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Part
1
The Practice of Human Resource Management
102
the organization on how people should be managed
and treated. They need to take action to achieve fair
dealing. This means treating people according to
the principles of procedural, distributive, social and
natural justice, and seeing that decisions or policies
that affect them are transparent in the sense that
they are known, understood, clear and applied
consistently.
Kochan (2007: 600) suggested that: ‘HR derives
its social legitimacy from its ability to serve as an
effective steward of a social contract in employment
relationships capable of balancing and integrating
the interests and needs of employers, employees and
the society in which these relationships are embed-
ded.’ But he also noted that most HR professionals
have ‘lost any semblance of credibility as stewards of
the social contract because most HR professionals
have lost their ability to seriously challenge or offer
an independent perspective on the policies and prac-
tices of the firm’ (ibid: 604). And, Parkes and Davis
(2013: 2427) pointed out the risk that the HR role
can become ‘rather passive, favouring communicat-
ing standards rather than actively promoting ethical
behaviour’.
To overcome this problem and thus fulfil an ethical
role Winstanley and Woodall (2000b: 7) remarked
that: ‘HR professionals have to raise awareness of
ethical issues, promote ethical behaviour, disseminate
ethical practices widely among line managers, com-
municate codes of ethical conduct, ensure people
learn about what constitutes ethical behaviours,
manage compliance and monitor arrangements.’
There are three approaches that HR can adopt.
The first is to ensure that HR policies and the
actions taken to implement them meet acceptable
ethical standards. HR can press for the production of
a value statement that sets out how the organization
intends to treat its employees. Value statements may
be set out under such headings as care and consid-
eration for people, belief that people should be
treated justly and equitably and belief that the views
of employees about matters that concern them
should be listened to.
This requires advocacy skills to persuade man-
agement to adopt and act on these policies and the
courage and determination to make out the ethical
case even when management favours a conflicting
business case. But value statements are meaningless
until the values are put into practice; the ethical
role of HR involves helping to ensure that this takes
place.
Second, HR practitioners can act as role models,
leading by example and living and breathing good
ethical behaviour. As a respondent to the survey
conducted by Parkes and Davis (2013: 2426) com-
mented: ‘If HR does not act ethically, how can it
expect employees to do so?’
The third approach, and the hardest, is to chal-
lenge unethical behaviour on the part of management.
Such behaviour can take many forms, including
management tolerance for exploitation and bully-
ing; the lack of a whistle-blowing policy, which
provides routes for reporting malpractice and
performance management criteria that emphasize
organizational gain over all else. The latter was the
case at the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) before
the financial crisis, where the performance manage-
ment concentrated on target achievement, ignoring
behaviour. The courage to challenge is less likely
to be forthcoming in organizations where the cul-
ture is one of command and control – and obedience
is expected to whatever is dictated by management
(features of the pre-crash RBS culture). Power, politics
and culture shape norms of behaviour and, as
Herb Kelleher (the CEO of Southwest Airlines) put
it, culture is ‘what people do when no one is look-
ing’ (reported by Lee, 1994). One respondent to the
Parkes and Davis survey (2013: 2425) commented:
‘It can be difficult on a personal level to be speaking
out – HR do not have the power’. Another said:
‘Speaking out can be career suicide’. It is too easy in
these circumstances for HR to be mere bystanders.
Neil Roden, former head of HR at RBS, explained
HR’s position in relation to the financial debacle
at the bank as follows: ‘I’m not absolving myself
totally... (but) I can’t see what HR could have
done... I wasn’t running the bank... the CEO makes
the decisions, not me. HR is a support function, no
more, no less important than sales or IT.’
An HR director who is a member of an executive
board can question decisions from an ethical view-
point but if the comments are not heeded then the
director will either have to accept the decision or
resign. It is important to challenge – and the cour-
age to do so is listed by the CIPD as one of the
qualities required by an HR professional. But it
is difficult and there may be limits to what HR can
do. If HR professionals cannot do anything about
the way their organization does things they either
have to carry on and do whatever they can in other
less confrontational ways, or they must leave.
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