Week 4 - What is Ethics?

Monday, January 25, 2010 7:07 PM

“Ethics is about standards of behaviour, specifically, concern for 'good' behaviour and consideration of how our behaviour , as an individual or an organisation, affects the well-being of others or society as a whole.” (Tilley, 2005)

Morals and values fall under ethics. It is difficult to define what 'good' morals and values are when people are just so different, being brought up with different cultures, rules and personal experiences. Thus it is the same for ethics. People have different sets of thinking and they live by their own beliefs. A child being brought up by his parents may not have the same set of beliefs as his parents.

It is not easy being ethical and being ethical is not simple. Ethics is not just about good intent. There are many things to be mindful of. There are laws and rules to follow, company ethics, clients' culture and beliefs to be mindful of. There are different ethics schools of thought and with all things there are advantages and disadvantages, so with these schools of thought. Different situations should be assessed differently. How would we know what is ethical in different situations? There are times when PR practitioners mean well but what they did is unethical, perhaps unknowingly. All these comes with experience and an alert mind to assess the situations thoroughly. However, then again some people lack experience and do not have that an alert mind. People are made differently.

All these ethics, morals and values are man-made as well, aren't they? How can we be sure what was set in the past are the 'right' set of ethics, morals and values since “It is likely that no two people, let alone two cultures, have exactly the same morals and values or place the same degree of importance on them” (Tilley, 2005)?

I think it all boils down to following the law and the company's set of codes of ethics for PR practitioners. There may be conflicts between the law and the company's codes of ethics or between the PR practitioner himself and the company's set of codes of ethics, then it would be up to the PR practitioner to make a decision to act upon what he feels compelled to.

I believe that ethics will always be a blur and that no one person will be able to define it completely as much as he wants to just because different people sees things differently. There is bound to be a conflict of interest and there are so many people in the world. Definitely there would be at least one person would raise his/her hand to object to it.

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Week 4 - What is Ethics?

Monday, January 25, 2010 7:07 PM

Monday, January 25, 2010 7:07 PM