Int. J.

of Human Resource Management 12:2 March 2001 243255

Ready for the mantle? Australian human resource managers as stewards of ethics

Glenn Martin and Klaas Woldring

Abstract In recent years in Australia, interest in business ethics has increased among managers, management educators and the public who observe the behaviour of organizations. This has been re ected in the literature of management education by an increased attention to the ethical implications of management practice. In parallel, human resources management in Australia has continued to evolve as a eld, and to press its claims as a profession. This is re ected by ongoing debate in the literature about the HRM role. Advocates of an expanded role for HRM claim that HRM initiatives and practices have a strategic impact on organizations, and should accordingly be recognized at senior management levels. However, these claims for an expanded role for HRM have not been accompanied by an increased discussion of the ethical implications of the HRM role. The need for such discussion is highlighted by a survey of HR managers in Australia, which found a high level of disagreement among HR managers on a wide range of ethical issues. Even where questions related to perceptions of fact rather than the expression of attitudes, a high level of disagreement was revealed. If this is the case, it should not be taken for granted that there is a ready consensus among HR managers when it comes to translating ethical principles into organizational practice. The importance of this conclusion is indicated by another nding of the study: where organizations have undertaken initiatives on ethics, there is a high degree of involvement by HR staff. Keywords Business ethics; HRM role; Australia; management education; organizational ethics programmes; HRM profession.

The topic of business ethics has earned the increasing attention of managers in Australia since the unwinding of a myriad of high-pro le nancial enterprises in the late 1980s. In retrospect many of these much-vaunted ventures were seen to be specious, reckless or simply fraudulent. More recently, the reports of the Karpin industry taskforce on Australian management have added another dimension to the issue of business ethics, with the nding that Asian managers do not appear to have a high regard for the ethics of Australian managers (Savery et al., 1995). This change is re ected in the frequency of articles on business ethics in the business and general press, in the increase in management textbooks which feature ethics as a discrete topic, in the presence of a plethora of articles and sites on the topic on the Internet, and in the appearance of ethics both as a topic in business courses and as a stand-alone unit of study. Correspondingly , there has been an increase in the literature on business ethics and more research into ethics in organizations. Studies have focused on the values of employees and managers, on the determinants of unethical behaviour and on the question of how ethics can be fostered in organizational life.
Glenn Martin and Klaas Woldring, Southern Cross University, Lismore, New South Wales, Australia (e-mail: gmartin@cch.com.au; woldring@zip.com.au).
The International Journal of Human Resource Management ISSN 0958-5192 print/ISSN 1466-4399 online 2001 Taylor & Francis Ltd http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals DOI: 10.1080/09585190010014629

