The Ethical Context of HRM

It is a curious fact that the current surge of interest in business ethics has largely bypassed the theory and the practice of human resource management . While business as a whole is presenting itself more and more in terms of social responsibility, and employees are routinely accepted as crucial stakeholders in most business organizations, HRM practice continues to affirm its significance for corporate profitability and prefers to distance itself from its traditional welfare image.

The business ethics mainly put attention on the social and ecological responsibilities of the companies within the society. Ethics are now becoming one of the most important internal concerns for the companies. Previously, the interests of the employees were not taken into consideration but now it has become one of the main responsibilities of the company to ethically manage its human resources (Christian & Andra, 2009). Now it’s the era of ethical leadership.

                                                Video 1: Human Resource Ethics

Acts of its employees towards a business perspective to his moral character is a litmus test. Relationship between business and its employees is based on employment contract. The principle of ethical selection is followed by an ethical organization for hiring prospective employees. As per this principle an organization should only hire a person who is expected to contribute the maximum towards increasing the long-term value of the business (Glenn, 2001).

Business ethics as a field of study and as an issue with currency in the broader community has grown considerably in recent years. This interest has been increased, it can be suggested, by a series of corporate scandals that have stimulated a small explosion in academic publications on corporate governance (Zoffer and Fram 2005) and led to a greater concern to include ethics courses in business school curricula (Crane 2004; Elliott 2004; Evans and Marcal 2005; Koehn 2005).

Given all of these initiatives in business ethics and CSR, one might expect a similar growth of interest in ethics and HRM. After all an extremely important component of making business more ethical is to take seriously the ethical aspects of managing people (Winstanley and Woodall 2000a).

What are the ethics related to a  work place?

• Safety and health: Much of the work in the industries and companies is hazardous. All this is because of the use of heavy technology. Nowadays there is much use of machineries and high temperature based production processes. New sources of accidents and illnesses are increasing day by day. Risk is present in every job but its frequency differs from job to job.

• Face to face ethics: These types of ethics arise due to human element in the activities in the workplace. No work is possible without employees.

• Corporate policy ethics: The use of more technology in the workplace has replaced the labor in the workplace. This has made hundreds of persons jobless. The managers are responsible for making policies and their successful implementation. It should be such that it can be able to send right signals to every person in the company (Shuttleworth, 2004).

• Employee Relations: It’s the duty of the HR manager to maintain objectivity in hiring, discipline, promotion, training, retention, termination and compensation (Ken & Joanne, 2010). All this lies at the core of human resources.

 References

• Ashly Pininngton,Rob Macklin and Tom Campbell , Human Resource Management :Ethics and Employment, Available at: https://www.hrpa.ca/Documents/Designations/Job-Ready-Program/Human-Resource-Management-Ethics-and-Employment.pdf (Accessed: Oct 5th 2018).
• Ethics in Human Resource Management. [online]. Available at: https://www.ukessays.com/essays/management/critical-analysis-of-ethics-and-hrm-management-essay.php?vref=1 [Accessed 5th  October 2018].
• Video 1:Human Resource Ethics [Online].Available at:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdQuzoHQt90/[Accessed 5th Oct 2018].