Ethical Standards for Human Resource Management Professionals:

SummaryFocusing on professional codes of ethics in HR, this article establishes a foundation for understanding the contents of these codes and for future research in this area. Five key professional ethics codes in HRM are analyzed according to six obliga tions. The resulting characterizations revealed that these codes advocate five principles related to integrity, legality, proficiency, loyalty, and confiden tiality. Particular flaws in code content and imple mentation are identified with recommendations for addressing them. Also, suggestions for standardizing professional HR codes and for future research are discussed.

Results from focus groups and national surveys of HR managers indicate their willingness to make the HR department the organizational locus of responsibility for ethical behavior at work (Petrick, 1992; CCH/SHRM, 1991; Wiley, 1993). In many corporations, HR managers conduct management-level or com pany wide ethics awareness programs. These companies encourage employees to approach HR with problems that cannot be taken to a super visor. Ethics hotlines, ombudspersons, and ethics officer positions are frequently staffed by HR personnel (Edwards and Bennett, 1987; Driscoll and Hoffman, 1998). In addition, HR managers work with senior managers to ensure that their conduct is aligned with the company's ethics codes (Edwards and Bennett, 1987), and with other employees to make sure they fully under stand the repercussions of ethical transgressions (Greengard, 1997). But, where do HR managers turn to gain a clear understanding of their own.

While codes are intended to influence profes sional behavior, they are not the only, nor are they the most influential, factors considered in resolving ethical dilemmas. The literature on the ethical decision making process, suggests a number of factors that

may influence a manager's decisions when confronted with ethical dilemmas. In addition to their own personal values, managers and professionals may be affected by factors related to corporate policy and organizational climate (Trevino, 1986; Fritzsche, 1987; Murphy, 1988; Sims, 1992) and factors related to their professional environment such as the professional association's ethics code, mate rials and seminars (Bommer, Gratto and Gravander, 1987; Frankel, 1989; Waters and Bird, 1987; Schweikart, 1992). Fritzsche (1987) identified several factors related to personal values, corporate policy, and organizational climate which significantly affect the ethical behavior of managers. Bommer, Gratto and Gravander (1987) suggested that in addition to these and other personal and work related items, factors related to the professional environment are important determinants of the ethical behavior of managers who are also members of a profession. The behavior of pro fessionals working in a business environment may be affected by such factors as the profession's codes of ethics, materials published by the pro fessional association to help members interpret and apply the code to their work activities, and the discussion of ethics issues in association periodicals and meetings (Bommer, Gratto and Gravander, 1987; Frankel, 1989; Waters and Bird, 1987). In a recent study of Chartered Life Underwriters (CLUs), Cooper and Frank (1991) examined the extent to which factors related to their personal attributes and environment, their business environment, and their professional environment helped them in dealing with work-related ethical dilemmas. These CLUs found factors related to their personal attributes and environment to be the most helpful when they faced ethical dilemmas at work. Moreover, they viewed factors in their business environment to be even more helpful in dealing with ethical problems than factors related to their professional environment. Similar results were found with internal auditors (Heaston, Cooper and Frank, 1993) and CPAs engaged in auditing in public practice (Cooper, Frank and Heaston, 1994). In making ethical decisions, CPAs looked more heavily to certain factors in their business environment such as company culture and a supportive boss than to various factors in their This study

When these same employment professionals were asked where they originally learned about ethics and what helps them in the work

place to make ethical decisions, they indicated that they mainly learned about ethics at home (93.2%) with their families (Wiley, 1993; Viet, Murphy and Baker, 1996) and that it is those learned values that help them make everyday ethical decisions (Cooper and Frank, 1992). In addition, 55.3 percent of them indicated learning about ethical decision making in professional organizations (Wiley, 1993). Two factors, college in general and professional organizations specifically, ranked fourth in the frequency with which they were men tioned by employment professionals as the place where they learned about ethical decision making. However, professional organizations were more influential than college courses

The recent human resource development (HRD) and ethics literature sheds further light on this matter. The HRD literature indicated that professional associations play distinctive roles in the formal and informal processes of adult learning. Formal development may include con ferences, workshops and seminars, while informal learning takes place through mentorships, networks and committee participation (Rusaw, 1995). The ethics literature suggests that in addition to having their meetings or conferences serve as a forum for the discussion of ethical issues facing their members, professional associ ations can help their members by establishing codes and by assisting in their interpretation.

