Critically analysis Role of HR Managers in Ethics

Human Resource Management is one of the business functions that is related or connected with managing relations between group of people such as employees, managers and employers (Wilton 2016). In this particular assignment, main emphasis has been given on understanding about ethics in human resource in business organization for establishing corporate culture for driving organizational excellence. The current segment elucidates about ethics and expressed in value judgments of worth as well as duly or goodness (Reiche, Mendenhall and Stahl 2016). Ethics cannot be defined and implemented in an appropriate way as it not only involves thinking but also feeling. Ethics refers as some standardized form of conduct as well as behavior of individuals that is accepted in a specific field of activity. There are some of the theories on ethics that give clear picture on the needs as well as necessity of ethics in Human Resource Management. The theory relates to moral unity as well as amorality. To that, the theory of moral unity predominantly advocates the principle where the business action need to be judged by the general ethical standards of the society as a whole (Wehrmeyer 2017). On the other hand, theory of amorality refers to business that can be amoral and action of business people that are not abiding by the general ethical standards.

On critical analysis, it is noted that ethics in Human Resource Management shows how to treat employees with utmost courtesy as well as distributive fairness. Human Resource Management aims at dealing with manpower planning as well as development activities in given business enterprise (Reiche, Mendenhall and Stahl 2016).

Human resource management plays an important role as it introduces the concept of ethics as well as highlights the ethical concerns that emerge from recent HRM databases. From the available information, it reflects the viewpoint where the ethics is treated as a pivotal issue for the HR specialists (Snell, Morris and Bohlander 2015). There are several ethical frameworks as well as application in HRM policies that need to be reviewed for getting insights of information about role of HR managers in ethics. In addition, human resource systems need to promulgate an ethical culture where the ethics actually pervades selection, performance appraisal, retention decisions as well as staffing activities and compensation activities. Furthermore, human resource systems as well as ethical corporate cultures need to be taken into consideration as partners who get involved in the process for creating competitive advantage for business enterprise (Reiche, Mendenhall and Stahl 2016).

It is important to consider the fact that management of ethics in human resource is treated under two general categories. The two categories are ethical dilemmas as well as ethical lapses. In addition, the major ethical dilemmas in Human Resource Management arise from functional area of business activities. There are several areas of ethical misconduct present in personal function that takes into account activities such as employment, labor relations as well as health and safety at the same time (Reiche, Mendenhall and Stahl 2016).

The main role of Human managers is to improve in the recruitment as well as selection process (Al Ariss, Cascio and Paauwe 2014). They should pursue the recruitment strategy that is needed for recruitment activities, financial aspects as well as criterion for assortment and preferences. The HR manager needs to follow situational factors like economic factors as well as social factors and technological factors. The HR manager needs to conduct ethics training. This manager should give equal opportunities to every employee who are working in the company and looking for advancement and development activities (Reiche, Mendenhall and Stahl 2016).

Role of HR in promoting ethics

The Human Resource Professionals should make an effort to create an ethical workplace where employees feel safe to work in that business enterprise. The HR manager needs to abide by the ethical standards that should be clear and easy to understand (Jamali, El Dirani and Harwood 2015). The importance of ethics in workplace had been acknowledged by all and for this reason most of the business organization is recognizing the need to guard against major misconduct. In that way, small number of organization are engaging ways where they just avoid any misconduct as well as strive to increase the level of ethical behavior at that place. For this, the main goal of the business organization should be to provide a principled society where ethics infuse the way activities is conducted in significant ways (Al Ariss, Cascio and Paauwe 2014).

It is not easy to realize the goal as it is resolute by a grouping of proposal as well as demand by getting huge sustenance from business enterprise. Human Resources are still able to fulfill an essential role for promoting ethics within other primary factors as it contributes to an ethical culture. These factors are ethical standards as well as ethical awareness and operational ethics (Reiche, Mendenhall and Stahl 2016).

The main principle of the principled standards of a company is to offer a clear guide for performance. In addition, the company needs to properly document the code of values as well as code of conduct and supporting policies that together comprise a code of ethics. It is mainly treated as an HR function where HR is placed for ensuring foundation aspects and reviewed on annually basis and understanding the effective facet of the ethics programs within business enterprise (Al Ariss, Cascio and Paauwe 2014).

It is important to understand the fact that ethical awareness is one of the essential factors that serves ways for promoting ethical behavior as well as reducing unethical behavior. For instance, the principle actually applies in an agency with high levels of principled consciousness. To that, ethical awareness can be attained by making use of variety of method (Gelens et al. 2013). The mechanism includes assessing as well as checking and reporting on ethical performance as it advocates by the company. The action taken help in promoting ethical awareness in the most appropriate way. Human resources manager here is the main contributor who aims at building as well as maintaining ethical awareness that falls under the scope of Human resources. The other action is about ethics training that act as a main contributor that help in driving the process a step further. The next action is leadership where the leaders are responsible to build ethical awareness as and when required. Human resources need to encourage ethical activities at workplace by recruiting the top talent that emphasizes upon better equipping their leaders to become role models (Reiche, Mendenhall and Stahl 2016).

It is important to understand the fact that integrating ethical standards into company’s operations need to be practiced in the most effective way. This action has a comparative impact on the ethical standards as well as ethical awareness and principled culture in which it either supports or underpins the activities. In addition, ethics need to be incorporated by using range of practices as well as systems and procedures like recruitment checks, promotion discussions; ethics attributes as well as performance management system and employee award programs (Reiche, Mendenhall and Stahl 2016).

