Our roles and responsibilities in the formation of an ethical climate at Penn State

Our previous PSEL pretension about ethics and our role in creating an ethical environment at Penn State reminded me about a past debate about ethics that I had participated in. How do we balance the rights of the individual with the rights of the group? Or put another way, do I as a leader need to be concerned with building an ethical code in my co-workers or is it their responsibility to develop their own ethical code? Clearly Penn State would like for all of its employees to have an ethical code that matches the six values that were given to us at the presentation. But if an individual does not value discovery for example, does Penn State leaders have an obligation to help mold this persons values? Ethical egoist would say it is the responsibility of the individual to build their values while the ethical universalist would say the society has the responsibility. Clearly when we hire a new employee we need to ensure this person has an understanding of the Penn State values and is on board with them. However, as screening potential employees measurable skills is difficulty, measuring values is nearly impossible. After we have hired an employee and we learn their values do not match the Penn State values, what do we do? I do not believe that you can make someone change their mind about values. Perhaps you can get them to see things from a different perspective, potentially altering what they value, but they make that decision. So I am inclined to say we can not change other peoples values therefore there is no reason to try. However, I am also not so pessimistic in life and I believe I can influence people to make this change. Therefore, I do feel that it is my duty as a leader to attempt to shape employees values and ethics. Largely I feel that I can do this by modeling appropriate ethical behavior, but also by have open discussions about the ethical dilemma’s that we experience at work.