The Question of Ethical Hypocrisy in Human Resource Management in the U.K. and Irish Charity Sectors

Whilst there is a growing volume of literature exploring the ethical implications of organisational change for HRM and the ethical aspects of certain HRM activities, there have been few published U.K. studies of how HR managers actually behave when faced with ethical dilemmas in their work. This paper seeks to enhance the foundations of such knowledge through an examination of the influence of organisational values on the ethical behaviour of Human Resource Managers within a sample of charities in the U.K. and the Republic of Ireland. A qualitative research design is adopted utilising semi-structured interviews. Findings highlight ethical inconsistency in people management in the charity sector arising from the clear application of strong and explicit organisational values to external client groups but their limited influence on people management strategies and practices within the organisation. Many of the ethical issues faced by HRM professionals in both countries arise from this inconsistency. In their handling of ethical dilemmas, the HRM professionals exhibit a combination of a care ethic and a concern for justice but it is also clear that in situations of management intransigence, a desire to be conscience driven often gives way to a contingent approach. Whilst respondents considered it inappropriate for the HRM function to be the conscience of the organisation, it is seen to have a key role in providing management with advice on ethical action. However, the ability of HRM to influence ethical behaviour is highly dependent on the status of the function within the organisation.     

Ethical Organisational Culture as a Context for Managers’ Personal Work Goals

The aims of this study were to investigate what kinds of personal work goals managers have and whether ethical organisational culture is related to these goals. The sample consisted of 811 Finnish managers from different organisations, in middle and upper management levels, aged 25–68 years. Eight work-related goal content categories were found based on the managers self-reported goals: (1) organisational goals (35.4 %), (2) competence goals (26.1 %), (3) well-being goals (12.1 %), (4) career-ending goals (7.3 %), (5) progression goals (6.8 %), (6) prestige/influence goals (4.2 %), (7) job change goals (4.2 %) and (8) employment contract goals (3.9 %). Ethical organisational culture operated as a context for personal goal setting: Those managers who evaluated their organisational culture as more ethical were more likely to report organisational goals (e.g. goals toward the success or performance of the organisation). However, if managers gave lower ratings regarding ethical culture, then they named job change and career-ending goals in more cases. Therefore, investing into ethical virtues of the organisational culture can promote managers’ personal work goals, which also benefit the organisation.     

How Leadership and Commitment Influence Bank Employees’ Adoption of their Bank’s Values

Retail banking is facing many challenges, not least the loss of its customers’ trust and loyalty. The economic crisis is forcing banks to examine their relationships with stakeholders and to offer greater reassurance that their brand promises will be delivered. More than ever, banks need to stand for something positive and valued by stakeholders. One way to achieve this is through paying more attention to brand values. Our article explores how values are adopted by employees within a bank. When employees ‘live’ their brand’s values, their behaviour during customer interactions reflects this, encouraging the strengthening of customer relationships. Specifically, we test the relationship between leadership style, employee commitment, and the adoption of values. Data was collected from a survey of 438 branch employees in a leading Irish retail bank. The study found that a structured and directive leadership style was effective at encouraging the adoption of the bank’s values. Moreover, when employees are committed to the organisation, this has a significant impact on their adoption of values. Thus, this study supports the literature which suggests that leadership and commitment are prerequisites for values adoption.     

Exploring the Principle of Subsidiarity in Organisational Forms

The paper starts with a case study of a medium-sized company in which a strong and successful change in the organisational form and job design took place. A bureaucratic organisation with highly-specialised jobs was converted into a new organisation in which employees became much more autonomous in managing their own work. This not only entailed new techniques and managerial systems but also a new anthropological vision. Bureaucratic rules were reduced, but not eliminated completely, and management became less authoritarian. Employees could therefore apply greater entrepreneurial spirit, developing their talents in pursuit of the company’s common goals. It is argued that this new organisational form is ethically superior to the old, and reflects the basic requirements of the principle of subsidiarity. The ethical principle of subsidiarity holds that a larger and higher-ranking body should not exercise functions which could be efficiently carried out by a smaller and lesser body; rather the former should support the latter by aiding it in the coordination of its activities with those of the greater community. While the principle has usually been applied in a political context, this paper explores the principle as a moral base for organisational forms within business organisations. Finally, the principle of subsidiarity is analysed in the context of business organisations and proposed as an ethical guideline for organisational forms. This would help to mitigate the effects of those bureaucracies in which individuals, with their dignity, freedom, diversity and capacity for undertaking business activities with entrepreneurial spirit, are often not fully appreciated.     

