MHRDIR 506: Professional Ethics, Standards and Career Development

Lecture 1

Muhammad Muinul Islam

Department of Public Administration
Jahangirnagar University
Syllabus
MHRDIR 506: Professional Ethics, Standards and Career Development

This course will enhance the ethical standards and dimensions of students, and also will deal with the mechanisms of professional career development keeping professional integrity and standards. In individual as
well as professional life, ethical standards are very important and essential. The objective of this course is to develop a theoretical and practical understanding of the processes of ethical issues in administration and
management related to public and private sectors organizational perspective.
Course Contents:

1. Ethics; definition and scope

2. Ethics, Law and Morality; Professional ethics and standards, Moral rules; evaluation and development.
3. Profession, Professional values, professionalism, professional code of ethics.
4. Right and duties, Professional-Client Relationship, Clients rights and professional justice.
5. Confidentiality, Conflict of interest, Professional competency and autonomy.
6. Discrimination and Harassment in professional Organization.
7. Career choice and development, Ethical decision making, Corruptions and ethics.
8. Whistle blowing and the ethical issues in organization.
Suggested Reading:

 Clancy Martin, Wayne Vaught, and Robert C. Solomon. (2017). Ethics Across the Profession: A Reader for Professional Ethics. Oxford University Press.
 Michael D. Bayles. (1988). Professional Ethics. Wadsworth Pub Co.
Why Study Ethics?
• When students enter the professional world, they will be expected to
follow an explicit or implicit ethical code.
• To responsibly confront moral issues confronted in professional life.
• How to deal with ethical dilemmas in their professional lives?
• To achieve moral autonomy.
Ethics & Morality
• The term Ethics is derived from Ethos (Greek), and Morality from
Mores (Latin).
• Both terms translate roughly into notions affecting “custom,” ”habit,”
and “behavior.”
Ethics & Morality
• Ethics is a set of moral principles and a code for behavior that govern
an individual’s actions with other individuals and within society.
• Morality is what people believe to be right and good, while ethics is a
critical reflection about morality.
• Oxford Dictionary Definition:
• Moral principles that govern a person's behavior or the conducting of an
activity.
• The branch of knowledge that deals with moral principles.
Ethics & Morality: Key idea

Ethics refers to standards of conduct,

standards that indicate how one
should behave based on moral duties
and virtues, which themselves are
derived from principles of right and
wrong.
Ethics & Morality: Key idea
Standards Right
Moral Values, and
of duties & customs,
behavior Wrong
virtues culture

It is expected It is my duty to Everyone Listening to boss

that we listen to follow my boss’ adheres to boss’ is a right thing to
our boss directions directions in the do
office
environment
Moral Relativism

Values are determined by the society we

grow up in, and there are no universal
values. Moral values are simply customs
or conventions that vary from culture to
culture.
What is Professional Ethics?
• Professional ethics concerns one’s conduct of behavior and practice
when carrying out professional work
Definition of profession:
• A dedication, promise or commitment publicly made
• Is a vocation or an occupation requiring knowledge of some department
of learning or science
• Occupation, practice, or vocation requiring mastery of a complex set of
knowledge and skills through formal education and/or practical
experience.
• All professions are occupations, but not all occupations are professions
Dilemmas and Moral Issues
• A dilemma is a situation where one must choose between two
undesirable options, which often leads to one’s having to choose
between “the lesser of two evils.”
• Grey area between two extremes.
• It is also important to note that not every dilemma is moral in nature.
There are two freedoms:
The false, where a man is free to do what he likes;
The true, where he is free to do what he ought.”
Charles Kingsley
The Runaway Trolley: A Classic Moral
Dilemma
Imagine that you are driving a trolley and that all of a sudden you realize
that the trolley’s brake system has failed. Further imagine that
approximately 80 meters ahead of you on the trolley track (a short
distance from the trolley’s station) five crew men are working on a section
of the track on which your trolley is traveling. You realize that you cannot
stop the trolley and that you will probably not be able to prevent the
deaths of the five workers. But then you suddenly realize that you could
“throw a switch” that would cause the trolley to go on to a different track.
You also happen to notice that one person is working on that track. You
then realize that if you do nothing, five people will likely die, whereas if
you engage the switch to change tracks, only one person would likely die.
What is Morality?
• Morality can be defined as a system of rules for guiding human
conduct, and principles for evaluating those rules.
•  Two points are worth noting in this definition:
• morality is a system;
• it is a system comprised of moral rules and principles.
• Moral rules can be understood as "rules of conduct," which are very
similar to "policies."
Moral Consistency
• To what extent do you think the following individuals are morally
inconsistent?

An anti-abortionist who
supports the death penalty
Moral Consistency
• To what extent do you think the following individuals are morally
inconsistent?

A vegetarian who buys

leather shoes
Moral Consistency
• To what extent do you think the following individuals are morally
inconsistent?

A socialist who educates his

children at a private school
Moral Consistency
• To what extent do you think the following individuals are morally
inconsistent?

An environmental activist
who drives an SUV
Moral Consistency
• To what extent do you think the following individuals are morally
inconsistent?

Someone who thinks

stealing is wrong but makes
illegal copies of computer
software or music.
Theories of Ethics
While it may be that some values are relative and that people are often
selfish, we do not have to conclude that all values are relative or that
people are always selfish. An ethical theory attempts to provide a set
of fundamental moral principles in harmony with our moral intuitions.
• Religious Ethics – an authoritative rule book to tell us what rules to
follow.
• Duty Ethics - Fulfill your obligations. Duties and rights are two sides
of the same coin.
Theories of Ethics
• Utilitarianism: There is one and only one supreme moral principal –
that we should seek the greatest happiness of the greatest number.
Maximize happiness. Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill (1800).
• Kant’s Approach to Ethics: Can your actions be consistently
generalized? Ask yourself “What if everyone did that?”. According to
Kant, if something is wrong, it is always wrong!