Ersonal Value Systems and Organizational

ersonal Value Systems and Organizational Dilemmas I can say with gratitude that my strong sense of family, my early socialization with many friends and my exposure to both pronounced secular and religious values would help me in my moral development. Through formal education and the experience of human interaction, I have come to appreciate the core differences between wrong and right and the often complex considerations which enter into dilemmas on the subject.

A positive upbringing and a principled sense of duty have given me over to a careful consideration in any such dilemma of the factors that dictate that which is right versus that which is wrong. As I have grown older, this have proven to be a vastly important skill to have, especially as I have entered into a world of professional responsibility and organizational ethics.

One of the key aspects in my moral development from an organizational perspective relates to my belief in the importance of serving one's roles and responsibilities with pragmatism. Indeed, our reading denotes that "all of us are both leaders and followers in different parts of our lives.

One is not better than the other; in the course of our lives we may learn to be good leaders by learning to be good followers, listening to each other and helping one another lead and follow." (Spears & Lawrence, 134) Within an organization, there are times to exercise coalescence and times to take the reigns in order to produce positive outcomes. Having a firm grasp on how moral considerations play into the assumption of such roles is crucial.

Thus, the moral compass which functions today in helping me to make difficult decisions would come from an intercession of organizational and personal values. Of course, this would be no easy course of development. The very notion of business ethics conjures up a greater wealth of corrupted images than those images which might correspond with its intended implications. In entering into the business world, this cynicism would develop fast.

I would find that, in correspondence with literature on the subject, "the problem with business ethics now is not vulgar ignorance but a far more sophisticated confusion concerning exactly what the subject is supposed to do and how." (Solomon, 315) In my own experience, this is a vital conflict of interest derived from an absence of clear ethical policy orientation in most profession organizations. Given my personal background, this is something which I have resisted as I have sought to develop a career.

Therefore, in any organizational dilemma, I tend to bring a great deal of personal experience to the objective evaluation of the ethical realties relating to certain decisions. While a well-informed moral compass does not always guarantee a decision-maker freedom from negative consequences, but it does invoke a defensible process by which decisions may be arrived at. This is a balance which I would have to learn all too well as I ascended to one of more first roles of leadership.

Here, I would learn that "the emphasis on material self-interest and the rejection of the emotions as a positive factor in business conduct have been traditionally associated with a concept called 'rational economic man.' (Klein, 347) This is a mode which would suit me with great importance as I developed a clear sense of my responsibilities as one employed to do a job. Within the context of any organization, I have developed to believe in the direct correlation between my personal preservation and the extension of the organization's interests.

Therefore, I am inclined to reflect on one such experience as having been most directly demonstrative of my moral compass under such a premise. As the assembly room manager for a small medical supply company, I had both a great deal of responsibility and some professional opportunity. As to this opportunity, I was in the unique position to offer a friend a job, in which position I would be his supervisor.

Based on the friend's need for a job and my belief that he could be relied upon, I brought him on board but did so to great disappointment. He proved a poor fit for the organization, demonstrating a lack of diligence, a slow pace of work, engagement in frequent disagreements with co-workers and superiors and frequently called in sick with little to no notice.

As his supervisor and his voucher upon hire, I was directly responsible for his efforts as well as for the consequences which they have to our functionality. Therefore, I was forced to dismiss this friend from the job, due to my ethically grounded sense of responsibility to serve an organization to the fairest of my duties. Naturally, the result of this would be two-fold. The organization would benefit as I was able to make another hire with greater dedication and capability in the position.

My workplace stress and the load of my responsibilities would be lessened by this improvement. On the other hand, my friendship with this individual never recovered. We had clashed frequently at the workplace and though I labored over the decision, I had given him ample warning that he was jeopardizing the security of both of our jobs, he showed little respect toward changing his behavior. The result for me was a careful meditation over the moral implications of this situation.

As a friend for whom I had clearly gone out on a limb, his ethical responsibility to me, let alone to the organization, should have been sufficient enough to alter his behavior. That it wasn't would ultimately be cause enough for me to push for his dismissal, feeling that at that juncture my ethical responsibility would be to the organization.

More than anything, I believe that this strengthened my position in the organization, with my willingness to do that which was necessary, even at the expense of this friendship, engendering trust in my ethical disposition. It would be clear to my superiors that I had taken my role as an investment of moral leadership. Here, our research contends that "moral leadership is not mere preaching, or the uttering of pieties, or the insistence on social conformity.

Moral leadership emerges from, and always returns to, the fundamental wants and needs, aspirations and values of the followers." (Wren, 483) In instances where the values of followers especially appear to be lacking, there is a necessity to examine workplace conditions for a cause. In the.