Bachelor Of Occupational Safety and Health

FAHM 3083
Ethics in OSH Profession

CHAPTER 5
PERSPECTIVE ON PROFESSIONAL ETHICS
 Focus of the Chapter
• What is a profession?
• Separatism In Professional Ethics.
• Code of Ethics and codes of conducts.
 INTRODUCTION
✓ Professional ethics is important because it is related
with the concept of roles. With roles comes certain
ethical obligations.
✓ A single individuals normally play a variety of different
roles. E.g. you as a student also may be a friend, a son
or daughter, a brother or sister, a member of club, a
citizen of nation.
✓ Therefore, professional ethics concern the obligations
held by individuals in their particular roles as
professionals.
✓ Specific profession or industries often specify their
own rules, beyond the general requirement of the
law and direct the individuals in those profession to
act accordingly.

✓ Many of these examples of professional obligations

may seem straightforward, but there are also many
exams that are not at all clear. E.g. journalist
obligation to provide important information to public
but at the same time has obligation to respect the
privacy.
 What is a profession?

✓ To consider professional ethics, a good definition will delineate

characteristic of occupation with similar ethical problems.

✓ There are three central features that an occupation must have if

it is to count as a profession:
i. the occupation must require extensive training (advance
academic degree, certification, license),
ii. have an intellectual component (advise others about matters
the average person does not know about or understand),
iii. and provide important service to society (organized functioning
of society).
✓ Examples: Lawyer, doctor, accountants, journalist, teacher,
engineer. OSH personnel?

✓ All major profession have organization that claim to represent

them. These organizations are not always open to all
members of a profession.

✓ Another common feature of the professional is autonomy in

his or her work. Professional are expected to exercise
considerable degree of discretionary judgment within the
work context.
 Separatism In Professional Ethics

✓ Professional ethics is branch of applied ethics with

certain unique characteristics. However, evaluating the
behavior of professionals is different from the moral
evaluation of common members of civil society.

✓ Professionals are called on to conform to ethical

standards that are higher than those apply to ordinary
people. Professionals have autonomy and thus this
require for higher moral distinctiveness.
✓ Reasons for separatism in professional ethics:
✓ Nature of professional services require knowledge not
possessed by the public at large. Therefore, the problems and
moral dilemmas encountered by professionals simply cannot
be accurately assessed by others.
✓ Professional involve providing services that are important to
society. The more crucial a service to a community, the
greater the community’s stake in the services rendered.
✓ A particular ethics to be professional because it is marked by
the realities of relationship that exist in professional settings.
 Excuses that make professional ethics irrelevant
✓There is a widespread agreement that we facing a crisis in
professional ethics.

✓Require education programs devoted to ethics and

professional must be taught what their ethical duties are.

✓If the problems facing professionals are not one of learning

the focus should be on the excuses offered and accepted for
lapses from ethical standards.
✓The various excuses are not always conscious effort
to avoid ethical responsibility. The professional might
face constraints and pressures.

✓However, the use of excuses to evade personal

responsibility contributes to the marginalization of
professional ethics.
 …Excuses that make professional ethics
irrelevant
The excuses commonly use in professional practices:
✓ The claim of ignorance:
Professional claim he or she did not know what the ethical rules
were. Such excuse seem sincere particularly among older
professionals who were not required to take course on professional
ethics. Increase level of instruction to deal with this excuse.

✓ The transfer of responsibility:

Most professional practices today is in large bureaucratic style and
organization. There always superiors, rivals, other team members,
and junior professionals who can be blamed.
✓ The Irresistible Pressure:
Professional do not have power to act ethically. E.g. “ I
had to do it to keep up with competitor”. Redesign the
professional services to minimize such pressures.

✓ The fault of machine:

Blame on technological failure. Almost all professional
make use of complex technology and malfunction can
occur in machinery.
 Code of Ethics and codes of conducts
✓ Most companies and organizations take ethics very seriously.
✓ Ethical dilemmas arise because the situations are ambiguous. An
organization’s Code of Ethics and Code of Conduct minimize
ethical ambiguities by communicating clear ethical guidelines for
employees to apply when making decision.
✓ Code of Ethics and Code of Conducts are two unique documents.
Code of ethics can be defined as broad ethical aspiration. A code
of conducts more extensively describes acceptable behaviors for
specifics situation that are likely to arise.

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✓ Code of ethics also known as value statement provide general
principles to guide behavior. For example respecting
customers, employees, community members, and natural
environment.

✓ Code of conducts often developed by an employee with legal

expertise, it provide content to the code of ethics and is
usually several page long. Code of conduct list several specific
law relevant to organization that employees will obey.
CODE OF CONDUCTS ON THE
PREVENTION AND
ERADICATION OF SEXUAL
HARASSMENT IN THE
WORKPLACE
Ministry of Human Resource, Malaysia

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 Benefit of a Code of Ethics
✓ It represent a statement of value to give the employees
and management guidelines about what to do in those grey
areas.

✓ Code convey a set of values and obligations that clarify

appropriate behaviors and provide employees with
consistent moral guidance.

✓ Demonstrate managerial concern for ethics. Establish

expectation to help guide them away from ethical
misconduct. Thus each company’s and profession’s code
may differ.
✓ Meet legal requirement and industry trends. Many
industry association and professional develop codes
of ethics as self regulating strategy that deflects
government regulations.

✓ By having code of ethics, employees commitment

loyalty increase, bad behavior decrease, manager
gains more confident, employees and customers
relation improved. Employee are proud to be
associated with ethical organization.
Steps for an Effective Code of Ethics
✓ Many organization begin codes of ethics with mission statement.

✓ The mission statement is about what the organization stand for and why it
exist and identify stakeholder of organization.

✓ Therefore, code of ethics cannot be written by only one person or one

group.

✓ A task force should be developed with representative from every level of

employees to write code of ethics and implementation of the code.

✓ Organization need to cover everyone to follow code and to report any

ethical issues.

✓ Rather than feeling the code is something imposed on them, employees

should feel they are involve in writing the code of ethics. This will help to
improve ethical working environment and public expectation.
 Content of a Code of Ethics
❑ A code of ethics express the principles that define an organization moral
essence. Code of ethics contain commonsense rules of conduct which
employees routinely conform. Keep the language simple and avoid jargon.

❑ A good code of ethics must integrate code in core ethical values such as
respect, integrity , and excellence. Providing employees with thing they should
not do can make them feel oppressive. Make a statement of how employee
should act, not how they should not act.

❑ Some believe that a code of ethics should begin with a statement of the
company’s value statements.

❑ Code of ethics content areas could include the following:

- Responsibilities
- Compliance
- Accounting
- Governance
- Confidentiality
 Discussion

a) Explain how codes of ethics can make a

difference in organization.
b) Develop a code of ethics for an organization
to which one or more of you belong. E. g.
club, association, or university. What are the
key issues that need to be addressed? Share
your code with the class and the
organization.
THANK YOU