Top Five Ethical Issues in Human Resources

Introduction Human resources managers face subjective, complex and elaborate roles. Studies and research completed and evaluated demonstrated that HR professionals continuously faced with high and demanding ethical codes upkeep. Ethical issues reveal essential questions about fairness, justice, truthfulness, and social responsibility. Policies linking to legal matters, confidentiality, loyalty, integrity and competency challenge the human resources managers to foresee issues arising. In defining ethics, “Will Durant's (1961) definition of ethics states that it is the study of ideal conduct. Durant's definition has meaning because it teaches that ethics has 2 elements: 1. Knowledge of ethics is not something people are born with; it is acquired by study. 2. Ethics is not common behavior, it is the ideal conduct people hope to find in the best of people” (Christensen, 1995). Christenson furthermore explained that “Durant's definition of ethics as the study of ideal conduct has meaning because it teaches that ethics has two elements. First, knowledge of ethics is not something with which we are born; it is acquired by study. Second, ethics is not common behavior; it is the ideal conduct we hope to find in the best of us” (Christensen, 1995). Ethical issues are complex and they are both a corporate and societal issues. Business ethical violations happen because people cross a thin line of ethical ignorance, they self-serve their interests, and/or companies do not have a solid value-based culture starting from the top to the bottom. When this happens, managers usually get involved with issues such as sexual harassment toleration, knowingly hiring immigrants, violation of privacy, biased performance reviews, wage and hour violations, terminating whistle-blowers, age discrimination, nepotism or favoritism and retaliation (Moser, 1988). There are numerous ethical issues within Human Resources, but the paper calls for the top five based on the author’s reasoning.

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