The Ethics of Human Resource Management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

The Ethics of Human Resource Management - Essay Example are considered as inalienable rights for workers (Fredrick, 2002) and these can be considered as negotiable too (Koehn, 2002) (Watson, 2003). Human resources management is also expected to address the issues of discrimination such as age, race, gender, religion, disability, sexual harassment etc. often through the use of affirmative action. (Smith, 1997) In a similar manner the employees of an organisation have certain obligations towards employers such as privacy over intellectual property rights, whistle blowing etc. Employees are expected to deal with these issues on an ethical plane such that the interests of the employer are not transgressed upon. On the other hand, employers have certain ethical obligations towards employees such as workplace safety through either modifying the workplace or through providing training and protection from hazards in the workplace. Within the problems listed above, individual companies can be considered as independent because most of these considerations can be handled in house or with the help of little external help. However there are certain issues that may pervade the limits of a company or firm’s authority to deal with them. The realm of more pervasive economic issues such as trade policies, trade unionism, immigration and globalisation all possess some kinds of ethical dimensions but it is often beyond the power of an individual company to deal with them (Legge, 2007) (Morehead et al., 1997). There are a number of leading theories on dealing with ethical issues in the human resource management sphere including Kantian ethics, consequentialism utilitarianism, virtue ethics and justice ethics. Arguments have been advanced both in favour of and against these theories that tend to make human resources management ethical as well as an unethical field of practice. There is however no denying that ethics plays a large part in human resources management and in order to create a lasting and