Importance of Ethical Behavior and its Significance in Persuasion

Ethical behavior is perceived as moral when applied to persuade an individual to undertake or agree to support a noble idea. It is important to understand that persuasion does not necessary translate to ethical situation, some persuasion may be unethical. In simple terms, ethical behavior is described as a phenomenon where an individual in the society abide by unwritten rules that conforms to the law of land (McMillan, & Sheehan, 2010). There are some incidence where some individuals in the public use the perception of ethical behavior to influence a segment of the population to act contrary to the set rules in the society. This paper addressed the importance of ethical behavior and its significance in persuasion.

Read also Persuasion Campaign for Online Education

            The importance of ethical behavior is not limited to persuasion it serves to boost morality in the society. This include creating a favorable for the different parties to engage each other in a meaningful manner. The importance of ethical behavior in a persuasive process can be traced to ancient periods (Den Hartog, & De Hoogh, 2009). Ethics is defined as behavior that differentiates human beings from other animals in lower forms of life. These include the ability to utilize symbols, reason and create an environment that leads to appreciative understand between two parties. The ethical behavior serves as benchmark where an individual can be judged based on ethics of persuasion.

Read also Business Ethics From the Perspective of Ethical Theories and Conflicts in Office Setting

            It is the moral standard that put people in the society checks and balances to coexist with each. Studies have indicated that human being cannot exists by absolutism theory, as such certain moral standard that benchmark human behavior while engaging with other in the society must exists. These moral standard may be in the form norms and values which various from one religion and culture to another (Coldwell, et al., 2008). It is this moral standards that govern how the business practices is conducted worldwide. An example of ethical standard is the Foreign Corrupt Practices Acts (FCPA), which prohibits business enterprises from taking in practices that are perceived or believed to disenfranchise a section of the society. This means the individuals elected or appointed to represent business communities and the leaders to the society must operate within acceptable ethical behavior in the persuasion process.

            Ethical behavior also play important role in organization culture since a positive culture in the organization can easily be transited from existing employees to newly recruited employees. Studies have indicated that the best method of assimilating newly recruited employees into the organization culture is by given them the opportunity to experience first-hand on how the employees conduct themselves. In addition, many business firms have relied on good organization culture to build public trust and expand their customer base. For example, Toyota Motors is one example of the business firms that have thrived by excellent organization culture.

            Negative organizational culture affects the image of the company and it is likely to negative impact business operations. If the damage is not managed on time, it may affects the returns and shares earned by the stakeholders. In a nutshell, the consideration of ethical behavior and its importance in persuasion is to build and maintain good relationship between the communities in which the company operates, the customers the company servers and the workforce of the company (Den Hartog, & De Hoogh, 2009). Further analysis indicated that it very challenging to maintain a good reputation in a dynamic business environment and it requires a lot efforts to persuade a lost consumers to accept the good and service of the company after making mistake. This outline the importance of ethical behavior in the persuasion process.

            There are a lot of factors that needs to be considered in the persuasion process. An individual participating in persuasion process needs to approach the whole issues with respect to other partners. It is paramount to treat other people as capable of making informed decisions, worthy, rational and autonomous (McMillan, & Sheehan, 2010). Prior to persuasion process, the public should be made aware of the expectation and the likely outcome of the process. Therefore, the two parties should approach the persuasion process with open-minded and be prepared to inspire and make the recipient able to comprehensively process the information given and come up with informed decision.

Read also Persuasion, Causation, Multisensory Priming, Compliance Gaining, Dissonance

            It is the ethical behavior that enables the parties to engage in a respectful, properly and honesty. This is because persuasion process serves as communication tool that requires the input of ethical morality make the process justly and universal acceptable. Several theories have been put forward to explain the connectedness between ethical behavior and persuasion process. Some of these theories includes relativism and deontological theory. 

            According to relativism theory, there is no single outstanding right moral value and everything is biased. The argument of this theory is that each every individual establishes own principles based on their personal judgment about what is important (McMillan, & Sheehan, 2010). As a result, an individual is forced to weight the negative and positive impacts of the principles but put their own interest forward. Nonetheless, the established principles tend to lean towards the previously made decisions. The relativism theory allows for multiculturalism and every individual to carry own moral beliefs.

            On the other hand, deontological theory states that there are behaviors that agrees on whether an action taken was right or not. This theory outlines the measures that are used to measure the ethical sense of the behavior. For example, a drug driver can be charged in the court of law for negligence in the responsibility to ‘above all do no harm’ (Coldwell, et al., 2008). This responsibility is drawn from various sources which include language, metaphysics, culture, religion, psychology and biology. These responsibilities can be prima facie, absolute or conditions based on the perspective in which deontological theory is analyzed.            

Unlike the relativism theory which considers the outcome of every action taken, deontological theory does not focus on the outcome of determining whether the ethical behavior is right or not. For instance, the theory is concern whether the drunk driver manages to arrive home safely, but it focuses on the wrong action taken by the driver to drive the vehicle under influence of alcohol. Therefore, the action of an individual is judged based on the right and wrong.  In conclusion, ethical behavior is assessed based on the positive and negative impacts. The outcome of the persuasive process depends on the constructive and deconstructive language utilized in the persuasion process.

Scroll to Top