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At the same time, HRM in Australia has progressed as a subject area, with a broadly accepted repertoire of functions and a broad consensus on educational prerequisites for practitioners. This development, together with changing approaches to management, has heralded a growing recognition of HRM as a signi cant factor in organizational strategy, among both senior managers and HR managers themselves. It is thus appropriate to raise the question of whether, if the ethical aspects of the general management role are deemed to warrant consideration, the ethical aspects of the HRM role should not likewise be considered. The question might be asked of both HRM educators and business ethicists. In fact, in both camps the attention devoted to the ethical implications of the HRM role in Australia has been limited. The issues on which one might hope to nd debate and research include: (1) the ethical aspects of HRM functions such as recruitment, performance appraisal, training and remuneration; (2) the ethical aspects of the overall role of the HR manager in the organization; and (3) the involvement of the HR manager in broader organizational ethical issues. Neither the HRM literature nor the business ethics literature in Australia reveals much attention to any of these issues. There are a number of practical reasons for HR managers to give attention to the issue of ethics. The development of the HRM eld has been accompanied by increased calls for it to be recognized as a profession (Nankervis et al., 1996; Blair, 1992). The criteria for a profession include commitment to a code of ethics. This is to say that one of the hallmarks of a profession is that its practitioners accept that all practitioners should adhere to an agreed set of standards of conduct. For this to be the case, it is essential that practitioners have ongoing discussions on the purpose and conditions of their calling, and form a consensus on what constitutes acceptable behaviour in practice. In addition, HR managers need to be able to justify their actions to others. Audiences both within the organization and external to it may look to HR managers for reasons the general public and legal bodies are two such audiences. Ethics and the HRM role The increased interest in business ethics in Australia has been re ected in the regular return of the Australian press to the topic not surprisingly, since Australia has had its own swag of corporate cowboys (Longstaff, 1994, 1995; Sykes and Sampson, 1993). It should also be said that the incidence of unethical conduct has not been con ned to the commercial business world: it has befallen not-for-pro t organizations and government departments in similar measure. Nevertheless, research on business ethics in Australia is still isolated (Milton-Smith, 1996; Francis, 1994; Lane, 1996; Batten et al., 1997). In the HRM eld in Australia, there is an even greater gap. Holian (1993) was reported as investigating ethics and stress in HRM, and Ardagh and Macklin (1998) reported on an investigation into the dilemmas that HR managers face. This gap, however, is not so surprising, as a similar gap occurs in the international literature of business ethics. As yet, HRM has received only minimal and tangential treatment as a concern of business ethics. The emphasis in the business ethics literature has been on the importance of the role of leadership. (The paucity of discussion of the role of HRM could, of course, be taken as a comment on the extent to which HRM has achieved recognition by the leadership of organizations.) This is not to say that business ethicists have ignored the role of HRM altogether. Akhtar et al. (1996) explored the ethical implications of the efforts by HRM to increase employees organizational commitment. Douglas (1996) identi ed a number of ethical

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choices that HR managers may face in their various functions, such as recruitment, training and performance evaluation. Anderson (1996) examined the role of HRM in the treatment of whistleblowers in Queensland government bodies. Lawrence and Blunsdon (1996) investigated personal-organizational values congruence with HR managers and accountants, and McDonald (1996) questioned the ethics of changes in Australian industrial relations. Weiss, in an American business ethics text, discussed the role of HRM, stating:
[HR managers] face constant ethical pressure . . . . [They] straddle the often ne line between the individual rights of employees and corporate interests . . . . As industries restructure, merge, downsize and expand internationally, the HR managers work becomes even more complicated. Human rights versus corporate pro t will always be a tightrope these professionals must walk in making decisions. (Weiss, 1994: 49)

Despite these examples, the prevailing situation, certainly in Australia, is that HRM has only a marginal place in business ethics literature, and ethics has a similarly marginal place in HRM literature. It is instructive, then, to look at how discussion of ethics has become more prominent in management literature, and to consider why ethics should also be a concern to the HRM eld. In the eld of management, as discourse on the management role matured, the issue of ethics was eventually addressed. This interest in ethics has been re ected in recent editions of management textbooks, which have begun to see the inclusion of some discussion of the importance of ethics in management. A United States example is Certo (1994), who gives explicit and extensive coverage to ethics (as well as quality and diversity) in management. A British example is Mullins (1993), whose text includes ethics as an integral aspect of organizational objectives. Nevertheless, the recognition of the relevance of ethics to management is more often implicit than explicit, or not integrated into the treatment of management topics. To cite an Australian example, in Robbins and Mukerji (1990) there is a chapter on Managerial ethics, in which they discuss ethical considerations in decision making, but this is not linked back to the earlier, separate chapter on management decision making. However, in their second edition (Robbins and Mukerji, 1994) the authors included several ethics case studies and attempted to integrate these into the treatment of management topics. If management literature has brought ethics into its discourse and research has increased as the eld evolved, then in a similar way, as the HRM eld evolves, it might be expected that the issue of ethics would be addressed. The eld of HRM has enlarged its purview since the 1980s, shifting from its characterization as the personnel department, with primarily administrative and welfare concerns, towards a more strategic role in the organization. This movement has occurred in a different fashion in the USA, Britain and Europe and in Australia and New Zealand. Whereas the shift was generally embraced in the USA as a more mature and professional expression of the particular set of functions that it performed in the organization, in Britain there was more of a debate, with HRM being distinguished from personnel management on grounds that were largely ethical, and seen to be so. The debate in Britain has focused on the ethical implications of the overall role of the HR manager at the macro-level of society rather than decision making at the microlevel of functioning within an organization. Hart (1993) argued that HRM is managerial and amoral, with its only concern being the added value that people can contribute to the organization. In contrast he depicted personnel management as having an inherent

