Cultural Values and Personal Ethics

Picture back to when you were in elementary school. It is a warm summer day, everyone is outside playing on the playground. Some children are playing on the swings, some on the monkey bars, while others decide they want to play kickball. After choosing captains, they start to pick who is going to be on their winning team. The captains quickly pick their friends, which goes by quick and then there are the few geeks or nerds left to pick from. Being not so popular growing up, I was one of the last few kids to be picked. It wasn’t that I didn’t know how to play kickball but I wasn’t an outgoing person in my childhood.

But how does personal, organizational, and cultural values come into play with my position as a manager and recruiter for a banking call center? How can past experiences help or hinder future events?

Personal Values

As the years went by I started to open up and began making friends in high school. I tried to be with the “in crowd” at the same time trying to be nice to the other not so popular students. Often times I felt a “gut” feeling about doing the right thing, other times I went with the popular decision; right or wrong. But as I was growing up, I started to realize that the right decision was always the best for me. It helped me become ethical not only in my personal life, but also in my professional life. It started to define my personal values and has guided me through tough decisions, popular or not, for which I haven’t regretted.

Personal values are something I believe is learned. It goes back to the continual debate over nature versus nurture. I believe my values came from both. I grew up in a two-parent home with an older sibling. Both of my parents worked for a living and I learned most of my values from them. They brought me up to be respectful, hard working, and honest and most of all treat everyone the way you want to be treated. I learned not to take money for granted because we didn’t have much. I wore hand-me-down clothing from friends and relatives. It taught me that money isn’t what makes you happy but you need to like yourself for who you are and not what you own.

Now as a hiring manager for Compass Bank, I look for similar values in the potential employees. I ask them questions about their childhood, past experiences that changed their values and what are they looking for in their career. I also like to share my values of who I am and how I advanced my career. Finally I ask them what are some of the values they are looking for in an organization?

Organizational Values

Every organization, big or small has a set of organizational values. Some of these values are in line with our own values and clearly defined, other are vague.

In the paper Finding Talent: A Study of Contacts and Careers (Hines, 2003) shows four different methods used on hiring employees from entry-level to executive positions. Each of the individuals interviewed stated they don’t follow their organizational values when interviewing and hiring employees. For entry-level positions, 80% use job postings in the newspaper or the Internet, career fairs and employee referrals. For middle to upper management, more then 50% say the hire based on word of mouth and not so much of past experience. And even others stated they try to hire previous employees they worked with before at other corporations. Are these personal values of these individuals? Does the organization stand behind these types of values? Or does cultural values come into play?

Cultural Values

Cultural values are a part of what makes up the world. The United States is called the “melting pot” since it became independent from the British in the 1700’s. Many individuals came to America looking for a new beginning at the same time they brought their cultures or traditions with them. As we become more of a multi-cultural society some of the traditions that were predominate during the early periods of American history are not so clear today. In early years, Italians only married other Italians, Germans only married other Germans, so on and so forth. Now, cultural or traditions are not a factor.

I view cultural values as a great way to understand someone’s values. It brings into light some of their personal values and the potential employees up bringing. I was raised in two different parts of the country. I was born in Western Pennsylvania and raised in West Palm Beach, Florida. Both parts of the country have different cultural values. In Pennsylvania, cultural values were placed on tradition. My grandfather on my dad’s side of the family was a skilled craftsman. He was very handy in his trade for which he used to provide for his family. He built his own homes. He worked very hard everyday in manual labor. On the other hand, being raised in Florida, the cultural values were different in the respect of not keeping traditions. They wanted to be different and on the leading edge of new things. These were not the same values I was use to being exposed to in Pennsylvania.

As an adult, I enjoy learning about different cultures and the values they place on individuals. It gives me an insight to what type of person they were in the past and hopefully what type of employee they will be in the future. But is cultural values a good tool to use when hiring?

Based on reading of The Role of Literacy in Individuals and Nations (Berryman, 1994), some cultures view experience and education in different ways. Emphasis on continuing education or continual heritage depends on your cultural. It could also depend on whom you know in the company that could help you get hired or promoted. For example, in the former USSR, only gifted students were given the opportunity to continue their education passed the eighth grade. Those whom didn’t display exceptional intelligence either went into the military academy or continued a trade or skill needed in the economy. This is opposite of our own culture and the opportunities provided to everyone.

Ethical Dilemmas

As I stated in the beginning of the paper, I still have a difficult time trying to hire candidates for open positions at Compass Bank. We try to hold regular job fairs each month with the Maricopa Department of Economic Security. During these job fairs, I have the opportunity to speak to individuals from all walks of life. Most of them are middle to late age workers who lost their job because they couldn’t keep up with changing technology. I spend about fifteen minutes with these individuals to see if their personal values and past work experience will be a fit for our organization. It is a very difficult ethical dilemma trying to look past maybe the way they are dressed or how many jobs they had in the past. But my personal values help guide me in those decisions. I usually will get a gut feeling that someone isn’t telling me the truth or they won’t fit into our organizational culture. It is hard to see these individuals sitting in front of me knowing they need a job to support their families. It tugs on my emotions but knowing I had the opportunity to let them know not to give up and share the same experiences I had when I was out of work helps them to continue their pursuit to work.

Conclusion

In conclusion, our personal, organizational and cultural values play a big part in our everyday lives. By trying to align your personal values with your organization values and not so much the cultural values, it provides a road map to help guide you with ethical decisions. Until someone writes a book that is 100% accurate on hiring the right person for the job, we will have to depend on our values.