The Humanitarian Social System

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emphasizes the terminal value of a comfortable prosperous life. Alternatively, the Humanitarian social system focuses on equality among persons in society. Again in Rokeach’s terms, the focal values of Humanitarian system would include the terminal value of equality, brotherhood and equal opportunity for all. Actually, Rokeach developed the Rokeach Value Survey (RVS), a classification system of values. The system consists of two sets of values, 18 individual value items in each. One set is called terminal values the other instrumental values. Terminal values refer to the goals that a person would like to achieve during his or her lifetime while Instrumental values are the means of achieving the terminal values. Brief, Dukerich, and Doran (1991), …show more content…

Liedka (1991) suggested that many managers find themselves forced to choose between preserving their relationship with the firm and following their own values. Tetlock (1992) showed that individuals confronted with complex problems view a justifiable decision as the most socially rational, demonstrating the power of perceived organizational norms. Beu and Buckley (2004) argued that organizations can affect the rules of the game in favour of ethical behaviour by implementing ethics programs. In this study two types of ethics programs are described, Codes of ethics and Values based organizations. In line with this paper, under Codes of ethics the employee is accountable for the organization. Members of the organization know what is expected of them, they know to whom they might justify their behaviour and they understand the sanctions and the benefits associated with their behaviour (formal type). By contrast, Value based organizations focus on defining organizational values and encouraging employee commitment to ethical aspiration through personal self-governance. (informal type). Concerning influential types of management/leadership in ethical behaviour, findings contain mainly the following types- as they were described by Trevino & Brown (2004): Transformational leadership: these relationships entail future obligations that are unspecified and are enforced by norms of reciprocity. Without the protection of contractually specified obligations, the perceived trust-worthiness of the partners and the fairness of the exchange become important for developing and maintaining lasting relationships. The obligation is voluntary and the benefits may be non-monetary, hence the loss of reputation plays an important role here. Leaders, in this category raise followers’ level of moral development and focus followers