The Importance Of Integrity And Ethics

Integrity is the adherence to moral and ethical principles and is a term that is encorporated into many different aspects of life such as business, relationships, and society (Dictionary.com, 2014). The most important aspect of integrity is its relationship to ethics. Pride et al. (2015) stated that "ethics is the study of right and wrong and of the morality of the choices individuals make." Ethics and integrity both place a great deal of importance on fairness and honesty. While the term integrity is broad, its relationship to ethics and business can help describe its true meaning. There are three factors that affect integrity and ethical behavior. These factors include individual factors, social factors, and opportunity. A better understanding of these factors and the role they play in ethics and business provides a clearer definition of what integrity is (Pride et al., 2015).

Some individuals lack knowledge about what can cause an ethical issue and may act in a certain way because they do not know any better. Personal values is another example of an individual factor that affects ethics because employees moral values influence their business behavior. The third individual factor that plays a big role in integrity and ethics is personal goals '. Both the goals an individual aspires for and how they manage to pursue these goals can have an impact on a business. An example of how individual factors affect integrity within a business would be if there was one employee whose moral values entailed stealing from fellow coworkers and customers. This employee would greatly reduce the integrity of the business and would be promoting an unsafe and hostile work environment (Pride et al.,