ETHICAL ANALYSES OF HRM / TUTORIALOUTLET DOT COM ETHICAL ANALYSES OF HRM / TUTORIALOUTLET DOT COM | Page 3

1 Introduction Despite entering a period of complexity and sophistication (Guest 2011), much HRM scholarship tends to embrace ‘‘rational and material conceptualisations of actor behaviour’’ at the expense of ideological and normative analyses (Heery and Hauptmeier 2010, p. 2910). Human resource management is an inherently ethical activity in that its M. Greenwood (&) Department of Management, Monash University, Box 11e, Clayton, VIC 3800, Australia e-mail: [email protected] Use of the term ‘‘ethical’’ in this manner assumes a narrow definition of ‘‘ethics’’ as the systematic study of reasoning about how we ought to act (Singer 1994) rather than a broad definition of ethics as set of norms or morals (and hence is not synonymous with the terms ‘‘moral’’ or ‘‘morals’’). By reflecting on the nature and justification of moral actions we ‘‘introduce clarity, substance and precision of argument into the domain of morality’’ (Beauchamp et al. 2008, p. 2) and eschew an uncritical acceptance of preconceived notion of right and wrong. Importantly there is no suggestion whatsoever that an ethical perspective is in and of itself moral or morally superior.