Predictors of Ethical Code Use and Ethical Tolerance in the Public Sector

This paper reports the results of a survey of ethical attitudes, values, and propensities in public sector employees in Australia. It was expected that demographic variables, personal values, and contextual variables at the individual level, and group- and organisational-level values would predict use of formal codes of ethics and ethical tolerance (tolerance of unethical behaviour). Useable data were received from 500 respondents selected at random across public sector organisations in a single Australian state. Results supported the study hypotheses, but indicated that different mechanisms underlie each of the criterion variables. Use of ethical codes was determined primarily on the basis of a perception that others use the code, while ethical tolerance was determined by personal values. At an applied level, the research highlights the need for orgasnizations to establish a critical mass of code users, so that this operates as a normative influence on others in the organization.     

What makes a good citizen in service settings?

As service firms face intense pressure to improve service quality, contact employees have been asked to do more with less. It is important that managers understand the concept of organisational citizenship behaviours and attempt to motivate employees to exhibit such behaviours. This study developed and tested a model of how employees' perception of organisational support affects affective commitment (AC), which contributes to their citizenship behaviours in service settings. Questionnaire data from matched pairs of 318 contact employees and their supervisors demonstrated that both perceived organisational support (POS) and AC play strong, central roles in determining contact employees' exhibition of citizenship behaviours. In addition, AC was found to be an effective mediator linking contact employees' perception of organisational support to their citizenship behaviours.     

Ethical Aspects in Nordic Business Mergers: The Case of Electro-Business

Postmerger integration is a highly challenging and demanding task. Its success depends not only on economic factors but also on the organisational members' feelings and their personal contribution to the new entity. Mergers are usually made for the sake of profitability in the first place, whereas less attention is paid to employees in such situations. This article describes various ethical observations made in our study on corporate mergers in the Nordic Electro-business industry. We examine how the organisational change was experienced by personnel, what kinds of ethical reflections surfaced in different phases of the process, and what conclusions might be drawn from them. The main focus is on the ethical meanings that emerged in our interviewees' stories spontaneously, without the topic of ethics having been separately brought up in the interview situation. The organisational members: we interviewed 35 electro-business employees who were either transferred from Vattenfall's contracting unit to the acquiring company or were already working there at the time of the merger. These persons were interviewed twice: first in 2001, the year of the initial merger, and again in 2005, 4 years from the start of the process and 1 year from the final ownership change. The merger process seemed to lead to decreased responsibility among the organisational members, which highlights the discrepancy between genuine ethical thinking and executive talk. Our study also revealed a dramatic shift in the moral attitudes of the managers who fell from power in the turmoil of organisational change. This moral dimension is evident in their sharply critical argumentation against the new operating model and new corporate management, as well as in their eventual indifference and non-commitment to the organisation. The ethical meanings of 'the good life' and a happy work community slowly disintegrated and were replaced by a longing for the earlier communality and sense of togetherness in their old organisation. This meant that 'the good life' would have to be sought elsewhere.     

Prediction of Whistleblowing or Non-reporting Observation: The Role of Personal and Situational Factors

This study examined whether it was possible to classify Australian public sector employees as either whistleblowers or non-reporting observers using personal and situational variables. The personal variables were demography (gender, public sector tenure, organisational tenure and age), work attitudes (job satisfaction, trust in management, whistleblowing propensity) and employee behaviour (organisational citizenship behaviour). The situational variables were perceived personal victimisation, fear of reprisals and perceived wrongdoing seriousness. These variables were used as predictors in a series of binary logistic regressions. It was possible to identify whistleblowers on the basis of individual initiative, whistleblowing propensity (individual and organisational), fear of reprisals, perceived wrongdoing seriousness and perceived personal victimisation. It was concluded that whistleblowers are not markedly dissimilar to non-reporting observers. Based on the two most influential variables (perceived personal victimisation and perceived wrongdoing seriousness), the average Australian public sector whistleblower is most likely to be an ordinary employee making a good faith attempt to stop what they perceived to be a serious wrongdoing that was initially identified through personal victimisation.     

Effect of newcomer socialisation on organisational commitment,job satisfaction,and turnover intention in the hotel industry

The academic literature features organisational socialisation as playing a crucial role in the early stages of newcomer employment. During this assimilation stage, newcomers adapt to a new workplace more effectively if socialisation is encouraged. It has been found that socialisation minimises the negative effects of unmet expectations on overall organisational effectiveness, including employee turnover – an issue that has become a considerable problem for many hotels. Extending this logic, this study aims to understand socialisation by specifically assessing whether turnover is determined by employees' beliefs about job satisfaction and individual commitment to an organisation and the hotel profession in general. The study of 428 respondents from 61 international tourist hotels in Taiwan implies that social interaction enables organisations to gain, from an increase in commitment to the organisation, job satisfaction and a decrease in newcomers' intent to leave the hotel profession. Two major contributions to the existing literature result (a) commitment to the organisation plays a dominant role in employee turnover intent and (b) job satisfaction is a powerful method of reinforcing individual commitment to the organisation.     

