The research about strategic human resource management (SHRM) has suggested that human resource professionals (HRPs) have the opportunity to play a greater role in contributing to organizational success if they are effective in developing systems and policies aligned with the organization's values, goals, and mission. We suggest that HRPs need to raise the standard of their performance and that the competitive demands of the modern economic environment create implicit ethical duties that HRPs owe to their organizations. We define ethical stewardship (...) as a model of governance that honors obligations due to the many stakeholders and that maximizes long-term organizational wealth creation. We propose that if HRPs adopt an ethical stewardship framework and the qualities of transformative leaders, they will be more aware of their ethical duties to their organizations and more effective in helping their organizations to create increased wealth, achieve desired organizational outcomes, and establish work environments that are more satisfying to employees. (shrink)

This article tracks Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) as an emergent organizational process that places the employee at its center. Predominantly, research on CSR tends to focus on external pressures and outcomes leading to a neglect of CSR as a dynamic and developing process that relies on the involvement of the employee as a major stakeholder in its co-creation and implementation. Utilizing case study data drawn from a study of a large multinational energy company, we explore how management relies on employees' (...) interaction with CSR as the process of initiation → implementation → maturation develops. Employee involvement grows from a minor element in the CSR initiation stage to a vital contributory factor in CSR's success in the later stages of the process. The article offers new insights into a processual and interactional approach to CSR that accounts for the actions of different actors involved at each stage. Most unusually, it also recognizes the dual impact this has on broader issues concerning the management and involvement of employees through CSR actions, and gaining legitimacy in the eyes of not only external stakeholders but internal too. (shrink)

This study aims to examine the perceptions of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic staff in English local government on the ethical nature of their treatment at work, and its mediating effect on their Public Service Motivation. This is a particular imperative in a sector which itself delivers social justice within a strong regulatory system designed to ensure workplace equality and therefore is expected to be a model employer for other organisations. Employees place great importance on their fair treatment by their (...) employers and, in particular, the endeavour of managerial authority to implement equality at work based on their discretionary powers. 2580 valid responses were collected from 15,000 questionnaires sent to staff in five local councils in England. Our analyses show that BAME employees have a significantly stronger PSM than their white colleagues; however, this has been eroded by their perception of unfair treatment: being underpaid allied with a lack of effort from management to ensure an equal work environment, to be specific, to prevent discrimination, bullying, and racism at workplace. Most importantly, the perceived exertion made by management to ensure an equal work environment has a significantly strong mediating effect on PSM and a compensational effect on perceived lower pay. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. (shrink)

Organisational approaches to talent management are often concerned with the ways that a small proportion of relatively high-performing employees are identified and managed in relation to the majority. Despite a growing literature on talent management, no papers have provided any guidance on how to evaluate it from an ethical standpoint. After considering what is meant by talent, this paper considers the ethical issues that arise from the operation of talent management programmes. These considerations are then used to create a framework (...) that has the potential to influence the practical design of talent programmes and which may focus further debate into the ethics of talent management. (shrink)

Organisational approaches to talent management are often concerned with the ways that a small proportion of relatively high‐performing employees are identified and managed in relation to the majority. Despite a growing literature on talent management, no papers have provided any guidance on how to evaluate it from an ethical standpoint. After considering what is meant by talent, this paper considers the ethical issues that arise from the operation of talent management programmes. These considerations are then used to create a framework (...) that has the potential to influence the practical design of talent programmes and which may focus further debate into the ethics of talent management. (shrink)

Aesop's fables are used to gather HR fables and these fables are told mainly in the words of the protagonists of these moral stories, HR practitioners. Leaving the moral meaning of the fables for the reader to interpret so the reader can ethically connect with the morality of HR work, the personal narratives of practitioners and their humanity, the fables conclude with a critical commentary by the author, the promotion of a human virtue and HR moral maxim. The article, itself, (...) then ends with an explanation of the research methodology adopted to compile the HR fables. (shrink)

Quality is commonly applied to products and processes, but we can also define human quality in dealing with people. This requires first establishing what treatment is appropriate to the human condition. Through an inquiry into the characteristics that define the human being and what ethical requirements constitute a good treatment, we define “Human Quality Treatment” as dealing with persons in a way appropriate to the human condition, which entails acting with respect for their human dignity and rights, caring for their (...) problems and legitimate interests, and fostering their personal development. With this in mind, we can distinguish between five different levels or degrees of HQT in organizations which can be characterized by the following terms: maltreatment, indifference, justice, care, and development. (shrink)

