The Ethical Context of HRM


Ethics is a special branch of philosophy that focuses on the questions related to morality, that is concepts such as good and bad, right and wrong; fairness and righteousness’ Woodall and Heery (1996). Business ethics deals with the degree and extent of morality to be used in business (George & Kortezi , 2010). Ethics in HRM basically can be described as affirmative morale obligations of employer towards employee to maintain equality and equity justice (Singh, 2014).

Areas of ethics in HRM

·         Basic human rights, civil rights and employments rights
·         Workplace safety and health
·         Privacy
·         Fairness and justice in treatment
·         Good faith deal with honestly, openly and without misleading each other

Role of HR in promoting ethics

1.       Improve recruitment and selection tests
2.       Conduct ethics training to management as well as employees
3.       Ensure the credibility of performance appraisal
4.       Implement a reward and disciplinary system
5.       Improve and facilitate two-way communication
6.       Avoid discrimination based on color religion, education etc.

Positives and Negatives

Lot of studies have shown good HR ethics can work better for organization
-          Previous empirical studies from scholars confirm there is a positive relationship between HR ethics and firm’s performance (Mikula, cited in Ombanda & K’Obonyo, 2019)
-          Relationship between ethics training, employee satisfaction and gender balance emphasize ethics training is positively influenced in CSR practices, employee satisfaction and performance (Liao & Teng, cited in Ombanda & K’Obonyo, 2019)

However today with competition and due to financial reasons organizations practice some un ethical behaviors ; just under a third (31%) of people professionals say that managers in their organizations often demonstrate unethical behavior (CIPD, 2019). Some of them are as follows
Workload- Employees are often found in stress when the workload is too high or too less, thus managers must divide work among employees as per priority and capability basis (Makin & Winder, cited in UK Essays, 2018)
Mistrust and unfairness - These will keep everyone in the workplace on the edge, create bad attitudes, and will decrease productivity (Pitt, cited in UK Essays, 2018)
Bias attitiude in selection – transfer, Promotion etc (Singh, 2014).
Longer and infelexible working hours (Singh, 2014).

References

CIPD, 2019. Rotten Apples, Bad Barrels and Stickey Situations:An evidence review of unethical workplace behaviour, London: CIPD.
George, G. N. & Kortezi , Z., 2010. Ethical Considerations in Organizational Politics: Expanding the Perspective. Journal of Business Ethics, 93(4), pp. 497-517.
Ombanda, P. O. & K’Obonyo, P., 2019. Critical Analysis of Ethics in Human Resource Management and Employee Performance. International Journal of Scientific and Research Publications, 9(1), pp. 580-595.
Singh, S., 2014. Ethics in Human Resource Management. [Online]
Available at: https://www.slideshare.net/saumyasingh7921/ethics-in-human-resource-management
[Accessed 07 June 2019].
UK Essays, 2018. Ethics in Human Resource Management. [Online]
Available at: https://www.ukessays.com/essays/management/critical-analysis-of-ethics-and-hrm-management-essay.php#citethis
[Accessed 07 June 2019].



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