Personal and Business Ethics Relationship of Personal

¶ … Personal and Business Ethics

Relationship of Personal and Business Ethics

Ethics is an umbrella term with a vast number of definitions, at a high level ethics can be described as a set of rules, moral values, or principles that one follows. Two of the major subsets of ethics are personal ethics and business ethics. Personal ethics are each person's own individual set of rules and moral values that they choose to follow in their life. For example one person's ethics may be that they choose to not steal or lie. Business ethics similarly are a set of rules or principles that an employee at a company must follow. For example an employee's work ethic might be to use their work computer for only business purposes. In the following personal and business ethics will be compared; it will be shown that sometimes these two types of ethics overlap, but are in fact different from one another.

First of all, business ethics are normally documented by the company that the employee works for, often times in an office code of ethics document. When the company has put an official code of ethics into writing for its employees, it is providing the employee with a set of rules and principles they are required to use when working (Dolgoff, 2009, p.21). These business ethics include the set of rules employees should follow for things such as computer use at work, sexual harassment, whistleblower policies, and financial integrity. These are all items the company chooses to put into place to help make their employees have ethical decisions. This improves the company's reputation, lowers their risks, and legally protects them when an employee violates the documented ethics. Companies take business ethics seriously, and many businesses have put a code of ethics in place at their companies and even hired ethics officers to help train and enforce them (Vallario, 2007).

Secondly, personal ethics are normally not physically documented, although some people do have an actual "Personal Code of Ethics" written. Instead they are the values and morals that an individual, oftentimes unknowingly, uses each day in every day actions. An individual's personal ethics may be that they are respectful to others, tries to be objective in decisions, and always tells the truth. These are all values that the individual person has chosen to follow throughout their life; not a set of ethics that someone else enforces. Personal ethics will affect relationships, careers, and define each person overall.

There is a relationship between personal and business ethics; personal ethics are often the building blocks of business ethics. If someone has a respectable set of personal ethics that they follow, it is very likely that they will follow the business ethics as well. This is because they are living by choosing to do what is right. Business ethics may go above and beyond any one person's personal ethics; for example the company will have strict guidelines for ethical situations you would not cross in your personal life. Business ethics are an extra layer of ethics on top of the employee's personal ethics. The businesses set of ethics are to help protect the company instead of only the ethics the individual chooses to have.