences, and much more.” We must remember to avoid stereotyping individuals and learn to accept that diversity in groups is the skillset that individuals bring to the group. The knowledge that individuals bring to the group is the diversity that most businesses are
Treviño, L. K., & Nelson, K. A. (2007). Managing business ethics: Straight talk about how to do it right Fourth ed., Retrieved on July 30, 2010 from www.ecampus.phoenix.edu