Personal Values Development

Personal values are developed at an early age. This paper will examine those personal values along with ethics and ground rules development. This paper will also define the sources that helped shaped those values and criteria along with the decision-making factors used to revise those values. Finally, this paper will be concluded by addressing the potential impact on the values and performance on the workplace.

Most important question will be what are personal values? The answer is that personal values are principles which define individuals. In principle, personal values include honesty, reliability, and trust. Personal values determine how an individual will react or handle different situations which may be presented or encountered throughout the journey of life. In addition, personal values will determine how an individual will relate to other individuals with different values and principles. Personal values and ethics will be carried by an individual in both personal and business world. If an individual carries personal values and ethics into the workplace, where the workplace does not maintain ethics as a priority then the individual would not succeed at this company. Personal values reflect the most basic characteristics of adaptation that guide individuals in deciding which situations should be entered and what should be done in those situations (Kahle, 1980).

For example, if salesperson of a pharmaceutical company visits doctor’s offices in order to educate the doctors about the new medication, the side effects, the advantages and disadvantages of the medication. The doctor will review the information to decide if that is the best medication or if a more economical medication can provide the same results. This would be an ethical way to make the presentation to the doctor. Now the same salesperson will make unethical practice if while doing the presentation also mentions that the medication is equivalent to medication X. The representative offers the doctors perks like lunch for the office staff, voucher for a vacation, different gifts in order to persuade the doctors to prescribe the medication, regardless of whether the change would be better for the patient financially or otherwise. The salesperson has stored the personal and ethical values in order to conform to the company’s demands. However, not all individuals are able to leave the personal and cultural values in order to satisfy the job.

Personal values are developed at an early stage. A child is born without personal values; the values begin to form after birth. According to Kohlberg (1971), the development occurs in three levels containing various stages.

The first level start when the child responds to the cultural rules, characterizes good and bad, right or wrong but the labels are interpreted in terms of concluding with physical or self-gratifying consequences like punishment, rewards or exchange of favors or even the physical power of those who express the rules and the labels. This level is divided in three stages.

The second level is the conventional level, when individual’s maintenance of family, group and nation’s expectation in every valuable regardless of any consequences. The attitude is about conformity and loyalty to personal and social expectations. This is where the individual supports and justifies the order and identifies with the other individuals or groups involved. This level is divided in two stages.

The third level is the post-conventional or principled level. Within this level the individual makes a clear and precise effort to define the moral values and principles which have validity and application. The validity and application separate from the authority of the group or individuals holding the values and principles; also apart from the individual’s own identification with the group.

During ones life, daily decisions made, for the personal life as well as within the work environment, are based on personal values and ethics. In one day, I was working with the Government where neither merchandise nor services are sold, offering customer service to passengers is something that I will always practice. Everyday my goal is to treat every passenger with dignity and respect.

On my previous career journey as a banker, honesty and sincerity is what continued to ensure the return of the customer. At the department I was managing, I constantly addressed those points. Although other managers in other departments may have allowed employees to lay or cheat in order to sell products or retain customers, I personally could not do the same. Looking at a customer and stating how safe to invest in shares or invest in foreign currency account is the best and knowing that it has a high risk was not something I could do. I guess that goes back to when I was a child and my parents will always tell me to treat others the way I wanted to be treated.