The Ethical Context of Human Resource Management

 Defining Ethics

Ethics is defined by the Compact Oxford Dictionary as being ‘related to morals, treating of moral questions’, and ethical is defined as ‘relating to morality’. Morality is defined as ‘having moral qualities or endowments’ and moral is defined as ‘of or pertaining to the distinction between right and wrong’. Petrick and Quinn (1997: 42) wrote that ethics ‘is the study of individual and collective moral awareness, judgement, character and conduct’. Hamlin et al (2001: 98) noted that ethics is concerned with rules or principles that help us to distinguish right and wrong.

           Clearly, ethics is concerned with matters of right and wrong and therefore involves moral judgements. Even if ethics and morality are not the same, the two are closely linked. As Clegg et al (2007: 111) put it: ‘We understand ethics as the social organizing of morality.’ Simplistically, ethics could be described as being about behavior while morality is about beliefs.

           Ethics is concerned with making decisions and judgements about what is the right course of action to take. It can be described in terms of a framework that sets out different approaches and can be extended to embrace particular concepts that affect and guide ethical behavior, namely equity, justice and fair dealing.

Importance of Ethics

• Satisfying Basic Human Needs: Being fair, honest and ethical is one the basic human needs. Every employee desires to be such himself and to work for an organization that is fair and ethical in its practices.

• Creating Credibility: An organization that is believed to be driven by moral values is respected in the society even by those who may have no information about the working and the businesses or an organization.

• Uniting People and Leadership: An organization driven by values is revered by its employees also. They are the common thread that brings the employees and the decision makers on a common platform. This goes a long way in aligning behaviors within the organization towards achievement of one common goal or mission.

• Improving Decision Making: Decisions are driven by values. For example, an organization that does not value competition will be fierce in its operations aiming to wipe out its competitors and establish a monopoly in the market.

• Long Term Gains: Organizations guided by ethics and values are profitable in the long run, though in the short run they may seem to lose money.

• -Securing the Society: Often ethics succeeds law in safeguarding the society. The law machinery is often found acting as a mute spectator, unable to save the society and the environment.
  
  

Ethical issues in Human Resource Management
          Human resource management deals with manpower planning and development related activities in an organization. Arguably it is that branch of management where ethics really matter, since it concerns human issues specially those of compensation, development, industrial relations and health and safety issues.

Ethical issues in HR

Ethical Issues in Hospitality Industry

1. Environmental Issues

2. Discrimination

3. Sexual Harassment

5. Advertising claims

6. Truth-in-Menu Laws

           Whitney (1990) showed that hotel industry employees need a higher ethical consciousness compared to other industries, as well as a stronger ability to judge ethical issues according to the principles of the organization. Unlike other industries, hospitality is very diverse. It involves employees and managers from every cultural, social, educational, racial, age, sex, and religious background. Moreover, Hall (1992) mentioned that hospitality embraces a large spectrum of beliefs and ethically acceptable behavior. Thus, he suggested that hospitality professionals need a global understanding of what is right and wrong.

Corporate Social Responsibility

             Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is exercised by organizations when they conduct their business in an ethical way, taking account of the social, environmental and economic impact of how they operate, and going beyond compliance. Wood (1991: 695) stated that: ‘The basic idea of corporate social responsibility is that business and society are interwoven rather than distinct entities; therefore, society has certain expectations for appropriate business behavior and outcomes.’ As Baron (2001: 11) noted, CSR involves ‘providing to others benefits beyond those generated by economic transactions with the firm or required by law’.

CSR policy may be expressed in a value statement that sets out the organization’s core values under such headings as:

• Care and consideration for people

• Competence

• Competitiveness

• Customer service

• Innovation

• Performance

• Quality

• Teamwork

But espoused values are pointless unless they become values in use and this needs concerted action by management working with employees and supported by HR.


Influence of ethics in employee attrition in the hospitality industry

         Many managerial theorists believe that a company’s most important asset is its employees (Collins, 2001). Therefore, companies should try to take better care of their employees. For example, companies should be interested in knowing what their employees think, how they perceive the organizational culture of the specific company, if they are satisfied with the policies and procedures, and of course if they consider their working environment as ethical or not. Pettijohn et al. (2008) contended that if a company’s employees perceive that their employers are ethical, then the employees’ job satisfaction ratings are high and their turnover rate and intention to leave the company are low. On the contrary, Jaramillo, Mulki, and Solomon (2006) argued that when employees consider their employers unethical, then job satisfaction levels may decrease and turnover rates may rise. Having strategic ethics will eventually lead to a reduction in staff attrition in businesses.

References

Armstrong, M. & Taylor, S. (2014) Armstrong’s handbook of human resource management practice (13^th ed). Kogan Page Ltd [Online]. Available at www.koganpage.com . Accessed on 31^st May 2021.

Dimitriou, K. C. (2012) The Impact of Hotel Business Ethics on Employee Job Satisfaction, Organizational Commitment, and Turnover Intention, pp. 1-15 [Online]. Available at https://ttu-ir.tdl.org/bitstream/handle/2346/46925/DIMITRIOU-DISSERTATION.pdf?sequence=1 . Accessed on 31^st May 2021.

Management study guide. (2021) Ethics in human resource management. Management Study Guide [Online]. Available at https://www.managementstudyguide.com/ethics-in-human-resource-management.htm . Accessed on 31^st May 2021.