Topic > The Importance of Integrity and Ethics - 795

Integrity is the adherence to moral and ethical principles and is a term incorporated into many different aspects of life such as business, relationships and society ( Dictionary.com, 2014) . The most important aspect of integrity is its relationship to ethics. Pride et al. (2015) state that “ethics is the study of right and wrong and the morality of choices made by individuals”. Both ethics and integrity place great importance on fairness and honesty. While the term integrity is broad, its relationship to ethics and business can help describe its true meaning. There are three factors that influence integrity and ethical behavior. These factors include individual factors, social factors and opportunities. A better understanding of these factors and the role they play in ethics and business provides a clearer definition of what integrity is (Pride et al., 2015). Some individuals have no knowledge of what may cause an ethical problem and may act a certain way because they don't know any better. Personal values ​​are another example of an individual factor that affects ethics because employees' moral values ​​influence their business behavior. The third individual factor that plays an important role in integrity and ethics is personal goals. Both the goals an individual aspires to and how he or she achieves them can have an impact on a company. An example of how individual factors influence integrity within a company would be if there was an employee whose moral values ​​involved stealing from colleagues and customers. This employee would significantly reduce the integrity of the company and promote an unsafe and hostile work environment (Pride et al..,