Ethics and HRM

Introduction

This chapter identifies some ways in which established ethical theory can be applied to issues of HRM, and some theoretical issues which are especially salient in HRM.

Modern literature one thical theory contains a number of prominent approaches that are relevant to HRM (see, for example, Solomon, 1992; Winstanley and Woodall, 2000; Claydon, 2000). Some have ancient roots, like virtue ethics, an approach to ethics which suggests that a criterion for judging behaviour can be found in the extent to which the behaviour manifests good character. Such a view can be found both in Aristotle and Confucius. Other well-known approaches include consequentialism, the view that actions can always be assessed in ethical terms just by considering their consequences, and deontology, the view that not only actions’ consequences are relevant but also their intrinsic nature or the extent to which they conform with fundamental moral rules. Common deontological considerations are honesty, justice and fairness. After identifying ethical issues in HRM and the implications that the different approaches to ethics have for those issues, towards the end of the chapter we shall say more about the different approaches themselves. To begin with, though, we ought to notice the general types of questions they aim to deal with.

A primary question for ethics is what actions ought to be done, that is which actions are right and which are wrong. Should I work back late to complete this important project, or leave early because my son expects me to take him to soccer practice? Another primary question is about value, that is which things are good and which are bad. Working hard can be good, but is it better than spending time at home with my family? Consequentialism offers a link between those two sorts of questions: an action is right if, and only if, it results in as much good or as little bad as any other available action. For human resource management, there is likely to be some emphasis on questions of rightness, but both sorts of questions are relevant. For example, some of the questions we touch on below revolve around the extent to which human resource policies and practices can be justified by the role they play in achievement of good organisational outcomes. That sort of view raises both the question whether [Page 476]such policies and practices can indeed be justified by outcomes, and also the question to what extent the organisational outcomes are genuinely good.

All those questions are normative, or prescriptive questions. That is, they are questions about what actually is right, or good. It is questions of that type that we shall mainly be concerned with here. Literature about ethics also includes descriptive material, such as survey studies about people's attitudes toward pay issues, or about what organisational processes are perceived as fair, and so on. These are essentially studies in psychology and sociology, and do not necessarily have direct implications about normative issues. However, such studies allow use of empirical methodologies which are common in other parts of human resource management literature, and may occasionally replace normative analysis because of scepticism about possibilities of reaching conclusions about normative issues, sometimes associated with ethical relativism, the view that the truth of ethical claims is relative to individuals or communities who hold them.

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