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social purpose. Keenoy and Anthony (1992) took an even stronger view: that HRM works as a meta-narrative rather than as an empirical construct, and it seeks to create a new reality through its rhetoric. That reality is a unidimensional, managerial set of values and beliefs that are grounded in the primacy of market forces. It employs myth to override the experience of workers and to divorce managers (including HR managers) from responsibility for their actions. Grant and Oswick (1998) found support for this religiose vision of HRM in a survey of HR managers. The HRM role in the British literature centres on a dichotomy between hard and soft HRM. Although some writers see opportunities in HRM for the furtherance of human values, at least in its soft, human developmental form (Torrington, 1993; Miller, 1996; Legge, 1996, 1998; Woodd, 1997), the discussion remains at the societal level, either in Marxist or Foucaultian deconstructionist terms. The questions of HR managers on day-to-day ethical issues have received scant attention (Kitson and Campbell, 1996), despite the principles put forward by Townley (1994) and Legge (1998) for translating such analysis into the operational context. In the United States, where the framework of HRM has been generally accepted, a textbook on HRM by Cascio (1995) has treated HRM topics through the lens of ethics, with case studies concluding each chapter. Thus we have an example of how ethics can be brought into the education of students of HRM, just as it has made inroads into the education of managers. The advance of HRM in Australia has been smoother, or, some might argue, less questioning, than it has been in Britain. HRM has almost entirely supplanted personnel management in the literature and in HRM education. However, it should not be concluded that HRM is universally seen as the unitary, managerial and mythological construct that Keenoy and Anthony depicted. Australian textbooks in the period 1990 to 1996 commonly identify the HRM role as consisting of three strands:
1 to contribute to what might be termed the business ef cacy of the organization. (This term is intended to embrace the objectives of public sector, service and non-pro t organizations as well as those of private-sector commercial enterprises.) Included in this concept are the goals of productivity, pro tability, ef ciency and effectiveness in achieving the organizations basic purposes; 2 to ensure that human resource activities comply with legal requirements, or, alternatively, that they succeed in avoiding legal threats; 3 to improve quality of work life, to ensure fairness in policies, and to foster harmonious relationships between management and workers. This goal may be summarized in the phrase to enhance human values. (Clark, 1993; Schuler et al., 1992; Stone, 1995; Nankervis et al., 1996)

While this depiction of the HRM role does not in itself help HR managers to resolve ethical dilemmas (and the research of Ardagh and Macklin (1998) makes it clear that HR managers keenly experience such dilemmas), at least it identi es that the role may require ethical choices to be made. These ethical choices can arise in three areas: c c c traditional HRM functions, e.g. recruitment, appraisal and remuneration policies; the overall role of the HR manager; and the scope for HR managers to make a contribution to strategies to foster ethics in the organization. Survey of Australian HR managers Research was carried out to investigate the views of Australian HR managers, utilizing a survey by mail of members of the Australian Human Resources Institute (AHRI). The

