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Meaning of Ethics
Ethics refers to a system of moral principles a sense of right and wrong and goodness and
badness of actions, and their motives and consequences.
Objectives of ethics
(i) To study of human behaviour and making evaluative assessment about that as moral or
immoral.
(ii) To establishing moral standards/norms of behaviour.
(iii) To ensure judgement upon human behaviour based on these standards and norms.
(iv) To prescribe moral behaviour i.e. making recommendations about how to or how not to
behave.
(v) To express an opinion about human conduct in general.
Nature of values
Values are global beliefs that guide actions and judgements across a variety of situations.
Values represent basic convictions of what is good and what is bad or what is desirable or
undesirable in one’s conduct. Values are at the core of personality and are a powerful source
affecting behaviour. They have an important influence on the attitudes, perceptions, needs
and motives of people at work. Values are relatively stable and enduring.
Values form the bedrock of a culture. They provide the context within which a society’s
norms are established and justified. They may include a society’s attitudes towards such
concepts as individual freedom, democracy, truth, justice, honesty, loyalty, social obligations,
collective responsibility, the role of women, love, sex, marriage, and so on. Values are not
just abstract concepts; they are invested with considerable emotional significance.
People differ in their choice of values, the enforcement of one person’s or one group’s values
on an individual are an ethical issue in its own right.