Chapter 5: An Examination of The Potential of Human Resource Development (HRD) to Improve Organizational Ethics

Unlike HRM and ethics the relationship between Human Resource Development (HRD) and ethics has been largely ignored. According to Tom Donaldson, the well-known business ethicist, “HRD has taken ethics for granted for too long” (Personal communication, September 12, 2001). Only very recently have HRD practitioners and scholars begun to truly understand and embrace the critical nature of ethics. In the not too distant past HRD as a discipline stood idly by as employees and managers faced dilemmas and paradoxes where doing the right thing was not clear, or in cases where personal, organizational and economic and social values clashed. But the profession has begun to take notice of this omission and now provides venues to address moral concerns within organizations. For example, there are now codes of ethics for professional organizations such as ASTD, International Society for Performance Improvement (ISPI), and the Academy of Human Resource Development (AHRD).