However, Joel has an active social life too and must take care to balance his work concerns with his social obligations without letting one interfere with the other. Married with two children, Joel has built a happy family life. He also engages in a number of recreational activities that engage both body and mind including golf and poker playing. Becoming active in recreational activities helps Joel maintain a positive affect in the workplace. One of Joel's biggest challenges has been to transform what was previously an external locus of control to an internal one. Before he found work in real estate, Joe worked for a small company selling plumbing supplies. While working for the plumbing supply firm, Joel frequently clashed with coworkers. He lost his temper at work occasionally and blamed his coworkers for the downfall of the business. After participating in several business communications courses, Joel realized that having an external locus of control was detrimental to his sense of well being at work. Not only did Joel experience a low degree of job...

After the seminars and once he found work in a field he was more passionate about, real estate, Joel began to attribute both errors and victories to his own actions. An internal locus of control has made Joel take responsibility for his mistakes, and he now admits when he could have done something different to help the company. His internal locus of control is one reason why Joel has improved his moral reasoning capacity. As Izzo (2000) points out, real estate sales have attracted a lot of negative attention because of the questionable ethical tactics used to gain profits. Joel proves that many of the most successful real estate sales persons and firm managers rely on solid ethics to promote the best interests of their companies.
References

Izzo, G. (2000). Cognitive moral development and real estate practitioners. JRER. Vol 20. Retrieved July 14, 2008 at http://ideas.repec.org/a/jre/issued/v20n12000p119-140.html