ETHICAL LEADERSHIP IN EMPLOYEE DEVELOPMENT 191owners, their agents, and employees (Guest 1987; Kochan and Osterman 1994;
Schuler 1995; Watson 1986).
During the last fifteen or more years, there has been a strong interest in
the relationship between employee development and organizations’ success
or competitive advantage. Learning organization theorists have expounded at
length on the significance of employees’ learning and organizational learning
(Pedler, Burgoyne, and Boydell 1991; Senge 1990). Knowledge management
practitioners and academics have proposed ways that knowledge should be
created, transferred, absorbed, and appropriated by organizations. Often, they
have accorded a central role to elite sections of the workforce (e.g. knowl-
edge workers) in addition to making more general observations about the
culture, structure, and systems of organizations (Flood et al. 2001; Kamoche
1996; Kamoche and Mueller 1998; Nonaka and Teece 2001). Others have
drawn attention to the evolution of international HRM emerging partly as
a result of the increased regional and transnational mobility of employees.
This movement in people has created new opportunities and more demands
on employees to work with and learn from economic and cultural diversity
(Barney et al. 2001; Ferner 1994, 1997; Schuler 2001).
Typically, the policy and practice of HRM has been set within changing
national contexts characterized by reduced trade protection and other prac-
tices aiming to promote globalization. The increased marketization of goods
and services has taken place alongside developments in employment law and
IR leading to a burgeoning complexity of individual rights and legislation
operating within states and across continental blocs (Bamber and Lansbury
1998; Deery and Mitchell 2000; Dickens and Hall 2003). People working on
HRM-related activities therefore are part of a complex and changing world of
business involving ethical choices and dilemmas.
The purpose of this chapter is to identify ways that HRM can contribute
to the fulfilment of organizational goals and employees’ interests (Pinnington
2003). Our assumption is that HRM policies and practices often overplay the
significance of the organization’s part of the bargain and consequently fail to
exercise leadership by so blatantly favouring one party in the employment
relationship. In other words, the institutions and ethical practices of HRM
are in question. HR practitioners and academics are employed within often
ambiguous and biased organizational circumstances, which mean that HR
practitioners do not have sufficient access to impartial institutional rules or
normative guidelines (Foot 1977: 14–15; Rawls 1955, 1993) by which they can
evaluate their actions and make ethical decisions. Our aim is to encourage
employers and employees to identify stronger ethical bases for HRM policy
and practice. Our hope is that this endeavour will make some contribution to
the achievement of mutual benefits for organizations and employees (Tourish
and Pinnington 2002).