Sociology Assignment: What Are The Ethical Issues? (Essay Sample)

Religion in the Workplace
Name
Institution
Introduction
Ethics can be defined as the basic moral principles that guide the behavior of a person or group for people (Kucuk, 2015). Ethics exists in every group of people and serve to outline the behavioral expectations of the different parties that are interacting in the play. For example, at the workplace, there are ethics that guide the way employees interact amongst themselves and with their boss. Ethics also govern the way people conduct or carry out their duties. Every career has its own norms. For example, in nursing, the interaction between the nurses and the patient is high determined by the ethical code used by the nurses to whom a deviation is not expected. There are sanctions to deter deviants fro ethics. Further, there are ethical theories and perspectives that help people to conform with the ethics in the society. In this paper, deontological and utilitarianism theories will be discussed and its applicability in reinforcing ethics and virtues in different ethical issues in the society.
What are the ethical issues?
Ethics encompass the interpersonal, group as well as the community politics all at the level of virtues and values and how they can be achieved, what the society should seek in order to encourage fairness and uphold social harmony. Ethics provokes thinking beyond oneself into what collective actions can be taken or what can collectively be avoided to foster harmony among the members of the society (Kucuk, 2015).
Some of the ethical issues in the society today include things such as whistleblowing in the government and the business world, human trafficking, gambling issues, workplace surveillance among many others that erupt from day to day.
Circumstances of breaches of ethics
Interactions between different groups of people on their daily businesses create situations in which the ethics are bound to be breached. For example, when managers, entrepreneurs and employees interact, there are numerous opportunities created for breach of ethics. Social issues such as ethnicity, age or gender disparities are the catalyzers that lead to a breach of ethics in most countries such as the United States. Business bosses who discriminate workers based on gender or race, for example, when compensating or recruiting new employees, will have breached the code of ethics and risk legal actions. Firms that do not take into consideration the social responsibilities while executing their operations also constitute to the breach of ethics. For example, a company that produces a lot of noise or gaseous and solid effluents into the environment without measures to mitigate the impacts are said to have breached the code of ethics. People who engage in illegal activities such as drug and human trafficking automatically breach the code of ethics (Fisher, 2013).
Ethical theories
Deontological ethics theory
The deontological theory was developed by Immanuel Kant in the 18th century. Deontology in ethics centers on the righteousness or the wrongness of the actual actions taken by the people as opposed to the consequences of the righteousness or wrongness of these actions. It differentiates itself from the consequentialism which focuses on the consequences of being righteous or wrong as well as the virtue ethics that concerns itself habits and the characters of the actors (Broad, 2014).
According to deontologists, a bad or good situation depends on the goodness or badness of the action that leads to that situation. In other words, a choice is considered to be right if it had taken into consideration the moral norms. Righteousness comes before being good in deontology. For instance, if someone come out and contemplates killing anyone on earth who did not support agricultural production so as to increase food production and reduce starvation. From a deontological perspective, the world without starvation would not be good because of the way it has been brought about (Broad, 2014)
Deontologists hold that some actions will always be wrong no matter what consequences follow or what actions follow. For example, deontologists believe that it is wrong to lie even to a murderer who is looking for a victim to kill. Also, deontological theories are obligation based since people are bound to duty.
Utilitarianism theory
Utilitarianism was put forward by Jeremy Bentham in the 18th century. Utilitarian theory is a moral principle which states that morally right path of action under different cases and circumstances is one that yields the most balance of advantages over damages caused to any vulnerable individual. Utilitarian insist and are simply bothered with the course of action; if the course of action yields the highest benefits to the simple majority then as to whether those benefits were derived through lies or manipulations or even coercion should not be a problem (Lau, 2012).
This theory is widely in use today even by those who do not know about the theory. For example, people engage in moral duties because of the positive results that are anticipated. People in business, lawmakers and scientists are bothered from day to day in balancing the potential benefits and harms that may result from whatever policies or actions they want to implement. For example, scientists' ways the side effects and the potential benefits of a drug before releasing for use by human beings. When their assessment informs them that the benefits would be more than the risks, they will then introduce the drug (Lau, 2012).
Utilitarianism theory provides quick answers as to whether the action we intend to take is morally right or wrong by simply assessing the benefits and harms. One may look for alternative courses of actions and table the potential harms and benefits for each so as to choose one among them that presents the most benefits with least hazards (Lau, 2012).
Ethical perspective
Descriptive perspective
The descriptive perspective of ethical issues focuses on the attitudes of individuals and groups. It is concerned with the observation of the upright decision-making processes. It attempts to examine the beliefs that people hold on certain actions. It uncovers the values, the wrongness or rightness of the actions and the characteristics of the moral agents that are considered to be virtuous. Lastly, it looks into the actions that the society reward or condemn through punishment by law (Pugh, 2014).
Applications of ethical theories and perspectives to ethical issues
Deontological theory can be applied to some ethical issues. Deontological believe that it is an obligation of an individual to perform duties or act in a specified manner transforms individuals into developing virtues that result from following the correct course of action. When a deontological theory is put in practice, it will mean that people follow the policies and the rules that are in place and would hardly divert into ethical issues such as human trafficking or domestic surveillance which are usually actions generated by those who do not follow the path of law.
Utilitarianism theory teaches human beings to assess the harms and benefits of the different course of actions taken so as to choose the best alternative which presents the least harms while maximizing the benefits. Looking, for instance, human trafficking, it may be considered a means that an individual chooses to make money out of engaging in the business. However, if the harms of that particular course of action used by the traffickers to get money, it is clear that the benefits accrued will be fewer than the harm accrued to the trafficked individuals and the family. The theory could inform the traffickers to stop the act. Also, gambling may be another course of action that people often pursue in search of money, but they often lose more than they could earn from gambling. This tells them that the harms are more than the benefits and therefore should stay away from such businesses. Similarly, domestic surveillance may help the parents gather information about the actions undertaken by the children. However, children will realize that they are being watched and begin to restrict their play activities that were health for their fitness. Domestic surveillance is also dangerous in leaking out families secrets. It is generally more harmful than the benefits it generates to the family.
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