Ethical and Moral Perspectives

Virtue ethics is a moral theory that states that a person should live his or her life trying to achieve excellence in everything him or her do. This theory also states that with practice anyone can achieve excellence or strength of character. Utilitarianism is also a moral theory that states that for an action to be right, it should be good for the whole of the team, group or society and not just for one person. The same way deontology, states that one should choose a certain course of action simply because it is the right thing to do. These three moral theories have in common that each one teaches that a person should always strive to do the right thing. Deontology and utilitarianism differ one from the other because deontology will act without measuring the consequences of the actions, while in deontology the course of action measures consequences before acting. Virtue ethics differentiates itself from the other two theories in that it teaches that is a theory where a person needs to practice in order to get the best results.

These three theories although different are addressing ethics and morality and how to live life rightfully. A person can choose to do the right thing for him or herself or do the right thing for all those around. Been ethical and moral means trying to always do what is correct based on the situation we are presented with.

My life I choose to live it following the virtue ethics theory. I like choosing the option that I feel is right, ethical and moral depending on the situation that I am going thru at the moment. At my last job one thing I did not agree with was that many decisions on how to discipline employees were made on the spot and the outcome depended on who the manager was and sometimes on their mood that day. Although I was part of the management team I always believed that this practice was unjust to the employees. We had an employee manual but it was not followed, as an employee manual should be. There was a specific situation were two billing representatives were written up for speaking Spanish on the billing floor. Another employee went to her supervisor and although this employee does not speak Spanish she said the two employees were talking about her. In the past I had supervised both these employees and when this happened they came to me and asked if there was anything I could do to help them. I talked to them to get all the information on how the events transpired. The employees explained that they were indeed speaking Spanish to each other