There are many different ways to define ethics, some say it is a
person's morals and values, whereas others say it is a unwritten code of rules
a person follows. Today I will be talking about the six levels of ethics:
personal, professional, public, federal, corporate and state. Among these six
levels there are smaller, more detailed inner levels. Take personal ethics for
example, this has to deal with your family and friends. Professional ethics has
to do with your job and the decisions you make in the workplace. Public ethics
deal with your community. Federal ethics deal with ethics on the federal level.
Sometimes these different levels of ethics
can rival one another. What you think is ethically right on a professional
level may not agree with what you think is ethically right on a personal level.
A person may bend the ethics to make an action seem correct because of a
conflicting level. This was the case in the article "The Lawyer Who Became
DuPont's Worst Nightmare." To the employees that have worked at DuPont for
generations, this company is the lifeblood of the town. They are so loyal to
this company that they have not reported health issues due to the exposure of
PFOA that have had horrible side effects such as birth defects of their own children. If you were the
employee to say something, then everyone else in the community would shun you
and refuse to sell goods and services to you. Which level of ethics should
you abide to? Is one level more important than another? This is a judgement
call and more based on your personal beliefs. If it wasn’t for Rob Bilott the
lawyer that took up a farmer’s case against DuPont than things would have went
a lot differently. Bilott took up the case even though it was not under his
normal cases for his job. Not only did he take up that case but he then took it
even further and used his ethics on the public and the federal level to push
further for the misuse and misreported of PFOA by DuPont. DuPont had hidden
away the effects of PFOA for decades from the public, which violated just about
every level of ethics. There is a cost for everyone to go against one of their
levels of ethics, how much money would it take for you to go against your
personal ethics? Five hundred dollars, or maybe 1,000 dollars? For the people
in West Virginia is was around 500 dollars.
In the end the public and the employees at DuPont safety can all
be due to Bilott, we need more lawyers to be like him and stand up against huge
corporations when they take advantage of the people living in the town with
chemicals that are unsafe for people to be around 8 hours a day and to be
exposed to in the drinking water, air, and soil all around them.
Resources:
"The Lawyer Who Became DuPont's Worst Nightmare" The New York Times
http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/ndu/strat-ldr-dm/pt4ch15.html
http://2012books.lardbucket.org/books/strategic-management-evaluation-and-execution/s14-02-corporate-ethics-and-social-re.html
