HRM and Supporting Ethical work place in organizations

HRM and Supporting Ethical work place in organizations

The concern about the prevalence of unethical behaviors within business organizations has been increasing and media attention has uncovered various instances of abuses, scandals, swindle and corruption (Bartels et al, 1998).

Because of those arrestments, the main concern of all professionals is to explore all possible ways of creating and supporting ethical behavior and activities within the business organizations.

According to Victor & Cullen, (1987) ethical climate can be defined as the mutual impression of what correct ethical behavior is and how ethical issues should be handled.

Dimensions of ethical climate of work (Arnaud, 2010)

Major Issues and Objective of Ethics in the Organisations

 Issues and Objective of Ethics (Shen et al., 2009; Rynes & Rosen, 1995)

HRM ethical guidelines

HRM is a set of unique activities, functions and processes that are aimed at attracting, directing and maintaining an organization‟s human resources (Lado & Wilson, 1994).

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The following guidelines relate to how employees are treated in general and to the key HRM activities of organization development.

HRM ethical guidelines (Armstrong & Taylor, 2014)

Major HRM activities of organization development

Recruitment and Selection

According to Opatha, (2009), “recruitment is the process of finding and attracting suitably qualified people to apply for employment”. 

Training and Development

Opatha, (2009) defines “Training and development is a formal process of changing employee behaviour and motivation in the way that will enhance employee job performance and then organisational overall performance”. 

Performance Appraisal

Accroding to Winstanley & Hartog, (2002) ethics can penetrate through employee performance evaluation and management and also can ensure the proper implementation of performance evaluation system.

Reward Management

In an organisation, reward management is concerned with the preparation and implementation of strategies and policies and the purposes of which are to reward fairly (Armstrong, 2006).

Ethical dilemmas

There is no right way to deal with an ethical issue, but an approach based on systematic questioning, analysis and diagnosis to get at the facts and establish the issues involved is more likely to produce a reasonably satisfactory outcome (Clegg et al., 2007).

Conclusion

Through suitable organizational interventions ethics can be embedded into HRM functional dimensions. Through this process, HRM can contribute to create and sustain ethics, ethical culture and ethical climate in the organisations. Embedding ethical orientation in each and every functional dimension of HRM is crucial for every organization. Ethical climate has an impact on the extent to which the organization experiences serious ethical problems. 

References

Arnaud, A. (2010), Conceptualizing and Measuring Ethical Work Climate: Development and Validation of the Ethical Climate Index, Business and Society, Vol. 49, No. 2, pp. 345-358.

Bartels, L. K. Harrick, E. Martell, K. and Strickland, D. (1998), The relationship between ethical climate and ethical problems within Human Resource Management, Journal of Business Ethics, Vol. 17, No. 7, pp. 799-804.

Clegg, S, Kornberger, M and Rhodes, C (2007) Business ethics as practice, British Journal of Management, 18 (2), pp 107–22.

Corporate Governance: Code of Business Conduct and Ethics. (1996). Retrieved June 3, 2016, from Amazon.com, http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=97664&p=irol-govConduct.

Armstrong, M. (2006), A Handbook of Human Resource Management Practice, 10th ed, Noida, India: Gopsons Papers Ltd.

Opatha, H.H.D.N.P. (2009), Human Resource Management, Colombo, Sri Lanka: Author Publication.

Rynes, S. & Rosen, B. (1995), A Field Survey of Factors Affecting the Adoption and Perceived Success of Diversity Training, Personnel Psychology, Vol. 48, No. 2, pp. 247-270.