While nearly all professional organizations establish codes of conduct, researchers question their impact on decision making and behavior. The central question is this: Do professional codes significantly influence professional behavior. Several have found that codes have some influence on decision-making (Posner and Schmidt, 1987; Maes, Jeffery and Smith, 1998). However, before professional codes can affect decision-making, professionals must be aware of their existence (Maes, Jeffery and Smith, 1998) and more importantly, their contents. With this in mind, the current research investigates the contents of HR ethics codes to determine the major principles that are espoused by them. As such, it represents the first dialogue concerning the contents of a broad range of ethics codes in the HR field.

Overall, these codes more frequently addressed the following aspects concerning the profes sional's obligation to employers:

practicing at a high standard of integrity (ACA, ASTD and IPMA); respecting confidentiality (IHRIM and IPMA); and supporting legitimate job-related activities (ACA, ASTD, IPMA and SHRM) and employer profitability (SHRM). The primary concerns seem to center around the professional's duty to exercise their expertise and competence at the highest level of integrity. This indicates that professionals can be expected to encourage and support effective employment practices vis a vis appropriate laws and the goals for their company

Since most HR professionals employed by cor porations do not work directly with external customers or clients, one would expect the codes to say very little in this area. This was generally true. These codes had little to say about honoring contractual obligations or specifically protecting client confidentiality. For the most part, they ignored the client and referred to how the profesitional.

Although many researchers have explored cor porate codes of ethics (McCabe, Trevino and Butterfield, 1996), relatively little research has been done on professional codes. Indeed, no study has broadly focused on or discussed codes of ethics in HR. Nevertheless, by raising new questions about HR codes, the research on pro fessional ethics can move beyond its summary characteristics to understanding the impact that professional codes of conduct have on profes sional behavior. Firstly, however, there was a need to gain a better understanding of HR codes. Thus, the purpose of this paper was to explore the characteristics of five HR codes of ethics according to six major obligations. Based on the current analysis, there are three key summary points. Firstly, the contents of these codes reveal that (1) they are a set of expecta tions by which the professionals will be judged by their constituents, (2) they represent the preferred character dispositions that should control the way the profession is practiced by the individual professional, (3) they are designed to support or encourage professionals to act in the interest of the public, and (4) they are - to some extent - catalogs of HR-related ethical problems that have been experienced. Secondly, the similarities among the codes lead one to believe that a unified code for the HR profession could be reasonably derived and would be very beneficial. Unification of these codes is a recommendation for standardization of the core principles already espoused by them. Such standardization would yield consistency

within the profession. It would bring a diverse group of HR professional organizations (ACA, IPMA, IHRIM, etc.) into harmony concerning the standards to which the profession wants all the members to be committed and to model. Standardization through a unified code would signal that the members of the profession are in one accord con cerning their perceptions of professional behav iors. This would also signal to the public that these professionals are capable of ongoing self regulation. It would show that HR professionals could be trusted to communicate with one another concerning professional conduct and behavior. Thirdly, these codes devote little attention to sanctions and penalties. The lack of sanctions leads one to believe that the codes are primarily used as a public relations tool. For example, they give little or no indication of how individual professionals may be reprimanded or what support the professional organization may provide when these professionals suffer reprisal for raising ethical concerns about their employers. These key points and findings serve to establish a base for further research on HR codes of ethics. Additional analyses on larger samples of HR codes would be beneficial. Indeed, other descrip tive and empirical work should be done on codes of professional conduct in HR. Such research should focus on establishing what the norms of the profession are and on developing theoretical models. These models should reflect the multiple sources and effects of ethical codes and their interactions with various individual-level and organizational phenomena (Weaver, 1993). With out this research, little can be known about the effect of HR professional codes on individual HR managers' behaviors during ethical dilemmas.