1.I do not think that a employee can be trained by their employer, or organization to be ethical. What a person considers ethical is their own opinion and how they act is based off their own beliefs of what they believe to be ethical and unethical. Since these things are tied to the individual person and their own beliefs, everyone’s ethics will differ. For this reason I don’t think you can train a person to be ethical because it is always their choice to act ethically or unethically. However, I do think that an organization can try and teach employees what they consider ethical and unethical at the company as a bit of a guideline to follow and what they are expecting from their employees. This is more so just rules though and guidelines about what the company wants and considers ethical and what it doesn’t consider ethical not training on how to change and be an ethical person. These rules and expectations can’t make a person ethical in my opinion but I do think it can help employers hire the right people and get rid of bad apples, and maybe help some people make better decisions while at the company that they wouldn’t outside of work because it has been laid out how to act for them. When it come to if students can be taught to be ethical at college or a university it is pretty much the same thing as if a organization can teach someone, in my opinion they can’t. I do think that universities can try and show students what businesses consider ethically good and ethically bad so that they have this understanding of what employers are going to be expecting from them. They can also give students an understanding of what ethics are but can’t train them to act ethical.
2. From both a training and employee development point of view, do you think that people can be trained by organizations to be ethical? Why or why not?
I believe that employees can be trained by a company to understand what the specific companies ethical standards and expectations are. Teaching someone to actually be ethical is a different story. This goes back to another question we answered earlier in the semester. People are largely influenced by the type of environment they are brought up in and who they choose to spend their time with. Upholding a high standard of ethics involves treating people fairly and being honest, and although a company may be able to give you their policies and tell you what is expected to meet the standards, if a strong moral compass is not something that you have, learning policies isn’t going to change that.
Do you think students can be taught to be ethical in a university College of Business before they begin their careers? Why or why not?
I do not mean to sound like a broken record, but similar to the answer above I believe that the answer here is yes AND no. Students can be taught the ends and outs of ethics, what it means, how important it is, and learn about all sorts of laws and rules surrounding the subject. However, simply learning these things will not make it a part of who you are. You also have to think about the fact that ethics sometimes crosses into things that have to do with culture, which is specific to each part of the world. A student who takes a general class about ethics at our university may be planning on going into international business at some point and what was learned in the class may not apply to the culture/country where he will do business.
I work at a company where there is a huge focus on the ethical treatment of coworkers and customers and everyone is expected to uphold a high standard of ethics. I learned the policies and expectations when I became employed there, and I don’t have a problem upholding them because the values required to maintain that standard were already a part of who I am as a person.
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