January 2011


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By Surendra Arjoon

To foster some of the core values of The UWI, the Department of Management Studies will now be offering a course in Professional Ethics. This course is a response to the current global financial crisis which was precipitated by abuses of authority and power, conflicts of interests, scandals, and so on. Ultimately, it is not institutions and markets that fail, but the judgments and actions of decision-makers. At the heart is the lack of professional and personal integrity.

Broadly, the course will try to show students how to pursue excellence, develop a capacity for independent thought and critical analysis, stimulate self awareness and social awareness, nurture a keen sense of individual and social responsibility, sustain personal growth, and foster ethical values, attitudes and approaches.

Professional ethics has become more relevant with the increasingly more complicated moral issues as societies continually revise their ethical codes. Participants would be encouraged to recognise the values fundamental to the experience of being a professional and to develop the skills for moral reasoning that would allow these values to be interpreted.

In their book, “Morality and Professional Life,” authors Cynthia Brincat and Victoria Wike noted that the current business environment has seen an increasing demand for ethically-sensitive professionals. As such, professional ethics has come of age in a period of great change. It is relevant for all those who work or plan to work professionally, and not just relevant to those in stereotypical professions such medicine and law.

It is perhaps more appropriate to refer to all work as professional work. The authors also point out that in this dynamic climate, there is a great call for moral professionals: those who have acquired not only technical competence, but moral intelligence, moral skills and moral leadership as well. It is debatable whether or not everyone who works has a concern for morality, but it is certainly now the case that the marketplace and society need moral sensitivity in those they employ.

The course intends to develop participants’ moral skills (personal integrity and responsibility, managing their emotions, compassion and forgiveness, beneficence and non-maleficence, justice and respect for human dignity) and their moral intelligence (becoming a moral leader).

It is important to recognise how one does one’s job is of greater moral relevance than what one actually does as a job. Concepts of work and how it is to be done (let alone done well), are being challenged, since most people view work from its economic worth rather than from its moral relevance. It is not simply about professional obligations and duties, but the solutions to the world crises ought to go beyond the idea of this strict justice notion of professional work. For example, the idea of sanctification of work, involves doing all honest work (intellectual or manual, significant or insignificant) with the greatest human perfection (professional competence) and supra-human perfection (for love of God and a service to others). Human work then becomes indispensable for personal and human development. It is a call to sanctify one’s work, to sanctify oneself in one’s work, and to sanctify others through one’s work. Work then is elevated to something divine (this is what is truly meant by the dignity of work) and should be carried out with professionalism and a spirit of service. This view of work is rooted in a humanism that insists on the inseparable synthesis between spiritual and material well-being. To sanctify work means that it must be done with a spirit of sacrifice, in an orderly way, and with human perfection from start to finish.

The view of ‘sanctification of work’ fits in with the concept of professionalism or how professional work ought to be conducted. It is not simply to be limited to professional duties and obligations (which reflects strict justice), but one must go beyond this view which is rooted in the letter of the law, to a spirit of service (one which is imbued with self-sacrificing love and compassion with the aim of serving and helping others). It is only by being generous with others that one can be truly happy. Adhering to strict professional duties inclines one to be more self-centered and one ends up being closed to the needs of others. This phenomenon can be described by what can be termed the logic of professional services: one gives one’s services to receive the appropriate remuneration for one’s services. On the other hand, professional work characterized by a spirit of service promotes an enlightened self-interest which goes beyond the logic of professional services and has its basis in the principle of gratuitousness: one gives without claim. Professional work done in this way recognises the dignity of work (by sanctifying work), the dignity of the human person (by sanctifying oneself and others through one’s work), and thereby promoting the common good (the good of each and everyone). It is a pity that, driven by a materialistic mentality, many people view work mainly from its economic worth and lose sight of its profound dimension and value as realizing and ennobling their dignity and, as a consequence, to the detriment of their own happiness.

–Surendra Arjoon is a Senior Lecturer in Ethics in the Department of Management Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, The UWI. This article forms part of the Professional Ethics undergraduate course, recommended for all UWI students, which is to be introduced in Semester II 2010/11. It is an elective which is designed to promote and improve the ethical behaviour of UWI students.