Family firms and the interests of non‐family stakeholders: The influence of family managers' affective commitment and family salience in terms of power

The goal of this research is to analyze the heterogeneity of family firms in the normative attention to their non‐family stakeholders. With this aim, we suggest that the psychological process of top family managers in terms of individual affective commitment to their firms is a key variable to explain that heterogeneity. However, we also suggest a moderator effect of the family stakeholder salience in the relationship between the managers' affective commitment to the firm and the establishment of firm goals toward non‐family stakeholders. The results of a hierarchical regression analysis on data obtained from 207 family executives show a significant positive influence of managers' affective commitment on the establishment of goals related both to internal (employees) and external (customers and community) non‐family stakeholders. In addition, we can observe a negative moderator effect of the family utilitarian power—as an indicator of the family stakeholder salience—on the relationship between the family managers' affective commitment and the goals related to non‐family employees.     

Does organisational support promote citizenship? The moderating role of market-focused HRM

This paper describes how employment relationships and human-resource management (HRM) functions can influence employees’ citizenship role definitions in service settings. Integrating social exchange and role theory, the paper suggests that contact employees will reciprocate felt obligations of high-quality employee–organisation relationships (i.e. perceived organisational support (POS)) by expanding their role in ways consistent with contextual behavioural expectations. The longitudinal survey of 1387 contact employees and 108 managers in a large supermarket chain shows that POS and several market-focused HRM practices influence employees’ service-oriented citizenship role definitions. In particular, high-quality employment relationships contribute to expanded service-oriented citizenship role definitions when market-focused HRM practices were implemented.     

The impact of the work environment on ethical decision making: Some Australian evidence

Business ethics has emerged in recent years as a field of significant scholarly endeavour. Particularly well documented is the existence of ethical conflict at work and the reported inseparability of business decisions and moral consequences. However, to date, the majority of studies have been conducted in the American business context.This paper examines the concept of ethical conflict as experienced by employees in the Australian context. According to a sample of Western Australian managers, ethical conflicts at work do occur — with relative frequency. Of considerable concern is the high incidence of cases where the demands of superiors are deemed to be the cause of this conflict. This finding is particularly disturbing as superiors are also the primary influence on employee ethical decision making. It would see that the ethics role models are also the instigators of unethical behaviour.This research has confirmed in the Western Australian context that the values of top management do have significant impact on the ethical choices made by employees. The management of organisational culture, therefore, is a key to raising ethical standards in business. The institutionalisation of ethics by such formal means as codes of ethics is a necessary, but insufficient, condition of ensuring ethical behaviour in organisations. Management of the informal climate is pivotal to the achievement of ethical organisational behaviour.Geoffrey Soutar is Professor of Management at Curtin University of Technology. He has particular interests in marketing and, in recent times, in the marketing of services. He has published widely across a number of management areas and has acted as consultant for both private and public sector organisations as well as for a number of unions.Margaret McNeil is a Lecturer in the School of Management at Curtin University of Technology. Her research interests include corporate innovation and financial services marketing. Consultancy has been in the areas of financial services, professional services and non-profit organisations.Caron Molster is a Research Assistant in the School of Management at Curtin University of Technology. She has a research interest in the area of ethics, having completed her thesis on this topic.     

New Insights into Ethical Leadership: A Qualitative Investigation of the Experiences of Executive Ethical Leaders

Ethical leadership has become a thriving research field. However, on reviewing previous research, we argue that several fundamental questions remain unclear and need further investigation. (1) Ethical leaders are defined as behaving ‘normatively appropriate[ly]’ (Brown et al., Organ Behav Hum Decis Process 97(2):117–134, 2005), but it remains unclear what this entails. What specific behaviours does an ethical leader show? (2) To date, ethical leadership has focused primarily on leader behaviour towards employees. Which stakeholders apart from employees are important to the ethical leader, and what kind of ethical behaviour does the ethical leader show towards them? (3) What are further antecedents and consequences of ethical leadership? We addressed these questions by qualitatively analysing interviews with 17, mostly Swiss, executive ethical leaders. The results indicate that executive ethical leaders care not only about employees but also about other stakeholders, such as customers, suppliers, owners of companies, the natural environment and society. Additionally, this study identified a broad range of executive ethical leaders’ behaviours towards these stakeholders, and, therefore, may function as a useful resource for future quantitative studies. Furthermore, we identified several antecedents of executive ethical leadership, for example ethical role models, business strategy and owner’s values, and consequences such as effects on other stakeholders than employees. Finally, our results shed more light on the processes of ethical guidance of employees. Managerial implications and avenues for further research are discussed.     

