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Business ethics provide a potent source of competitive advantage, placing increasing pressure on organizations to create and maintain an ethical workforce. Nonetheless, ethical breaches continue to permeate corporate life, suggesting that there is something missing from how we conceptualize and institutionalize organizational ethics. The current effort seeks to fill this void in two ways. First, we introduce an extended ethical framework premised on sensemaking in organizations. Within this framework, we suggest that multiple individual, organizational, and societal factors may differentially influence the ethical sensemaking process. Second, we contend that human resource management plays a central role in sustaining workplace ethics and explore the strategies through which human resource personnel can work to foster an ethical culture and spearhead ethics initiatives. Future research directions applicable to scholars in both the ethics and human resources domains are provided.

Provides a guide to the works of authors in the field of business ethics for those contemplating incorporating this into human resource management teaching. Considers the question, “What is the role and function of business in society?” Sets out a number of theoretical approaches and reviews a number of texts on the subject.

Reports on the conference on Ethical Issues in Contemporary Human Resource Management, held in April 1996. Notes concerns raised at the conference relating to a lowering of employment standards. These included factors such as: insecurity and risk, transfer of risk and surveillance and control. Suggests a number of alternative ethical frameworks useful in an analysis of HRM, including such elements as: basic human, civil and employment rights, universalism and community of purpose. Considers methods of defending such an ethical focus from charges of utopianism, and suggests that ethical HRM will be a developing theme over the next few years.

The purpose of this paper is to examine human resources (HR) professionals’ self-perceptions of ethically questionable human resource management (HRM) practices (i.e. disregard for the individual, favoring those in power and discrimination). The research sought specifically to determine how these perceptions are influenced by their organizations’ ethical infrastructure and corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices.

Data were collected from 134 HR professionals using an anonymous structured questionnaire.

The scope of organizations’ ethics programs and the degree of importance given to developing an ethical infrastructure were found to predict the level of acceptance of unethical HRM practices related to discrimination. These practices are also less acceptable to professionals from organizations that are perceived as more socially responsible regarding their employees.

Additional studies with larger samples are needed to determine more clearly not only the influence of contextual determinants, but also the practical consequences of high levels of acceptance of unethical practices in HRM.

Organizations can decrease their HR professionals’ acceptance of ethically questionable HRM practices by developing and emphasizing a strong ethical infrastructure and CSR practices, especially those affecting employees.

HR professionals’ perceptions of ethical issues have rarely been analyzed using empirically tested methods. By surveying HR professionals, this study contributes to a fuller understanding of their perceptions regarding the ethics of their own practices. The results show that contextual determinants play an important role in predicting the level of acceptance of unethical HRM practices, especially those leading to discrimination.

This paper is concerned with recent attempts to appropriate normative ethics as a medium for engaging critically with the practice and theory of human resource management (HRM). Focusing particularly on arguments for justice and rights in the workplace, the limits of foundationalist critiques of HRM are explored. The discussion suggests a future direction for the critical study of HRM in the present economic and political conjuncture. Critical scholars of HRM are invited to give further consideration to their aims and objectives and the manner of their intervention in current debates, in a discussion which highlights the importance of politically and rhetorically sensitised management scholarship.

By examining the literature on the ethical dilemmas of H/RM practitioners, the paper aims to put an “H” in H/RM.

Analysing the significant contribution which H/RM scholars have made in studying the ethical dilemmas of H/RM practitioners, the paper builds a view of an H/RM practitioner as a “conscientious HR manager” loosely connected to an ethical dilemma, a “Rubik's Cube”. Using these linguistic devices to simplify others scholarly work, the paper introduces a complex autopoietic system to provide a more “connected knowing” of ethical dilemmas and the “H” in H/RM.

Generalising from this analysis, the paper connects a social sub‐system (H/RM) with a living human system.

Naturalistic “grounds” for launching a normative critique of H/RM that celebrates humans as social and biological animals are provisionally outlined.

The paper adapts Capra's complex autopoietic system to present a normative critique of H/RM from the Darwinian left.

The purpose of this paper is to understand how and under what conditions employees’ participation in high potential (HiPo) programs leads to various employee outcomes (i.e. affective commitment, job satisfaction, organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs), and turnover intent).

Data were collected by a cross-sectional survey among 242 employees who had HiPo programs in their current organizations.

Findings provided support for the mediating role of commitment-focused HiPo attributions in the relationships between HiPo program participation and employee outcomes (affective commitment, job satisfaction, OCBs, and turnover intent). The results also demonstrated significant interaction effects of HiPo program participation and organizational trust on commitment-focused attributions. Additionally, the results provided support for several mediated-moderated models.

This study opened the “black box” by examining the processes through which talent management (TM) shapes employee attitudes and behaviors, and demonstrated that these relationships are not necessarily direct.

To ensure employees’ career success, organizations need to build trustworthy relationships with their employees, and must consider the processes related to the talent identification, as well as the messages this identification communicates to employees about their contributions.

This study is the first to examine employees’ attributions about their participation in HiPo programs. Further, this study is also the first to empirically investigate the role of employees’ perceptions of organizational trust in the context of TM.

This narrative review presents a multi-stakeholder ethical framework for AI-augmented HRM, based on extant research in the domains of ethical HRM and ethical AI. More specifically, the authors identify critical ethical issues pertaining to AI-augmented HRM functions and suggest ethical principles to address these issues by identifying the relevant stakeholders based on the responsibility ethics approach.

This paper follows a narrative review approach by first identifying various ethical/codes/issues/dilemmas discussed in HRM and AI. The authors next discuss ethical issues concerning AI-augmented HRM, drawing from recent literature. Finally, the authors propose ethical principles for AI-augmented HRM and stakeholders responsible for managing those issues.

The paper summarises key findings of extant research in the ethical HRM and AI domain and provides a multi-stakeholder ethical framework for AI-augmented HRM functions.

This research's value lies in conceptualising a multi-stakeholder ethical framework for AI-augmented HRM functions comprising 11 ethical principles. The research also identifies the class of stakeholders responsible for identified ethical principles. The research also presents future research directions based on the proposed model.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the underlying mechanism through which high-performance work system (HPWS) influences employee creativity. In addition, this paper aims to examine contingent factors in the relationship between perceived organisational support and employee creativity.

The sample of the study included 268 employees and matched supervisors from two pesticide chemical companies in China. Hypotheses were tested with linear regressions.

The study shows that HPWS enhances perceived organisational support, which in turn promotes employee creativity. Moreover, the results also indicate that devolved management positively moderates the relationship between perceived organisational support and employee creativity.

The unique environment of China may limit the generalisability of the findings. Future studies can extend these findings by conducting studies in other societal contexts.

When trying to inspire employee creativity, organisations need to pay attention to employees’ perception of organisational support. One way of enhancing perceived organisational support is to implement HPWS. In addition, organisations need to encourage devolved management in order to inspire more creative behaviours.

This is the first study that explores the mediating role of perceived organisational support in the HPWS-employee creativity linkage. In addition, the study provides what is believed to be the first test of the moderating role of devolved management.