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membership of AHRI is around 15,000, representing all States and Territories of Australia, and covering HR practitioners, consultants, teachers of HRM and students. Members come from the public, private commercial and not-for-pro t sectors, and all major industries. The sample for the survey was a random sample from AHRIs membership directory. A quota was used for each State or Territory which was in proportion to their corresponding populations. Student and university staff members were excluded from the sample. Responses were received from 160 recipients, for a response rate of 36 per cent, and the characteristics of the sample closely matched those of larger Australian HRM surveys (Dowling and Fisher, 1996; CCH Australia, 1996). Comparisons were made on personal factors (age, sex and number of years in present organization), organization size and sector, State/Territory of location and industry. There were no outstanding differences to suggest that the sample was biased on any of these dimensions. The questionnaire presented HR managers with a series of questions about ethics and about the HR role in their organization. Some questions sought factual information about their organization, while other questions sought respondents views on organizational ethics issues. Ethics was presented in terms of normative behaviour grounded in human values like honesty, non-sel shness, respect for others and caring. A simplification of Waters types of ethically questionable managerial acts (Waters, 1988) was used. The intention was to introduce ethics as a socially shared values base which was relevant to day-to-day organizational actions and decisions. Obversely, it was sought to avoid the impression that ethics is a remote philosophical debate about ethical theories (such as deontology, utilitarianism or virtue theory), or that ethics is a relativistic and subjective choice. The introduction stated:
Ethics issues can arise when people seek their own or their friends interests against the organizations interests (eg stealing or misuse of rms money, goods or information); or when people seek to further the organizations interests against other parties (such as cheating or mistreating employees, customers, suppliers or the environment).

The sections of the questionnaire dwelt on several areas, three of which are discussed in this paper: 1 the extent of organizational change in the last two years, and the ethics issues that had arisen in the organization (the latter an open-ended question); 2 the respondents views on ten particular HRM issues; 3 ethics activities that had taken place in their organization, such as composing codes of ethics, training employees on ethics issues and the role of HRM in the area of ethics. A pilot survey was conducted by mail as a preliminary, to ensure that the questionnaire was suitable. A total of twelve were returned out of twenty-two sent to a random sample of HR managers in Brisbane organizations (for convenience), a return rate of 55 per cent. All respondents fully completed the questionnaire, including the open-ended question, and some provided comments on the questionnaire. Some minor changes were made to the wording of questions and to the order of questions. The survey was publicized in the monthly magazine of the AHRI, HRMonthly . Recipients of the survey were assured that the survey was anonymous, and no identifying details were collected. Also, questions were designed such that respondents were not requested to report unethical behaviour on the part of their employer.

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Findings: a lack of consensus on ethics It was expected that responses would re ect the con ict that ethical questions can generate, and this expectation was ful lled in numerous ways. Some examples were: c 66 per cent of respondents felt that there was a moderate or greater need for their organization to give greater attention to unethical employee acts against the organization; 64 per cent felt there was a moderate or greater need for attention to unethical employee acts that furthered the organization; 54 per cent reported that there had been moderate or greater discussion of ethical issues in their organization over the last two years; but 68 per cent did not agree that there had been in increase in pressure on employees to act unethically in the last two years. c c c These responses occurred in the context of an overwhelming perception of organizational change: 96 per cent of respondents reported that their organization had undergone a moderate or greater amount of change in the last two years, with 27 per cent reporting an extraordinary amount of change, and 76 per cent reporting restructuring or downsizing of the workforce. The majority (70 per cent) of respondents named one or more ethical issues which were relevant to their organization; in all, the 160 respondents named 252 ethical issues. The range of ethical issues was extremely broad, covering every conceivable aspect of organizational activity: business policies (e.g. policies on trading and marketing practices), employer/HR responsibilities (e.g. EEO issues, recruitment) and employee actions (e.g. con icts of interest and dishonesty). Views on HR ethics issues The questionnaire presented ten statements on HR issues and on the congruence between the HR managers values and those of their organization, with agreement/ disagreement sought on a seven-point Likert scale, although the scale was compressed to three in the analysis (agree/disagree/neither). It was hypothesized that a consensus would exist if the proportion of neither agree nor disagree was less than 12.5 per cent, and if the proportion of the smaller of agree and disagree was also less than 12.5 per cent. A 90 per cent con dence level of signi cance with a one-tailed test was used. The statements are shown in Table 1. For the most part the views of HR managers were decisive, in that only one statement produced a level of uncertainty high enough to reject the hypothesis: 17.5 per cent neither agreed nor disagreed with Statement 9 concerning con ict between company goals and the interests of society. This indicates that HR managers tend to hold rm views on ethical questions. However, when the second criterion was applied (i.e. did the majority of respondents have the same view on the statement?), only four statements elicited a consensus as de ned. The statements eliciting a high level of agreement were of interest: 1, 2, 7 and 10. Statement 2 was considered to be a motherhood statement: it was expected that few managers were likely to maintain that the ethics of job applicants are not relevant in selection. Statement 1, that EEO laws have ensured equity in recruitment, elicited moderate agreement (70 per cent). The other two statements, 7 and 10, both concerned congruence between HR managers and their organizations, and both elicited high agreement: 10, I am satis ed with the general ethics of my company, drew 85.5 per cent agreement, and 7, My personal values are generally compatible with the values of my organization drew 77.4 per cent agreement.

