Business Ethics and Corporate Governance, Second Edition

PERSONAL VALUES AND ETHICAL DECISION MAKING

An ethical decision maker needs to build and develop certain values. The Josephson Institute of Ethics³⁴ has identified ethical values such as trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring and citizenship as being the most important of these values. These are called The six pillars of character. According to them, these universal ethical values could be used to guide our choices. ‘The standards of conduct that arise out of these values constitute the ground rules of ethics, and therefore, of ethical decision making.’

According to the Josephson Institute of Ethics, ‘The six pillars of character taken together act as a multilevel filter through which ethical decisions can be processed,’ and ...