Decision making Essay

My personal ethics development has been a process and it has changed over the years from people influencing me and myself maturing. As a child, I was raised well by my mother who always taught me to do the right thing when no one was looking. She always made sure I respected my elders and had good manners. I went to a Catholic school when I was in grade school and high school. My family and I would go to church every Sunday and have dinner together every night. My family always taught me to have good values and morals, to be a part of the community in a productive way. The people that raised me in my earlier life played a huge importance on the man I have become. At this point of my life ,I thought my compass was true north as we heard Mr. O’Rourke talk about in the video lecture. I had strong values at all times or at least I thought I did. As my life went on I realized that my compass was north ,but it wasn’t true north. I still had room to grow and become more mature in my decision-making. Sometimes it can be very hard to judge how ethic you are like a person because you are judging yourself. I graduated high school and soon after that I decided that I was going to join the Army instead of going to college. I was 19 years old when I joined the United States Army and enlisted for four years. The minute I arrived to boot camp I was introduced to the seven Army values which are loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity, and personal courage. We had to memorize these army values ,as well as The Soldiers Creed and Warrior ethos. The warrior ethos is, I will always place the mission first, I will never quit, I will never accept defeat, and I will never leave a fallen comrade. Every morning we would stand information and have to repeat these creeds and Army values as a group. At the time ,I did not understand why it was suppose important memorize all these things. They would make us do team building exercises, where you would have to trust your fellow Soldiers. Then the next six years of my life will change how I looked at my moral decision making for the rest of my life. I went to Iraq when I was 20 for a 15-month tour and came back 22 years old. Within those six years ,I deployed to Iraq three deferent times for a total of 33 months. While you are deployed in a war situation you will be faced with unethical decisions on a daily basis this is where you got to separate your religious and personal ethics with your jobs ethics. Sometimes you need to make a decision based on a duty-based principal, were right and wrong is determined by an outside source. You do things you don’t necessarily believe in ,but it’s for the better of the workplace, work or in this case for the Army. I look back to the days of basic training and throughout the nine years I have been in the Army and I realize why the Army puts so must stress on values. We have classes all the time on ethics, decision-making and critical thinking. The Army prepares you for the hard decisions you are going to have to make with using sound judgment and values. All the training I received from the Army and them instilling values and standards in my brain helped me to always make ethical decisions in the most distraught instances. It helped me that I was raised with good ethics, morals, and values. It made the transition in the Army easier for myself than some of the other Soldiers. The Army is a perfect example of just because you were raised with bad ethics or values do not mean that you will always live that way. People are brought in from all over the world and have to work with each other on a daily basis and trust each other. The Army will teach you how to have good ethics and values. I see people change all the time over the course of time. They will make you have a role model character once they make you believe in the values and ethics. I am not saying everyone will change or will be able to change but if a person truly wants to change they can change with strong leaders in place with good characters. Ethics is crucial in the business world because there is so much room for corruption and misbehavior in the workplace. There is many chances to make unethical decisions in business that is why it is so important to have mandatory training and have people who believe in you work for you. Every company or business needs to come up with some policy such as code to ethics in the workplace environment. Just cause someone grew up a bad apple does not mean that the person is going to be a bad apple there whole life. People who impact them throughout their lives can change them or a certain job with high ethic standards could change their point of view. It could be as simple as one person who influences that person for them to change to the perspective on their ethics. Without ethics in organizations, there would be no sense of trust among employees and as well with customers. You want to know your employees are making ethical decisions because you cannot watch everyone that works for you all the time. You want them to act the same way whether you are in a room with them or a thousand miles away. It is your responsibility as a leader to influence these people and instill these values and ethics in them. You need to make your employees believe in you and your ideas. Throughout my life ,I feel I have had strong morals but many people have influenced me in a positive way. Most people just need positive influences in their life to shape them to have good strong ethics. I was just lucky enough to have these people in my life from an early age and throughout my life. I have never been the person who does things for entitlement-based, I do not find myself making decisions solely on the basis of what is best for myself.