Strategic Human Resource Management

Section Six

Ethical Dimensions

In addition to determining the impact of human resource
practices on financial or operational measures, all activities,
practices, and programs should be evaluated from an ethics
perspective. While human resource management operates
within a highly regulated environment, compliance with the law
or regulations does not always ensure ethical behavior.
Fortunately, the investment perspective of human resources is
consistent with high ethical standards. Employers who invest in
their employees are more likely to treat them ethically because
they have an investment to protect. Nonetheless, the
investment perspective is not sufficient to ensure ethical
behavior. In addition, the technological advances that have
done so much to enhance productivity, make jobs less
monotonous, and allow greater flexibility in where work is
performed also have brought new ethical challenges.
Information technology and the rapidly evolving Internet and
software industries pose special challenges, as described in the
following account of ethical problems in the Silicon Valley:

Among the common infractions: companies

stealing one another’s intellectual property,

cheating employees out of promised stock

options... or intercepting private e-mail, as

when Interloc, the corporate predecessor of rare-