COLLAPSE SUBDISCUSSIONRobert Bass Robert Bass 8:28pmOct 15 at 8:28pmManage Discussion Entry Hi Marcus, Thanks for the discussion! You mentioned altering certain aspects of your personality. I don't...

Robert Bass

Hi Marcus,

Thanks for the discussion! You mentioned altering certain aspects of your personality. I don't wish to pry, but would you be willing to say more about what you hope to change?

Rob

Laura Carasimu

My three most important and visible ethical guiding principles are loyalty, honesty and selflessness. These values I hold are of utmost importance to me and contribute to my character, my personal and professional presence, and my expectations for myself. I have a responsibility to embody these values and personal ethics, just as I expect others to carry them out as well. Role models have been very influential early in my career and since. These ethical principles dictate who I want to be as a member of society, and how I want to be perceived by others.

The qualities of ethical leaders are evident and remarkable. Having an ethical leader as a role model empowers rising leaders to be more effective, more ethical, and better leaders for their subordinates (Brown & Trevino, 2014). Social learning theory explains human behaviors and justifies why people seek role models. Ethical leaders breed ethical leaders. Adults lean on others as an external source of inspiration for leadership and ethical behaviors, as was discovered in a study that also highlighted the correlation between leader age and presence of a role model during childhood (Brown & Trevino, 2014).

As I consider where my personal values originated, I firmly believe my childhood role models helped form them. Family and culture have had a tremendous influence on me growing up. As an adult, workplace colleagues and leaders, and university professors have become my role models and continued influencing me to embody these values. I am actively engaged in holding myself to these standards because this has become my character, and these are the expectations I have communicated to others, explicitly or implicitly.

In my relationships, I carry myself in accordance with these values. Ethical culture and ethics programs are both multi-dimensional constructs and should be studied as such (Kaptein, 2009). Guidelines promoting ethical practices, through programs and workshops, have been increasingly more important in the workplace. To create a desired culture, behaviors must be communicated and reinforced. In my personal experience, my past experiences have formed my present-day values and morals. While formed by community and culture, they are reinforced or influenced by my current environment. For that reason, businesses have an obligation to create ethical environments in which others can adopt and embody those guidelines (Kaptein, 2009).

References

Brown, M. E., & Treviño, L. K. (2014). Do role models matter? an investigation of role modeling as an antecedent of perceived ethical leadership.Journal of Business Ethics, 122(4), 587-598.

Kaptein, M.(2009). Ethics programs and ethical culture: A next step in unraveling their
multi-faceted relationship.Journal of Business Ethics,89(2),261-281.