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Understand the meaning of ethics and the need for ethical policies and codes. Enumerate the factors influencing ethical behaviour at work.
Explain the role of human resource management in promoting ethical values. Present an overview of international business ethics.
Ethics: meaning
Ethics refers to the ethical principles which determine the behaviour of an individual or a group.
Types of ethics
Descriptive ethics
Descriptive ethics is mostly concerned with the justice and fairness of the process. It involves an empirical inquiry into the actual rules or standards of a particular group. A study of the ethical standards of business executives in India can be an example of descriptive ethics.
Normative ethics
Normative ethics is primarily concerned with the fairness of the end result of any decision-making process. It cares about what one really ought to do and it is determined by reasoning and moral argument. It shows whether something is good or bad, right or wrong.
Interpersonal ethics
It is mainly concerned with the fairness of the interpersonal relationship between the superior and the subordinates. It refers to the style of the managers in carrying out their day-to-day interactions with their subordinates.
Utilitarian approach
In this approach, the HR policy is based on the philosophy of the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Based on this approach, decisions like lay-offs in a difficult situation for the organization are justified on the grounds that they benefit the majority of the employees.
This approach is based on the principle that an organization should respect an individuals dignity and rights. Each employee is entitled to be treated with due respect and his or her privacy and integrity should be respected by the organization.
The focus of this approach is on equal treatment, adoption of due procedure and consistency in the application of policies and rules. This approach puts emphasis on the fairness in ensuring a balance between the benefits and the burdens of the job, like compensation and performance, compensation and job attendance.
Individual factors Organizational factors Supervisors behaviour Organizational culture Code of ethics
Selection tools can be used to inform applicants about the ethical practices of a company. Ethical values of the organization can be reinforced by adopting selection tools that are normally viewed by the employees or others as unbiased.
Ethics training programmes can be organised for employees to train them on matters like the code of ethics and ethical decision-making process.
Training programmes can also be conducted to enable employees to recognize the situations posing ethical dilemmas and make a judicious use of the code of ethics to solve such problems.
While evaluating performance, organizations should follow ethical principles such as respect for the individual, mutual respect, procedural fairness and transparency.
Since performance appraisal is prone to ethical slippages, the management should therefore ensure transparency in the assessment of the employee performance against standards.
While framing compensation policies, the HR managers must make adequate provisions for recognizing and rewarding those employees who exhibit high ethical values like honesty and integrity.
The compensation policies should discriminate and discourage those employees who display unethical behaviour. While deciding compensation packages for employees, organizations can depend more on scientific tools like job analysis and work measurement to avoid ethical conflicts.
Disciplinary procedure of the organization should guarantee fair treatment to all its erring members while dealing with matters involving indiscipline. Organizations must have wellwritten ethical codes to enable the employees to evaluate their own ethical behaviour.