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Table 1 Ten statements on ethical issues in HRM

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1 Equal employment opportunity laws have ensured that people from disadvantaged groups are treated equitably in recruitment. 2 The ethical standards of job applicants should be a factor in job selection. 3 Performance appraisals often re ect personalities or politics rather than the employees actual performance. 4 Cultural diversity in the workforce should be encouraged only if it has clear economic bene ts for organizations. 5 Remuneration levels for employees depend more on their bargaining power than on what is equitable across the whole of society. 6 Human resource managers sometimes treat employees harshly or dishonestly in order to prevent them pursuing legal actions against the organization. 7 My personal values are generally compatible with the values of my organization. 8 I nd that sometimes I must compromise personal principles to conform to my organizations expectations. 9 An ethically responsible manager must occasionally place the interests of society over the companys. 10 I am satis ed with the general ethics of my company.

The lack of consensus among HR managers was demonstrated by most of the questions. For example, for Statement 5, Remuneration levels for employees depend more on their bargaining power than on what is equitable across the whole of society, 38.6 per cent disagreed and 53.8 per cent agreed. For Statement 4, Cultural diversity in the workforce should be encouraged only if it has clear economic bene ts for organizations, 58.9 per cent disagreed and 25.9 per cent agreed. The results are shown in Table 2. Six out of the ten statements resulted in either one or both of the criteria not meeting the statistical test for signi cance at the 90 per cent level. The data support the conclusion that there is no consensus among HR managers on ethical issues. This conclusion is reinforced when the statements that did obtain a consensus are examined further. The two statements which elicited the highest level of consensus among the sample group did not concern views on particular ethics issues, but were concerned rather with the congruence in values that HR managers perceived between themselves and their
Table 2 Test for consensus on ten statements
Q. Statements on ethics & HRM D % N % A % Z(N)* Accept/ Z (D Accept/ reject H or A)** reject H

5a 5b 5c 5d 5e 5f 5g 5h 5i 5j

Ethics and EEO law Ethics and applicants Performance appraisal & politics Cultural diversity & economics Remuneration & marketplace HRM prevents legal actions Personal values compatible Compromise pesonal principles Interests of society Satis ed with company ethics

23.8 6.3 70.0 2 2.390 Accept 3.8 8.1 88.1 2 1.673 Accept 32.5 5.6 61.9 2 2.630 Accept 58.8 15.6 25.6 1.195 Accept 38.8 7.5 53.8 2 1.912 Accept 67.5 9.4 23.1 2 1.195 Accept 17.6 5.0 77.4 2 2.848 Accept 47.8 6.3 45.9 2 2.368 Accept 14.4 17.5 68.1 1.912 Reject 11.3 3.1 85.5 2 3.567 Accept

