The Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) is the apex recruiting body in India responsible for selecting candidates for various prestigious civil services positions. In 2015, the General Studies Paper 4, also known as the Ethics, Integrity, and Aptitude paper, presented candidates with a challenging array of questions aimed at evaluating their ethical and moral reasoning, decision-making abilities, and overall aptitude. This paper, a critical component of the UPSC examination, tests not only the knowledge but also the character and judgment of aspiring civil servants. Let’s delve into the solved questions of the UPSC 2015 GS 4 paper to gain insight into the rigorous standards expected of future administrators and leaders in India.
Q1. (b) Differentiate between the following (200 Words, 10 Marks)
(i) Law and ethics
(ii) Ethical management and management of ethics
(iii) Discrimination and preferential treatment
(iv) Personal Ethics and Professional Ethics
Tags: Ethics and Human Interface: Essence, determinants and consequences of Ethics in-human actions; dimensions of ethics; ethics – in private and public relationships.
Decoding the Question:
- In the Intro, try to define respective terms.
- In Body,
- Add points of differences with suitable examples.
- In Conclusion, try to end with a sentence on their relevance.
Answer:
(i) Law and ethics:
The major differences between law and ethics are mentioned below:
- The law is defined as the systematic body of rules that governs the whole society and the actions of its individual members. Ethics means the science of a standard human conduct.
- The law consists of a set of rules and regulations, whereas Ethics comprises of guidelines and principles that inform people about how to live or how to behave in a particular situation.
- The law is created by the Government, which may be local, regional, national or international. On the other hand, ethics are governed by an individual, legal or professional norms, i.e. workplace ethics, environmental ethics and so on.
- The law is expressed in the constitution in a written form. As opposed to ethics, it cannot be found in writing form.
- The breach of law may result in punishment or penalty, or both which is not in the case of breach of ethics.
- The objective of the law is to maintain social order and peace within the nation and protection to all the citizens. Unlike, ethics that are the code of conduct that helps a person to decide what is right or wrong and how to act.
- The law creates a legal binding, but ethics has no such binding on the people.
Law and ethics are different in a manner that what a person must do and what a person should do. The former is universally accepted while the latter is ideal human conduct, agreed upon by most of the people. Although, both the law and ethics are made in alignment so that they do not contradict each other.
(ii) Ethical management and management of ethics:
- Ethical management suggests the inclusion of an ethical dimension in management of institutions like government, NGOs and private firms, e.g., training of managers and workers to make them ethically literate and professional.
- It should be followed within the corporation’s relationships with customers, employers, suppliers and shareholders. It defines the right and wrong conduct. It includes professional ethics, social ethics, personal ethics, and normative ethics.
- Management of ethics is different. To manage ethics means to create a set of principles or code for all to comply with ethical behavior. It is how one deals with conflicts of interests and dilemmas to make an ethically sound decision, how one manages to direct his/her’s actions and satisfy his/her conscience to move towards an ethical path. Management of ethics states the ethical treatment of the company towards the employees and stakeholders. It includes creating a trustworthy environment, code of conduct and open communication.
- Ethical management presumes already known and set ethics while management of ethics deals with continually managing the ethics. Management of ethics can be considered as a previous step of ethical management as ethics themselves have to be managed before these can be used for management purposes.
(iii) Discrimination and preferential treatment:
- Discrimination is based on bias, prejudice and nepotism while preference is based on merit. While selection, if criteria like race, religion, community or color comes into play, it leads to discrimination while preferential treatment is based on performance and hence is determined on merit grounds.
- Discrimination is negative and hence needs to be curbed while preferential treatment is inherent and inevitable to human conscience as minds tend to prefer something over other owing to some factors. Preferential treatment based on biases and preconceived notions is discrimination.
- Examples of Discrimination could be the denial of education to girls while Preferential Treatment could be a remedy to Discrimination like additional support for girl child’s education and reservation of seats in institutions and in services to encourage employment.
(iv) Personal Ethics and Professional Ethics
- Personal Ethics is based on individual values, ideas and belief which in turn is a result of upbringing, conditioning and education. While Professional Ethics is the set of values suited for a particular organization or other set up.
- Personal Ethics is to abide by values like truthfulness, trust, compassion, etc. so as to maintain his/her relation with one’s family, friends and even with strangers. Professional Ethics is to do one’s work honestly with dedication and motive of service. Unlike personal ethics, professional ethics may have codified rules like conduct rules, code of ethics where non-compliance may attract punishment in some cases.
- Ethics in public life places a greater responsibility and is more demanding as in public life you cannot always follow your personal ethics. While in professional capacity, there can be a conflict between personal and professional ethics.
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