A conceptual framework to analyse hospital competitiveness

This article proposes a conceptual framework to analyse hospital competitiveness at the organisational level. Hospital competitiveness, defined as the capacity a hospital has to develop a superior performance that leads it to a position of competitive advantage, may be analysed in three dimensions: organisation, strategic behaviour, and performance. Based on previous studies and on the current structural adjustment in the Portuguese public hospital sector, this article suggests the following categories: legal status, organisational complexity, and resources for the organisation dimension; stakeholders, services and inter-organisational relationships for the strategic behaviour dimension; and type of indicators, efficiency and effectiveness, and benchmarking for the performance dimension. This framework seems to be particularly useful in evaluating Portuguese hospital competitiveness and providing insights for hospitals' managers and public decision makers both from Portugal and other countries.     

The Influence of an Organisation’s Corporate Values on Employees Personal Buying Behaviour

This article explores the influence that an organisation’s corporate values have on employees’ behaviour and values both within and outside the work environment. In particular, it focuses on the impact of these values on the personal buying behaviour of employees. The empirical research was undertaken within a case study organisation that produces wine in Spain and involved interviews with senior management, an analysis of company documentation, as well as group discussions with employees supported by an employee survey. The article argues that an organisation’s corporate values influence not only its employees’ behaviour within the work environment, but also impacts on their global values system outside of the work environment. In particular, this was evident within the employees’ buying behaviour practices in relation to supplier loyalty and environmental concern. This has implications for business ethics as an organisation’s value system may go beyond the purely business context. Organisations need to be aware of their impact on employees’ behaviour outside of the work environment; this is particularly the case for multinational companies working across many cultures.     

Ethical Commitment,Financial Performance,and Valuation: An Empirical Investigation of Korean Companies

A variety of stakeholders including investors, corporate managers, customers, suppliers, employees, researchers, and government policy makers have long been interested in the relationship between the financial performance of a corporation and its commitment to business ethics. As a subject of research, the relations between business ethics and corporate valuation has yet to be thoroughly quantified and investigated. This article is an effort to amend this inadequacy by demonstrating a statistically significant association between ethical commitment and corporate valuation measures. Consistent with anecdotal evidence, we have found a significant association between the ethical commitment of Korean companies and their valuation on the Korean stock market. However, the result reveals that the association between ethical commitment and financial performance is not significantly supported. Tae Hee Choi received Ph.D. from the Ohio State University, Ohio, USA. Presently working as Assistant Professor in accounting at the KDI School of Public Policy and Management. Research interests are business ethics, capital market, financial accounting, managerial accounting, and valuation. Jinchul Jung received Ph.D. from Kent State University, Ohio, USA. Presently working as Assistant Professor of Business Administration Department in the College of Business at Chosun University. Research interests are business ethics, family-supportive program, and organizational commitment.     

The role of the human resources manager: strategist or conscience of the organisation?

The human resource manager treads a fine line in seeking to reconcile the values of the organisation with professional values about the ethical management of people. This paper seeks to explore this ambiguity. The research findings suggest that the extent to which HR professionals can influence organisational ethics is dependent on the culture and structure of the organisation, as well as on the status and credibility of the HR specialists themselves. In the main there is little evidence that their influence is significant.     

Organisational Change through Collaborative Learning in a Network Form

In view of the changing nature of organisations, their structures and processes, managing organisational change is seen to be an ongoing challenge. In this paper, organisational learning is considered to be a potent force that drives organisational change. The use of an electronic group communication system supporting a distributed work process is explored in a network form of organisation. Following an analysis of the patterns of behaviour that occur within an evolving electronic social space, this paper concludes with a discussion of the implications for managing change through learning in a network form of organisation.     

The Effect of Organisational Vision on Service Quality Delivery

This study is an attempt to apply the concept of organisational vision to quantitative measures of service operation. Service organisations look at customer satisfaction ensuing from service quality delivery as a source of competitive advantage. To be able to contribute towards this end, vision must exert influence on the key variables job satisfaction and service effort of employees. The results show that organisational vision positively contributes to job satisfaction and service efforts of the participants working in a nationwide fast-food organisation.     

Corporate codes of ethics: necessary but not sufficient

While most large companies around the world now have a code of ethics, reported ethical malpractice among some of these does not appear to be abating. The reasons for this are explored, using academic studies, survey reports as well as insights gained from the Institute of Business Ethics' work with large corporations. These indicate that there is a gap between the existence of explicit ethical values and principles, often expressed in the form of a code, and the attitudes and behaviour of the organisation. The paper suggests that two basic reasons appear to be at the heart of the problem: ineffective ethics programmes and deficiencies in corporate culture. The paper concludes that successfully embedded corporate ethical values requires well‐designed ethics policies, sustained ethical leadership and incorporation of ethics in organisational processes and strategy as part of an ethical culture at all levels of the organisation. It makes some practical suggestions on how this can be achieved.