Speaker 1: Have you ever been in this situation? You arrive at your favorite amusement park and rush to ride the brand new state-of-the-art roller coaster only to find a three-hour wait? Are you tempted to jump ahead in the line? What prevents you from doing so? The answer is that it is usually your ethics. Ethics refers to the moral principles or values that generally govern the conduct of an individual or group. They can also be viewed as a standard of behavior. The gray area of ethics occurs when one person's standard is not the same as someone else's. Society's ethical standards are for people to follow the rules and not cut in line. In business, ethics are very important as companies must follow the unwritten rules to protect employee rights, the environment, and their customers. Business ethics determine companies' everyday conduct. They include both laws and morals, which determine how an employee will act in the business world. Laws define the boundaries of what is legal and are the written guidelines that must be followed in society. Morals are the rules people develop as a result of cultural norms and values, and are traditionally what employees learn from their childhood, culture, education, religion, etc. They are usually described as good or bad behavior. Would a salesperson have good morals if they pushed a product on a customer that they knew was not going to help them solve a problem? Psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg famously identified three levels of ethical development that individuals typically progress through. By looking at these stages, we can begin to talk about whether behavior is ethical and what its motivations might be. The first level of ethical development is called pre-conventional morality. This level of ethics is most childlike. The best example would be to think of how a toddler acts during a day. They're very self-centered and only driven by rewards or punishment, such as a lollipop or a time-out. Most business people have already moved beyond this level of ethical development, well hopefully. The second level of ethical development is called conventional morality, which means behaving in accord with society's rules and expectations. This level is when a marketing manager would be concerned with breaking a law and how it could be viewed by outsiders. Another way to look at this is peer pressure or doing what others would do. The last level is called post-conventional morality and revolves around the idea that people are more concerned about how they view themselves and not what others may think. Internal pressure to behave correctly and follow a moral path is the central theme. A marketing manager who has reached a level of post-conventional morality would not just be a marketing manager, he would be a leader in this field. He would be a leader in this field. He would be a leader in this field. He would be a leader in this field.