• Employers
• Coercion
• Child Labor
• Longer as well as inflexible working hours
• Biased attitude in transfer, promotion and selection
• Creating spilt in union leaders
• Employees
• Showing false certificates
• Undertaking decisions based on their convenience
• False claim of personal details such as age and qualifications
• Government
• Functioning of government offices is not always visible as well as consistent
• Announcing vacancies but not taking any action in future

Unethical practices of Human Resource Management

Figure: Diagrammatic representation of HR ethical issues

(Source: Chun et al. 2013)

The above diagram shows HR ethical issues. There are several ethical issues that pertain to attributes such as salaries, annual incentive plans and executive perquisites. In addition, the HR managers have the responsibility to raise the band of base salaries. HR managers even face issues at the time of hiring of employees (Reiche, Mendenhall and Stahl 2016).

The HR Manager need to be morally accountable for promoting as well as development fairness and justice for all human resources and business enterprise

There are several points that need to be taken into account for promoting fairness as well as justice in business enterprise.

• Business enterprise need to realize the intrinsic value of its employees
• Treating people with self-respect, sympathy as well as respect for fostering a trusting work environment that is free from harassment, unlawful discrimination and intimidation.
• Business enterprise should be fair as well as honest towards its employees or staff members.
• Decision undertaken by the management need to be ethical as well as legal (Reiche, Mendenhall and Stahl 2016)

Case study analysis and justified examples on cross cultural differences on managing issues of ethics by taking countries such as China and Brazil 

• Both Chinese as well as Brazilians prefer to socialize when they engage in conducting the business activities.
• Both Chinese and Brazilians aim at maintaining business relationships for establishing an atmosphere of trust.
• Face-to-face meetings are mostly preferred by the Brazilians and Chinese as compared to telephonic communication (Reiche, Mendenhall and Stahl 2016).

• Individualism versus collectivism- On comparison between countries like Britain and China, Chinese society is collectivist and Brazilian society focus mainly on individuals.
• In Chinese culture, they do not like if anyone interrupt other person if someone is speaking. Brazilian people are more tolerable in these activities.

It is important to give proper attention to business ethics by the owner or managers. The human resources mainly function by undertaking wide variety of challenges and take into account numerous ethical pitfalls. It is important to understand the significance of ethics in human resources as it is critical for any of the trade owner.

It is essential to consider the fact that breaches of ethics in human resources can lead companies to get hold of lawful problem. In addition, business with inclusive ethics programs cannot avoid costly trouble in regard to discrimination as well as hostile work environment issues as it result in lower costs for litigation as well as out of court resolution (Aswathappa 2013).

Nowadays, legal trouble can actually initiate additional challenges for the employers as the news outlets an principles watchdog business enterprise for spreading the word about any misdeed that takes place in business enterprise. Gaining status as an ethical company as it help to attract the top talent in the business from wider area where the human resources believes in finding the most valuable employment association with each other (Reiche, Mendenhall and Stahl 2016).

It is important to understand the fact that training employees ethically will help in building long-term employee trust as well as loyalty as it convey a range of different benefits to company. In addition, loyal human resources even gain more experiences when they work with the employers as it allows them to master production process as well as understanding the inner workings of the business enterprise (Reiche, Mendenhall and Stahl 2016).

There are no single theories or opinions about ethics in HRM that is purely convincing for every single person. The requirement like policies and procedures cannot be denied and take care about activities such as discrimination, union laws, health and safety of employees. The present study properly explains about ethical standards that guide the practice of Human resource management. The main principle of the organization is to enhance in the level of dignity of several harmed parties as well as sustaining in the moral sensibility for performing the tasks and applying proper set of standards (Armstrong and Taylor 2014). The standards even elucidates about ethical challenges that results in performing the work of human resource management.

There is an urgent need of priority based selections in the business enterprise where the management needs to undertake steps for proper selection process in the business enterprise. It is due to dissatisfaction from some of the group of employees on matters relating to system of testing and grading in training process, there is a need to undertake measures for testing as well as grading process in business enterprise (Husselid, 1995). There is a need to undertake some strategic measures to bring cooperation between employees as well as employers for getting access to better performance in developing job skills. It is important to aware employees about the approach of administration where they need to assist with the management for better performance in the most appropriate way. It is important for all the employees to understand the system of measuring productivity of employees as well as system to measure the transfer credits so that they reward real worker who are working hard for the business enterprise. It is the responsibility of the management to provide safe working environment to the employees so that all employees feel safe and know the importance of ethics at the time of conducting activities in given business enterprise. Transparent communication is an effective way where employees can communicate without any hesitation to the upper level management and express their views and opinions related to any activities. The HR manager needs to listen to the grievances of the employees and try to solve it as far as possible (Al Ariss, Cascio and Paauwe 2014). The employees should feel that their opinion matters the most to the organization and for this reason they will start thinking to become a true and productive asset to the particular business enterprise.

Conclusion 

At the end of the study, it is concluded that human resource management aims at dealing with manpower planning as well as developmental related activities in business enterprise. Human resource management is that branch of management where ethics plays an important role and it concern with human issues in relation to attributes such as compensation, healthy issues as well as development and industrial relations. Furthermore, there is sufficient disagreement noted from different groups of employees who are working in business enterprise. The above analysis explains about ethics in Human resource management that stem from maintaining employee relationships and there can be further ethical standards at the same time. Addition to that, employee rights as well as duties and discrimination at workplace are mainly discussed in the above study. With the emergence of globalization, it had brought together concept of globalizing labor as well as trade unions that have started to decline. It further explains about the role of HR where the issues relates to employee policies as well as practices in the most appropriate way. Human resource is nothing but an arm of stakeholders who are engaged in undertaking strategic as well as policy decisions with a motive to gain profits in the upcoming financial years.

Reference List

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