Human Resource Management is in a contentious relationship with moral philosophy. To understand this relationship, one can approach it from the standpoint of Human Resource Management (HRM) or philosophy. This article presents the latter. One of the most important 20th century discussions on the development of moral behaviour came from Laurence Kohlberg. His model of universal moral stages provides a framework inside which virtually all forms of morality take place. These stages are used to characterise the morality of HRM. In (...) order to avoid portraying them as moral philosophy the paper assesses HRM’s morality by using these seven stages as an ordering framework. To achieve this, a normative and a supportive empirical study have been conducted: the normative study found that HRM appears to be located at stages two and four; this is supported by empirical data because most respondents (76%, n=204) saw HRM’s morality as a reflection of these three stages. These stages represent: seeking personal benefits, corporate conformity, and supporting corporate policies. (shrink)

This essay, and the special issue it introduces, sets out to reignite ethical interrogations of the theory and practice of Human Resource Management (HRM). To cultivate greater levels of boundary-spanning debate about the ethics of HRM, we develop a framework of four tenors for scholarly work: the ethical-declarative, the ethical-subjunctive, the ethical-ethnographic, the ethical-systemic. Each of these tenors denotes particular grounds for ethical critique and encourages scholars to consider the subjects and objects of their enquiry, the disciplinary scope of their (...) work and the limits to subsequent claims about ethics and HRM. We provisionally locate each of the papers comprising the special issue with regard to one, or more, of these tenors. (shrink)

This article examines the ethical framing of employment in contemporary human resource management (HRM). Using Axel Honneth's theory of recognition and classical critical notions of reification, I contrast recognition and reifying stances on labor. The recognition approach embeds work in its emotive and social particularity, positively affirming the basic dignity of social actors. Reifying views, by contrast, exhibit a forgetfulness of recognition, removing action from its existential and social moorings, and imagining workers as bundles of discrete resources or capacities. After (...) discussing why reification is a problem, I stress that recognition and reification embody different ethical standpoints with regards to organizational practices. Thus, I argue paradoxically that many current HRM best practices can be maintained while cultivating an attitude of recognition. If reification is a type of forgetting, cultivating a recognition attitude involves processes of "remembering" to foster work relations that reinforce employee dignity. (shrink)

The increasing challenges faced by organizations have led to numerous studies examining human resource management (HRM) practices, organizational ethical climates and sustainability. Despite this, little has been done to explore the possible relationships between these three topics. This study, based on a probabilistic sample of 6,000 employees from six European countries, analyses how HRM practices with the aim of developing organizational ethics influence the benevolent, principled and egoistic ethical climates that exist within organizations, while also investigating the possible moderating role (...) played by their employees’ perception of corporate sustainability. Findings demonstrate that ability-enhancing practices (i.e. recruiting, selection and training) and opportunity-enhancing practices (i.e. job design, industrial relationships and employee involvement) improve benevolent and principled organizational ethical climates, while motivation-enhancing practices (i.e. performance management, compensation and incentives) rather than being related to these organizational ethical climates, are linked to the egoistic climate. In addition, the perceptions of the company’s employees in terms of corporate sustainability moderate these relationships, by reinforcing the positive relationships of ability-enhancing and motivation-enhancing HRM practices in terms of benevolent and principled ethical climates and by reducing the positive relationships between motivation-enhancing practices and egoistic climate. Specific implications for HRM research, teaching and practice are then advanced and discussed. (shrink)

The very idea of human resource management raises ethical considerations: What does it mean to us as humans for human beings to be managed as resources? Intriguingly, the field of ethics and HRM remains underdeveloped. Current approaches to HRM fail to place ethical considerations as their central warrant. This article, building on Greenwood (J Bus Ethics 36(3):261–279, 2002), argues for a deeper analysis of ethical issues in HRM, indeed for a differentiated ethical perspective of HRM that sets normative deliberations as (...) its prime task. By identifying a distinct ethical approach to HRM that is unashamedly normative and socio-politically embedded, two objectives can be achieved. First, mainstream and critical approaches will be challenged to take ethical issues in HRM more seriously. Second, a dedicated forward-looking research agenda for the ethical analysis of HRM will be advanced. (shrink)

Thesis )--University of Stellenbosch, 2010.