HRM AND PERFORMANCE: ETHICAL DILEMMAS 65A final point to note is that the ethical issues highlighted in this chap-
ter involve researchers, policymakers, and practitioners. Partnership has the
potential to address the issues at a practitioner level. There are a separate set
of issues for academic writers and researchers about the way they present
their research. In most cases, authors are suitably cautious; or, where they
go through a refereeing process, are required to display caution. There are
ongoing debates about the value of positivist research, and this chapter has
been written within a positivist framework. The key requirement among
academics is to be aware of the ethical issues and to make them explicit in
the presentation of findings. Critics may fail to understand how difficult it is
to obtain high-quality data. In a still young but expanding field, it may be
reasonable to develop a body of knowledge even with less than ideal data-sets.
The risk lies less in the academic discourses than in the overenthusiasm of
those who are unwilling, for understandable reasons, to wait for academics
to develop a coherent body of knowledge; or who remain sceptical about
whether academics can ever develop this in a contentious area of research
such as the relation between HRM and performance. The seemingly inevitable
rush to application of a less than fully formulated and researched approach to
an issue as important as the management of people is a danger about which
both academics and practitioners should be fully aware. Ironically, perhaps, we
might therefore be more sanguine about the evidence concerning the limited
take-up of contemporary HRM and about the difficulties of applying it.