Ethical And Financial Services: Understanding The Impact Of Ethics On Business Activities

Primary Definition

Discuss about the Ethical and Financial Services.

The current business structure is based on the changing time and the taste and preferences of the consumers. Every firm functioning in the economy tries to maximize profit by using extensive techniques and strategic business plans so that they can obtain a significant market share. It is seen that many organizations in order to increase market share and profit from the market uses unfair means to reach their goal. In order to do so, the organizations affect the ethics and morals of the society and the employees working within the organizations.

The society plays a big role in the development of an organization as he individuals living in the society are the customers of the firm. It is important for every organization to function their business activity by not affecting the morals and the ethics of an individual or the society. Ethics play a big role in the life an individual as it comprises of the principles and moral that direct the behaviour of an individual (Welsh and Birch 2015). These behaviour are essential for conducting various activities in the day to day life. 

The evaluation of ethics is a significant role in the current life and one of the important tools for evaluating it is through the ethical lens inventory process that helps the students and an individual to understand the various values that determine their choices. It is essential in recognizing how a person prioritizes its values during the time of making an ethical decision. The current paper tries to highlight the ethical lens inventory process and how it affects the future course of life for the Global Citizenship concepts.

The term ethics can be vastly explained as determining the actions and values of an individual. During the time of making a choice, everyone knows their values and motivations. The determination of each choice leads to the translation of our values into concrete actions in certain situations (Chartier and Plante 2013). The particular actions are then differentiated into “ethical’ and ‘unethical” on the basis of whether the actions are similar to understanding of the observer regarding what the behaviour means.

Morality: Everyone has various value sets that is helpful in deciding what to do. Though we share our values with each other in various communities like in the family, professional friends and others, the focus every individual place on the various values and the behaviours that means the living of those values as personal. The character values of every individual is created on their personal morality and it shapes over the life as one selects what kind a person he/she chooses to be and make decisions that is helpful in living those decisions.

Ethics: It is known that everyone live in a community. It starts with our family to people we live around; everyone has an expectation about what should be traits of a good individual. As an individual grows up, they are aware of the norms, principles and rules which need to be abided while living our life. There are even conversations about the behaviours and goals that are treated as ethical. With the change in time, there are evolutions of standards and therefore there are continuous discussions what are the behaviours that are seen in a person with integrity, working with courage and provides justice to the community and the environment where they dwell (Collmann and Matei 2016). The term ethic can be divided into personal, professional and organizational ethics. These three types have their own definitions and determination of values that guide the progress of everyone living within the environment.

The Ethical Lens Inventory

The term Ethical Lens Inventory (ELI) is an online tool that comprises of thirty-six pairs of words or statements with compelled choices. The students or the individuals are given instruction to select the item that will reveal their actions and values if they had the option of choosing. The choices of an individual indicate the favourable ethical lens with the estimation that the default lens of a person is their chosen perspective taken while evaluating the moral dilemma. The ELI instrument keeps the students in their respective quadrants that comprises of one of the four vital ethical outlooks. They comprise of Deontological theories, consequential theories, virtue theories and justice theories that is helpful in allowing the more precise picture of the ethical choice in decision making (Hamori 2016). These above mentioned outlooks later complements to the four Ethical Lenses namely, Results, Relationships, Responsibilities/Rights and Reputation.

However, in addition to recognize the four ethical outlooks, the instrument also depends on two perpetuities that express the values often discovered in tensions in the moral dilemma. It is seen that equality versus autonomy and sensibility versus rationality. The ELI instrument evaluates the student’s inclinations for entrusting sensibility, equality, rationality and autonomy in solving the moral dilemma (Jondle et al. 2013). The below given diagram represents the illustration of the quadrants and values in consideration that makes  the ELI.

It is essential to understand and have knowledge about the moral reasoning of the individuals and therefore, it is mandatory to recognise their judgment of their frameworks, theories and models they made use of while undertaking the moral decision. Similar to Ceranic (2013)  the paper even evaluates the moral reasoning with respect to the capability of one person to evaluate and analyze various courses of actions and results while finding out an individual’s stance by taking into consideration certain ethical principles or decisional rules. The paper therefore, uses the responses and analyses of the individuals to the Hot Topic Simulations as the method of their moral reasoning.

