PSYCH 639 Week 6 Personal Ethical Framework Example

The Rules I Will Work By: A Personal Ethical Framework for an I-O Practitioner Inside a Grocery Chain

[Student Name]

University of Phoenix

PSYCH/639: Ethics and Professional Skills in I-O Psychology

Week 6 Assignment

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The practitioner, his employer and the examples are composites written for a model paper; ethical standards and research come from the sources listed.

Ethics in industrial and organizational psychology is not only about knowing the code; it is about acting well under pressure, inside organizations whose goals do not always match the profession's. This paper sets out the framework I will use in my practice, drawn from my values, professional standards and research, and tests it against a case from this term.

Where My Values Come From

My parents ran a small grocery shop in Accra, Ghana, before we moved to Phoenix when I was twelve. In their shop, customers bought on credit written in a notebook, and my father's rule was that the notebook was never wrong, because his word was in it. My first job in the United States was stocking shelves at night for the company I now work for. From those experiences I carry three values: keeping my word, treating every worker with the dignity of a customer and telling the truth even when it costs money.

Values and the Code

These values align with the APA Ethics Code's principles of fidelity, respect for rights and dignity and integrity. They may also create tension. My loyalty to hourly workers, whom I once was, could bias me against managers; my habit of keeping promises could make me reluctant to share information when the code permits or requires it, as in the harassment comment this term. A framework must account for these tensions rather than assume my values are already professional ones.

Handelsman et al. (2005) proposed that becoming an ethical psychologist is a process of acculturation, borrowing Berry's model: trainees bring a personal ethics culture to the profession's culture and may integrate them, assimilate by abandoning personal values, separate by holding onto personal values without adopting professional ones or become marginalized from both. They argued that integration, in which professional standards and personal values inform each other, is the healthiest outcome, and that training should help students examine their own values explicitly.

A Process for Hard Decisions

Rest (1986) broke ethical action into four links in a chain. First comes noticing that a situation has an ethical side at all. Then comes working out what the right course is. Next comes wanting to do it more than one wants the competing payoffs. Last comes the nerve and staying power to carry it out. A break at any link stops the chain, however strong the others are.

My process follows these components. First, sensitivity: I will ask, at the start of every project, who could be harmed, what was promised to whom and what the organization's request might hide. Second, judgment: I will identify the stakeholders, the relevant standards, at least three options and their consequences, using the five moral principles from earlier in the course. Third, motivation: I will name the competing interests pulling at me, such as my budget, my reputation or my friendships, so they do not decide for me. Fourth, character: I will consult, document and follow through, and I will offer the organization a workable alternative whenever I decline a request.

Every dilemma this term began with a reasonable-sounding request; noticing the ethical issue was the hardest step.

Why My Own Conduct Matters

Brown et al. (2005) described the ethical leader as someone who behaves well in plain view and also pushes others to do the same, by talking about ethics, rewarding it and making decisions that show it. In their studies, ethical leadership was associated with followers' perceptions of leader effectiveness, satisfaction, willingness to report problems and extra effort. Mayer et al. (2009) found that ethical leadership by top managers related to ethical leadership by supervisors, which in turn related to lower deviance and greater citizenship among employees, a trickle-down pattern.

I now supervise two assessment analysts. How I handle requests from executives teaches them what is acceptable. If I quietly comply with a predetermined list, they learn that data can be bent; if I decline and offer an alternative, they learn a different lesson.

When Law, Code and Company Disagree

My framework also needs a rule for conflicts among the law, the code and company policy. The law sets a floor: I will never recommend a practice I know to be illegal. The code often asks more than the law, as when it required me to keep a confidentiality promise the company could legally have broken. Company policy usually aligns with both but sometimes lags behind, as our survey invitation did before I revised it. When the three conflict, I will follow the most protective standard that still lets me do my job, explain the conflict to my manager in writing and, if needed, seek advice from employment counsel or an ethics consultant outside the company. Writing this order down in advance keeps me from inventing a convenient rule in the moment.

Caring for the Practitioner

Ethical practice also depends on the practitioner's condition. Several of my weakest moments this term came late on busy days, when I was tempted to send a quick yes to an executive's email. Fatigue narrows attention and makes the path of least resistance look reasonable. I will protect time for reflection during peak hiring periods, avoid answering ethically loaded requests by email at night and keep the habit, borrowed from a mentor, of rereading any message that commits me to something before sending it.

Testing the Framework

The staffing cut request tested every step. Sensitivity was the first hurdle: the request was framed as building an objective index, and only noticing the age pattern alerted me. Judgment identified the organization, not the CFO, as the client and showed that a valid process served the company better. Motivation required naming my budget dependence on the CFO. Character meant raising the issue in a meeting with HR present, documenting it and following through. The framework held, though I acted more slowly than I would like.

Pressures I Expect

I expect pressure from executives seeking quick answers, from vendors selling tools with weak evidence, from friendships inside a company where I have worked for years and from fatigue during busy hiring seasons. For each, I plan a safeguard: written agreements at the start of projects, a vendor evidence checklist, disclosure of personal relationships before accepting assignments and a rule to sleep on any decision that involves bending a promise.

Commitments

Over the next five years, I commit to consulting a trusted colleague outside my company at least quarterly, joining SIOP and attending its ethics sessions, keeping a decision log for dilemmas and reviewing this framework each year.

Conclusion

My framework joins values from my family's shop with the profession's standards, structured by four steps from noticing an issue to acting on it. Research on ethical acculturation and ethical leadership reminds me that integrity is both personal and contagious. The cases this term showed that ethical practice in organizations is usually not heroic refusal but careful noticing, reasoning and offering a better path.

References

Brown, M. E., Treviño, L. K., & Harrison, D. A. (2005). Ethical leadership: A social learning perspective for construct development and testing. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 97(2), 117-134. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2005.03.002

Handelsman, M. M., Gottlieb, M. C., & Knapp, S. (2005). Training ethical psychologists: An acculturation model. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 36(1), 59-65. https://doi.org/10.1037/0735-7028.36.1.59

Mayer, D. M., Kuenzi, M., Greenbaum, R., Bardes, M., & Salvador, R. (2009). How low does ethical leadership flow? Test of a trickle-down model. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 108(1), 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2008.04.002

Rest, J. R. (1986). Moral development: Advances in research and theory. Praeger.