The Ethics of Human Resources and Industrial Relations

"In the business and economic spheres, many of the most pressing ethical issues involve the employment relationship, such as the rights of employees versus shareholders, employee privacy and monitoring, whistleblowing, pay equity, discrimination, employee safety, anti-union campaigns, and minimum labor standards. Since the field of human resources and industrial relations is ultimately about people and quality of life, there is a pressing need to develop applications of business ethics for the employment relationship in the context of research, practice, and teaching."-From the Preface

In recent years, by following media coverage of many scandals of accounting and accountability, the public has gained a greater understanding of what can happen when businesses do not adhere to ethical practices. It is now time for the human resources and industrial relations communities to explore the application of ethics to the employment relationship and to discover the importance of treating employees, not just numbers, properly.

Author Bio:John W. Budd is Industrial Relations Landgrant Professor at the Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota. He is the author of Employment with a Human Face: Balancing Efficiency, Equity, and Voice, also from Cornell. James G. Scoville is Professor of Human Resources and Industrial Relations at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of several books, including Status Influences in Third World Labor Markets: Caste, Gender and Custom.

John W. Budd is the Industrial Relations Land Grant Chair and Director of the Center for Human Resources and Labor Studies at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of Employment with a Human Face: Balancing Efficiency, Equity, and Voice and The Thought of Work, also from Cornell, and Labor Relations: Striking a Balance; coauthor of Invisible Hands, Invisible Objectives: Bringing Workplace Law and Public Policy into Focus; and coeditor of The Ethics of Human Resources and Industrial Relations, a LERA Reserach Volume distributed by Cornell.