Southern Business Review Volume 32 Issue 2 Article 4 How Industrial Relations Informs the Teaching of Ethics in Human Resource Management Charles G. Smith Otterbein College Hugh D. Hindman Appalachian State University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/sbr Part of the Business Commons, and the Education Commons Recommended Citation Smith, Charles G. and Hindman, Hugh D. () "How Industrial Relations Informs the Teaching of Ethics in Human Resource Management," Southern Business Review: Vol. 32 : Iss. 2 , Article 4. Available at: https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/sbr/vol32/iss2/4 This article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at Digital Commons@Georgia Southern. It has been accepted for inclusion in Southern Business Review by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons@Georgia Southern. For more information, please contact [email protected]. How Industrial Relations Informs the Teaching of Ethics In Human Resource Management Charles G. Smith and Hugh D. Hindman Most people want to do also because they directly avoid the historical and the “right thing.” This is true affect people and, so, have the philosophical backdrop that in business as well as in life. It potential to bring significant give texture and substance to is the duty of business good or significant harm to these decisions, an under- educators to provide a both individuals and to standing of the intellectual framework for students and society. To better inform the antecedents of today’s peers to judge the operational, debate over ethicality of HR employment relationship, and legal, and ethical rigor of practices, the authors suggest their inherent tensions will managerial decisions. This a re-examination human afford business decision article focuses attention on the resource management through makers a framework from human resource management the lens of its historical and which to better judge the function. The importance of philosophical predecessors— significance and the ethics of human resource management the industrial relations school their actions. (HRM) practices to the success of thought. The article presents an of the firm is accepted by Contemporary disputa- industrial relations system scholars and practitioners tions on the nature of the model updated to reflect alike and will be assumed employment relationship are current business exigencies. It here. But human resource at times truncated, uninspired, further offers a brief historical management practices are and lifeless. America is not and philosophical journey into important not only because of one big happy family and America’s experience with the their efficacy for the firm, but neither are business employee–employer relation- organizations. Nor should they ship linking economic with be, as many in the human moral theory and considering Charles G. Smith, Ph.D., is professor of management, in resources field would hold. three alternative moral the Department of Business, Choices need to be made, viewpoints on the industrial Accounting, and Economics, some rooted in history, some relations system. Next is a Otterbein College, novel to the present. Some are review of the treatment of Westerville, OH 43081. operationally sound, some are human resource management not. Some choices are legal, issues in popular collegiate Hugh D. Hindman, Ph.D., is some are not, and some are business ethics texts. The professor of labor & human morally defensible and others article concludes with resources, in the Walker are not. A discussion about implications for teaching College of Business, the appropriate structures and business ethics in human Appalachian State University, polices at work is in order. resource management. The Boone, NC 28608. While business schools often authors’ purpose is not to 16 Spring 2007 Southern Business Review promote their own views, but used to order one’s beliefs, that followed the industrializa- rather to frame the debate attitudes, and behavior about tion of the republic itself. concerning the treatment of the manner in which people Figure 1 presents a revised men and women in their deal with one another at work. industrial relations system working lives. The industrial Its purpose is to provide an model updated to reflect relations model affords understanding of the contemporary realities. As an decision makers enormous development and operation of instructional tool it flexibility with their human structures and processes summarizes the dominant resource practices, work involved in the production of forces at play in the employer- structures and process. The goods and services as they employee relationship. The article identifies questions of relate to the parties involved actors in the system include concern. How they are and to the larger society. employers and their trade answered is idiosyncratic to Kochan, Katz and McKersie associations, employees and the business decision maker define it this way, “…the their unions or professional and, hopefully, rooted in premises, values, laws, associations, and the sound moral reasoning. institutions and practices that government as the govern employment representative of the body The Industrial Relations relationships” (1986). The politic. Additionally, the System classic work on industrial system recognizes the relations system theory posits importance of consumers, Students of business ethics that the role of the system is competitors, suppliers, and rarely focus on America’s the establishment of rules that other interest groups. The industrial relations system, govern the relations between primary actors then develop preferring instead to study its primary actors, labor, rules that govern the macro socio-economic forces management, and the employment relationship by underlying systems of political government. The rules establishing structures and economy such as capitalism, themselves and the techniques processes that promote their socialism, or communism or, for their establishment are respective interests. These alternatively, opting to influenced by three myriad rules tend to coalesce investigate micro socio- environmental forces, around four different models economic concerns such as technology, the market, and of workplace governance– price fixing, product safety, the distribution of power and command and control, false advertising, employment status among the actors within employee empowerment, discrimination, or bribery the larger society. Finally, collective bargaining, and (Adler & Bigoness, 1992). what binds the entire system industrial democracy. Here, however, attention is together is the shared ideals The ideas of a command directed to the institution of and beliefs of society, i.e., and control governing the employee - employer ideology (Dunlop, 1958). A structure flows naturally from relationship and the control, stable menu of rules, both the work of such management authority and decision making substantive and procedural, theorists as Fayol, Taylor, and relationships generated. These developed among labor, Weber. Proponents of a considerations are central to management, and government command and control industrial relations system before and after World War II; structure legitimize top down theory and lie on a middle however, today the system is decision making, information stratum of the hierarchy of in flux, undergoing a meta- flow, and authority theoretical abstractions. morphosis perhaps as potent relationships. Work is An industrial relations and far reaching as the one perceived as undesirable, system is a conceptual tool Southern Business Review Spring 2007 17 Figure 1 Modified Industrial Relations System loathsome, and alienating policies of the firm; and 2) A second type of requiring extrinsic reward performance monitoring—the governing structure available mechanisms, subject to market control function—making sure to American business is the pressures, to attract, motivate, intended policies are employee empowerment or and maintain needed implemented. Both of these employee involvement model. employees. Employees cede to tasks have direct and obvious Tracing back to the Human a managerial class control not effects on employees. Relations School (Mayo) and only of their labor, but of the Employees have one main following MacGregor’s (1957) rule-making processes that task—follow the rules. While Theory Y assumptions that govern the nature of how work command and control employees seek challenge and is actually performed. structures are somewhat out of fulfillment in their work, Employees are conceptualized fashion in academic circles, management has experimented as interchangeable parts in the they remain a common with a number of structures machinery of production. prototype for workplace directed at increasing (Braverman, 1974). governance today. Command employee involvement, Management has two main and control regimes continue participation, and commitment tasks: 1) policy to dot the economic landscape at the workplace. Job redesign, formulation—the command from traditional industrial TQM initiatives, quality circle, function—formulation of the sectors to white collar and self-directed work teams, and strategic and operational service sectors. employee involvement 18 Spring 2007 Southern Business Review committees are examples much of what human resource the collective bargaining type designed to unleash the management addresses with is the grievance/arbitration creative power of the collective bargaining