Integrating the statement of values into course syllabi  (Page 3/4)

Values orientation

• The SOV can also be read as the identification and affirmation of a community’s aspirations. By taking on this values orientation, the SOV replaces the reactive compliance perspective with a proactive stance oriented toward excellence. The emphasis here is on how the community can support its members by identifying best practices toward realizing these aspirations and especially how it can provide support to those who fall short. This values-based orientation is built upon the following three components
• Development of Shared Values: Using a process similar to the one described above, a community develops a Statement of Shared Values. These provide guidelines that replace the hard and fast rules of a compliance code. Statements in values-oriented codes play a different logical function than statements in compliance codes. "Principles of Professional/Organizational Conduct" in compliance codes specify circumstances of compliance: time, agent, place, purpose, manner, etc. These circumstances provide sufficient content to allow principles of professional conduct to function as rules that can be violated. This gives them "teeth," that is, makes it possible to enforce them by sanctions and punishments. "Ideals of the Profession/Organization state a community's shared aspirations. They set forth levels of behavior well beyond the minimum. Because they chart out directions for continuous improvement, Ideals of the Profession/Organization profess a community's commitment to excellence rather than the moral minimum.
• Support for Employees: Since Statements of Values can set forth excellences or aspirations, the role of the community changes from monitoring and punishing to helping community members realize key values in their day to day activities. In other words, the role of the organization changes from punitive to supportive .
• Ethical Aspirations: In summary, values orientations can be interpreted as setting forth higher standards for behavior. Going well beyond the moral and legal minimum, these values--when clarified in a community's statement of values--serve as aspirations. A values orientation requires that a community design strategies that reinterpret and realize basic values as excellences. Hence, it is most compatible with a virtue orientation and virtue ethical theory.

What you will do ...

Suppose the sov has been adopted and implemented for several years now. exercise your moral imagination and envision problems that the pursuit of these excellences would have avoided.

Question 1:

Question 2:

• Does the adaptation and implementation of the SOV promise to make us (ADEM stakeholders) a better community?
• If so, how?
• If not, what are its weaknesses?
• Nota Bene: If you feel that the adoption of the SOV will not make us a better community, feel free to state this and then explain your position. Your first item here

Challenging the statement of values