Ethics, CSR and MNCs: Establishing the Link with HRM in Times of Economic Crisis

Purpose – To explore the ethical challenges, the financial crisis afflicting Greece and most of the European South creates for MNCs. Emphasis is placed on using human resource management (HRM) as the principle prism to identify the role of employees as organizational members and individuals within the transforming environment.Design/methodology – The chapter follows an exploratory inquisitive path, attempting to elicit information and evidence from theoretical and practical sources, bringing together three primary areas: CSR and business ethics, HRM, and contextual factors, moderated by the financial crisis. The key driver is to shed light in a related narrowly searched field, paving the way for future investigations.Findings – The results from the critical analysis indicate substantial overlap between the examined themes, indicating considerably scope for academics and practitioners to pursue more specific work on field.Research implications/limitations – The chapter is predominantly exploratory in nature, endeavouring to seam together into a meaningful platform several subtle issues and introduce a novel context as the focal point. The innate limitation is the lack of empirical substantiation which could be picked up in ensuing researches, based on the premises stemming from this discourse.Originality/value of chapter – The chapter offers a novel contextualization for academics and practitioners within the field of CSR, business ethics and HRM, which is particularly relevant given the permeating fluidity in the extant economic and business environment. Decision and policy-making on organizational and institutional level can also gain from the insights proposed, and through continued research to effectively form policies in the near future.