Achieving Ethics and Fairness in Hiring: Going Beyond the Law

Since the passage of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and more recent Federal legislation, managers, regulators, and attorneys have been busy in sorting out the legal meaning of fairness in employment. While ethical managers must follow the law in their hiring practices, they cannot be satisfied with legal compliance. In this article, we first briefly summarize what the law requires in terms of fair hiring practices. We subsequently rely on multiple perspectives to explore the ethical meaning of fairness in hiring. Ethical fairness underlies the law and regulations in this area, but goes beyond them as well. We conclude by demonstrating that ethical hiring practices enable managers to make better hiring decisions.G. Stoney Alder is Assistant Professor of Management in the College of Business at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Colorado at Boulder. His research interests include organizational justice, electronic monitoring, and ethics. Dr. Alder’s work has appeared in a number of journals including Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Human Resource Management Review, Journal of Business Ethics, and the Journal of High Technology Management Research, among others.Joseph Gilbert is an Associate Professor of Management at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. He teaches in the areas of business strategy and business ethics. His research is primarily in the area of business ethics. Prior to receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Southern California, he had extensive management experience in the financial services industry.