2 1.461 3.834 2 3.834 2 4.747 2 6.208 2 2.191 0.687 2 7.921 2 2.008 3.068

Accept Accept Reject Reject Reject Reject Accept Reject Reject Accept

* Reject hypothesis if z . 1.645 (p , 0.1, one-tailed test) ** Reject hypothesis if z . 2 1.645 (p , 0.1, one-tailed test)

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organizations. In both cases HR managers reported a very high level of congruence of values. Of the other two statements, one was considered to be close to a motherhood is good statement that the ethical standards of job applicants should be a factor in job selection. The other statement on which consensus was obtained was on equal employment opportunity, a statement asserting that equity had been achieved for disadvantaged groups. In the face of current discussion in Australia on persisting pay inequities between men and women, and discrimination in selection against people on the basis of age (including both youth and older workers), to name just two of numerous equity issues, one could be forgiven for not yet subscribing to this particular assertion. Ethics activities and the HRM role Respondents were asked what activities to foster ethics had taken place in their organization in the last two years. The incidence of activities is shown in Table 3. There were only two activities which had occurred in more than 50 per cent of organizations: developing codes of ethics and changing structures in order to improve accountability. It could be said, however, that structural changes may occur without there being a strong concern with ethics. Training that related to ethics was reported to have occurred in just under 50 per cent of organizations. The creation of an explicit ethics role in the organization had occurred in about one in six organizations. Table 3 also shows the involvement of HR managers in ethics activities in the organizations where activities occurred. For every activity, HR managers recorded a high percentage playing a leading or moderate role in the activity. Involvement in changes to reward systems recorded the highest level of involvement at 92 per cent, and, where there was an ethics of cer or ethics committee, 81.5 per cent of HR managers played a moderate or leading role in the initiative. These data were analysed by sector differences (public, private and not-for-pro t) and by organization size to see whether the involvement of HR managers was related to either of these factors. The probabilities of HR manager involvement in each activity were calculated for chi-squares on the assumption that there were no differences between sectors or organizations of different size. There was no consistent pattern to the probabilities of the chi-square statistic for either sector or organization size, so it was not possible to conclude that sector or organization size made a difference to the level of involvement of HR managers in ethics initiatives.
Table 3 Ethics activities and the HRM role
Activity N 5 160 No. of occurrences of activity % of organizations No. of HRM in leading/ moderate role % of HRM in this role

a b c d e

Code of ethics issued or revised Structural changes for accountability Audit of ethics, social responsibility Training in ethics, decision-making Reward systems changes to reinforce ethics f Ethics of cer/committee created, promoted

