Abstract

Enduring interest in the ‘social’ aspect of the ethical dimension of Human Resource Management (HRM) on employees and society is a positive trend towards humanity. To maintain justice, fairness and well-being towards its stakeholders, it is necessary for an organization to perform HRM functions ethically. Authors identified two possible meanings to the ethical dimension of HRM. In addition to the above, a second possible connotation was recognized, and labeled as ‘Ethical Orientation of HRM or EOHRM’. This is ‘to direct HRM functions to create, enhance and maintain ethicality within employees, to make an ethical workforce in the organization’. EOHRM is conceptualized based on three dimensions: acquire, develop and retain. Elements of EOHRM are the functions of these three HRM fields. Ethical characteristics would be embedded into elements and question items of the instrument, in order to measure EOHRM. It seems that this concept has been unexplored by scholars in the existent HRM literature. This article attempts to bridge this knowledge gap to a significant extent. EOHRM is offered as a novel concept to HRM architecture, and it gives favorable directions towards future research.

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