ETHICAL LEADERSHIP IN EMPLOYEE DEVELOPMENT 199being compromised by HRM. As Barbara Townley (1994: 166) has claimed,
ethics is central to the conduct of HRM:
The criteria I have used to critique personnel raise one central question: how might we
conduct ourselves in our relations with others? This is an ethical question. To raise it
is to place ethical considerations at the heart of political action.
Method
Our investigation was confined to one area of HRM—employee develop-
ment. We interviewed managers who held responsibility for employee devel-
opment in two corporate companies that were deliberately chosen because
they had reputation for innovation in employee training and development.
The first company was an automobile company at the time of the research
soon to be split up with different units under American and German own-
ership, and the second was a privatized UK company operating primarily
in the telecommunications industry. Influential stakeholders were selected
as initial interviewees and then further subjects identified on the basis of
recommendation, following the tracer study approach (Hornby and Symon
1994). The process of selection continued until the major reference network
was exhausted. The managers were all interviewed using a semi-structured
schedule of questions. The content covered: their background and work
experience, the role and structure of technology-based learning (TBL), their
knowledge of the use of multimedia programmes, decision-making processes
in training, and external and internal factors influencing the design and
implementation of training and TBL. The interviews were audiotape-recorded
and transcribed. Their accounts and responses to questions were treated as
potential individual agenda for employee development containing themes
and actions. The data were content analysed for their individual themes and
actions.
Sample
The job backgrounds of the managers in the automobile company were var-
ied, but most were long-term employed by the company for twenty or more
years, and individuals from all major UK plants were interviewed. The com-
mon initial career was in technical training and the majority had worked on
several sites and had been employed for a period of time in areas such as
engineering, production, or personnel. Interviews were held with seventeen