Ethical Perspectives

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Ethical Perspectives

Introduction

Ethics involves identifying, differentiating, and defending concepts of right and wrong, and what values humanity retains from ethical growth and development. The Williams Group for Ethics and Management developed an exercise, called the Ethics Awareness Inventory, which analyzes responses to a set of questions, and categorizes the results under four ethical perspectives: Character (or Virtue Ethics), Obligation (or Deontological Ethics), Results (or Utilitarianism), and Equity (or Relativism). After completion of the inventory, my ethical perspective was determined to be Obligation, or Deontological Ethics.

I will begin by explaining the core beliefs and values of the ethical perspective of Obligation, and look into the beliefs and values of the remaining three perspectives. I will also examine a few issues which will likely be faced in my workplace, examining how my ethical perspective comes into play.

Obligation/deontology

Deontological Ethics "falls within the domain of moral theories that guide and assess our choices of what we ought to do (deontic theories), in contrast to (aretaic [virtue] theories) that — fundamentally, at least — guide and assess what kind of person (in terms of character traits) we are and should be." (Alexander & Moore, 2007, 1).

The first perspective I will explain involves focus on "an individual's duty or obligation to do what is morally right." (University of ...

... middle of paper ...

... 2007, from

http://plato.stanford.edu/

IDRA (Intercultural Development Research Association). (2007). Race Equity and

Desegregation Terminology. Retrieved December 15, 2007, from http://www.idra.org/

Sinnott-Armstrong, Walter, (2006). Consequentialism. Stanford Encyclopedia of

Philosophy. Retrieved December 15, 2007, from http://plato.stanford.edu/

Swoyer, Chris, (2003). Relativism. Stanford Encyclopedia of

Philosophy. Retrieved December 15, 2007, from http://plato.stanford.edu/

University of Phoenix – Ethics Awareness Inventory. (2003). Your Ethical Perspective –

(C) Character. Retrieved December 15, 2007, from https://ecampus.phoenix.edu/

University of Phoenix – Ethics Awareness Inventory. (2003). Your Ethical Perspective –

(O) Obligation. Retrieved December 15, 2007, from https://ecampus.phoenix.edu/

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