106 122 43 74 25 27

66.3 76.3 26.9 46.3 15.6 16.9

75 97 26 57 23 22

71.4 79.5 61.9 76.7 92.0 81.5

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Of the ten statements on ethics in the HR area presented in the survey, HR managers did not obtain a consensus, as de ned, on most of them. Substantial proportions took opposing positions on a number of the statements. For example, to the statement asserting that performance appraisals were often politically determined rather than objective, 62.2 per cent agreed, while 32.5 per cent disagreed. It was not that HR managers were undecided about ethical issues: for only two of the statements did the proportion of neither agree nor disagree responses exceed 12.5 per cent (the criterion level chosen). The lack of consensus concerned major HR functions and role responsibilities: c c c c c performance appraisal; cultural diversity initiatives; remuneration management; support for employee rights; and social responsibility. More signi cantly, perhaps, HR managers exhibited, by contrast, a high level of satisfaction with their organizations ethics and a high level of compatibility with their companys values. Given that the data suggest that HR managers disagree on many major ethical issues in HRM, this satisfaction and compatibility is intriguing. Are HR managers very good at choosing employers whose values accord with their own or do HR managers accept their organizations ethical practices a little too blithely? The latter explanation lends support to the criticisms that have been made about HRM being a managerial ideology which has forgotten its roots in the advocacy of employees welfare and rights. The survey found that some activity has occurred in Australian organizations to foster ethics. In fact, the results differed in some respects from another Australian study. Soutar et al. (1995) found only a small proportion of companies had initiated ethics activities. The present study found that 66.3 per cent of organizations had issued or revised codes of ethics (16 per cent in Soutar et al.), and 46.3 per cent had conducted training in ethics (24 per cent in Soutar et al.). But the focus of the present study was more on the role of the HR manager in such activities than on the activities themselves, and the nding was that HR managers had played a leading or moderate role in most of the activities which had occurred. This raises the possibility that, as interest in business ethics increases, the likelihood is that HR managers will be expected to play a signi cant role in the planning and implementation of initiatives to foster ethics in organizations. Analysis of other data from the survey suggested that this may even be the case where the existing in uence of HRM in the organization is not great. Since HRM has sought out a role closer to centre stage in the organization, a more strategic role, it should come as no surprise if senior executives look to HR managers to carry out programmes to improve the ethical conduct of the organization, and even expect them to suggest and design these programmes. Yet the ndings raise serious questions about the preparedness of HR managers as a class to produce consistent and pertinent programmes to foster ethical conduct. It would be legitimate for senior executives to doubt the ability of HR managers in this area when (a) there seems to be a lack of consensus among them about what stand to take on major issues, and (b) there is still a scarcity of public discussion by HR practitioners and educators on ethical issues.

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An analysis of articles in the Asia Paci c Journal of Human Resources over the period 1991 to 1996, which was carried out in conjunction with the survey, con rmed that ethics was accorded very little attention in that forum. There was only one article (out of 199) which speci cally mentioned ethics, an article concerning Ethics and organizational change from autumn 1991 (Nielsen et al.). A further search looked for articles which discussed topics concerning the enhancement of human values (e.g. managing diversity, employee participation). There were twenty-four articles which met this criterion. However, there were only six articles which also met the condition that ethical values be distinguished from business effectiveness. That is, only six articles out of 199 acknowledged that ethical values have value apart from any contribution to the bottom line or that they may at times con ict with short-term, bottom-line considerations. This analysis was applied to the HRMonthly magazine with similar results. Ethics was the subject of only ve articles out of approximately 1,060 over the same ve-year period. The second analysis using the two criteria above was applied to a two-year period for HRMonthly from November 1994 to October 1996, approximately 440 articles. Only ten articles satis ed the two criteria, although these instances served to remind HR practitioners of the inherent tensions in their role. Raab (1995), for example, described how HR managers were being drawn by the rhetoric of transformational change into participation in brutal downsizing decisions that jettisoned value systems as much as they dispensed with employees. Lagan (1996a) told HR managers: You rarely wield the power yet have a critical role in looking after the soul of the corporation. . . . It can be argued that there are moral judgments inherent in every perspective adopted by HR people and therefore an ethical imperative to be aware of and accept responsibility for the implications. Another indicator of the lack of attention given to ethics in Australian HRM is the annual survey of AHRIs members. The results of the 1995 survey were examined (Dowling and Fisher, 1996). The survey obtained 2,795 responses, so it represented a signi cant source of data about the status of Australian HRM. The survey did not mention ethics. There were eleven options provided for Duties of the HR function, but ethics was not one of them. Perhaps the closest item was EEO, and only 0.3 per cent of respondents said they were primarily involved in this area. The section of the survey which enquired about HRs development of important new policies listed twenty- ve topics, but ethics was not one of them. Nor was ethics cited as an Issue to have greatest impact in the next ve years. Of interest, given the data from the survey presented in this paper, was the nding that a high percentage of HR practitioners claimed to like their jobs. There is no evidence here that HR practitioners suffer from con icts between irreconcilable objectives in their role. The need for HR managers to address ethics The results of the AHRI survey are disconcerting when juxtaposed to the ndings of the present study. The AHRI survey implies that HR practitioners in Australia do not see ethics as an issue, yet the present survey indicates that collectively they exhibit a high level of disagreement with one another on ethical issues. One answer to this paradox is that it may not be an issue for individuals. The survey found that most respondents either agreed or disagreed with ethics statements; they were not undecided. Nevertheless, the collective disagreement is signi cant for the profession (if we may call it that) of HRM, and so too are the questions that produced the highest level of uncertainty.

