2005 The Ethics of Human Resources and Industrial Relations

Abstract

The motivation for this edited volume is simple—ethics are important but almost always absent beyond hollow rhetoric in both the scholarship and practice of human resources and industrial relations (HRIR). National and international business leaders, policymakers, advocates, and critics frequently employ the rhetoric of ethics. There are calls for more ethical business practices, a more ethical global economy, and more ethics training for managers. In the business and economic spheres, many of the most pressing ethical issues involve the employment relationship, such as the rights of employees versus shareholders, employee privacy and monitoring, whistle blowing, pay equity, discrimination, employee safety, anti-union campaigns, and minimum labor standards. At the same time, there is vibrant scholarship in the field of business ethics in which ethical theories and moral philosophy are applied to business issues, but with just a few exceptions, traditional HRIR scholars are unaware of business ethics scholarship. The subject of ethics is clearly an underanalyzed area in HRIR. Since HRIR is ultimately about people and quality of life, there is a pressing need to develop the positive (analytical) and normative (prescriptive) applications of business ethics for the employment relationship in the context of research, practice, and teaching.