Moral Obligations

 

According to Carolyn Wiley (2000), “Five key professional ethics codes in HRM are analyzed according to six obligations. The resulting characterizations revealed that these codes advocate five principles related to integrity, legality, proficiency, loyalty, and confidentiality” (pg.1). The ethical standards for human service professionals are a set of standards to guide human service professionals in their ethical decisions. These guidelines are necessary, because they help to guide individuals in making a choice that will be effective and productive; rather than, making a decision that will be ineffective and counterproductive.

The individual’s morals will play a role in determining what actions/behaviors are right or wrong. Nevertheless, the society that they live in, and work in, will have a set of standards that the individual will be expected to follow. In the end, each individual’s choice will show if they are or are not upholding the ethical standards of their profession. Human Service Leaders have a  moral obligation (a duty) to uphold the Ethical Standards for the Human Service professional.

Pierre Kletz defines morals as, “What lies beyond that is a logic of procedures as opposed to a submission to duties: the idea is not to do what morality dictates without thinking of the consequences of one's actions for oneself; rather, through morality, one may find the "best" action (not in ethical but in qualitative terms) to achieve one's goal” (p.12). I feel that it is important for each one of us to know what we are doing, and why we are doing it, because if we don’t then there is a chance that under stress and/or pressure we might not do what is ethically sound.

References

Kletz ,Pierre. (2009) Research in social responsibility: a challenge for management education. falseManagement Decision47. 10 (2009): 1582-1594.

Wiley, Carolyn. (2000). Ethical standards for human resource management professionals: A comparative analysis of five major codes: JBE. Journal of Business Ethics 25.2 false(May 2000): 93-114.