There have years of research that reveals that moral behaviour is the effect of a multi-stage procedure. There are have been other researchers who have proposed four levels that acts as a foundation of this research. Firstly, it is essential for an individual to identify the presence of a moral issue or awareness. The next step involves taking a moral judgment also known as moral reasoning and then solves to behave morally even known as moral decision making. The last involves acting on their moral decision by intriguing in the moral behaviour. The process enables to test the moral decision making by looking at the responses to the Hot Topic Simulations (Stonehouse 2012). The answers of the individuals and the students are helpful in providing qualitative information that provides awareness about how they went about to discover that the moral concerns of the concerned time was most significant.

The value preferences of the individuals leave us in a particular ethical lens, which concentrates on various secondary values, the values that arrive from the meeting point of the values on the primary continuity (Long, Mertins and Searcy 2012). This placement explains that we need to giver importance to various values, which provides various prospects on the ethical issues. The position on the grid shows the preferred ethical lens and the pros and cons of the desired preference.

Moral Reasoning

Rights/Responsibilities Lens: The individuals in this lens focus on the core values of sensibility and autonomy. This quadrant has the symbol of a telescope as it takes a long view to discover the ideal values that are crucial for human beings (Litzky 2012). This lens highlights the works that shows the ethical issues known as Deontology.

Result Lens: This quadrant concentrates on the core principles of sensibility and autonomy. This quadrant is symbolized by a microscope sign. This lens concentrates everyone’s attention on the actions as we make choices that will be useful to obtain the goals that have been set in life. This lens even concentrates on individual results and aims as they question everyone to identify what would make everyone satisfied and happy (Torres Jr 2012). As the concentration is on the results of the actions, these ideologies become a part of the technological tradition also known as utilitarianism.

Relationship Lens: This quadrant looks ver the core principles of rationality and equality also known as the theory of justice. The symbol of this quadrant is of a binocular. It does not look at the extreme view but are encouraged to survey a definite community as justice is searched. This lens looks through a prophetic tradition, which asks to have a fundamental cleanliness and stimulates everyone to care for people who are unfortunate (Drover, Wood and Fassin 2014).

Reputation Lens: This quadrant is similar to relationship lens as the core values of this section are equality and sensibility. The symbol of this section is represented by a camera and concentrates on recognising the functions, which are to be fulfilled in life and the aspect in which the work is done. The other idea that this section highlights is the frames and name of all the activities that is seen in our daily life. This lens abides with the technological tradition, which is known as virtue ethics (Isaacson 2013). The concentration of the lens is on the specific virtues the community believes that need to be cultured by the individuals who are in the responsible position. The secondary principles refer to those, which are in relation to a good character that is created through addictive reflective behaviour.

The understanding of the connection between the individual’s ethical prospects, moral reasoning, moral decisions and moral awareness is crucial as it provides intuitions about how the designing of the ethics curriculum is undertaken and the efficiency with which students and the individuals are prepared so that they can deal with the moral dilemmas in life and society. If the results show that the business students moistly depend on a definite prospect while resolving the moral dilemmas, and helping them to understand and emulate on their ethical prospective references that that enables them to understand the relative strengths and weaknesses that every theoretical prospective offers when interpreting through the moral dilemmas and creating moral decisions (Finlay 2012). Moreover, if the analysis show that few prospects tend to the creation of greater moral awareness and enhanced moral decision making, this method establishes a base for the development of teaching arbitration to raise the flexibility of the students to make use of the other prospects. Furthermore, if for instance, it is seen that the individual’s and students in the Reputation Lens are likely to display moral awareness and moral decision making, it can be seen that a design can be created. The design is created for learning activities, which concentrates on the culturing of characteristics within an individual that is worth a thought in their perceptions and has honest purpose. The implication of ethical lens inventory through all these concepts is helpful to the Global Citizen as the instrument takes into the consideration the total population and tries to underline the various principles available in the global community (Covrig,  Ongo and Ledesma 2013). The ELI therefore analyses the cultural and intercultural values of various societies globally.

Conclusion

The above study therefore looks at the importance of ethics and morality of individuals and students all over the world by evaluating the various cultural values in different societies and communities and evaluates their effects on the moral character of a human being. The paper even highlights the point of moral reasoning and sensitivity that exist in the mindset of a human being as the individual grows up resulting to their activities in present life. The way a person leads his life is made up of all the moral and ethical awareness that they receive from their local community and family.

The Ethical Lens Inventory is therefore a crucial tool in analyzing all the perspective of ethics so that the idea of a developed future Global Citizen in the world can be attained thereby making the individuals more ethical and good.

Reference List

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