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The questions that produced the highest level of uncertainty concerned commitment to ethical principles: (1) should HR managers decide on a programme (cultural diversity) because it enhances human values, or only if it enhances the bottom line? and (2) do HR managers owe an allegiance to society that on occasion may be stronger than their obligation to their employer? These questions go to the heart of the problem of ethics for HRM it inexorably presents choices which require courage and which will not go away. It would be understandable if HR managers preferred not to talk about it, and the AHRI survey suggests that this is indeed the case. Nevertheless, the question of ethics needs to be faced for a number of reasons. If anything, ethical issues are on the increase, and are more intense. Some loom in new areas, such as the possibility of genetic testing of job applicants to identify desirable or undesirable traits (Lagan, 1996b). How would HR managers deal with this? The issue of HRM as a profession is another reason to acknowledge the ethical implications of the role. Even if one takes a sceptical approach to the question of whether HRM is a profession (Pritchard, 1997), it is both prudent and honourable for practitioners to strive to articulate standards and codes of ethics for themselves. In the US context, the President and CEO of the Society for Human Resource Management had no dif culty describing HRM as a profession characterized by competence buttressed by advocacy and ethics (Losey, 1997). In fact, AHRI in 1999 made some moves towards the revision and adoption of a new code of ethics. There has also been an increase in discussion of ethical issues in AHRIs HRMonthly magazine. Developments in HRM education in Australia also indicate a slowly increasing recognition that ethics has to have a place in the curriculum. The most recent Australian HRM text, Australian Human Resources Management: Current Trends in Management Practice includes a chapter on the importance of ethical cultures in organizations (Miller, 1999). For reasons of public credibility HR practitioners should also be active in building a shared understanding of the ethical implications of their role. Although HR managers are probably a long way from being held legally liable for the ethical failings of their organization, the closer they stand to the strategic centre of the organization, the more they will be seen to share responsibility for the organizations actions and policies. In the mind of the public there is a strong nexus between power and responsibility. Conclusion The development of the eld of HRM can be compared with the eld of general management. The literature of management has seen increasing attention given to the issue of ethics as the eld has developed, and this is re ected in management textbooks by the inclusion of discussion of ethics. The recent HRM literature in Australia, in contrast, has not devoted much attention to ethics as an issue of concern to HR practitioners. There are some signs in the late 1990s that this may be changing, and advocacy of the importance of attention to ethics is occurring regularly. Nevertheless, at this stage it could scarcely be said that there is a consensus in Australian HRM for the view that there are ethical aspects to all HRM decisions, much less a common understanding of what that might mean or imply. The survey presented in this paper provides evidence that if HR practitioners are faced with ethical dilemmas in HR functions, their position on those issues will not be unanimous. If it is correct to say that the HRM literature (at least in Australia) is beginning to recognize the ethical aspects of the HRM role, then it may be time to move beyond advocacy and begin to discuss the meaning and implications of ethics for HRM. There are two levels at which this needs to occur. First, it needs to occur in terms of the

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overall role of the HR manager the impact of the HR manager on the strategy, culture and politics of the organization. Second, it needs to address issues at the functional level the day-to-day, week-to-week decisions in functions such as recruitment, performance appraisal or training and development. In addition, there is a third area requiring attention: where organizations undertake initiatives speci cally to foster ethics, it is apparent that HR managers will be expected to be involved. References
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