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Introduction
In the middle of a global economic crisis of unprecedented proportions
and growing mistrust and skepticism about business, challenges associated
with the search for new foundations for a more egalitarian and sustainable
capitalist system are immense. Rescue measures taken by governments and
businesses to date seem to be transient at best, failing to address the root
causes of the deep and continuing economic turbulences and the demoralized capital markets. Rather than dealing with the underpinning triggers of the crisis, policymakers seem oriented toward mitigating the results
and outcomes of the problem. However, as long as the root causes of the
recent global economic meltdown are not identified and addressed, there is
definite risk of regression to similar economic collapses in the future. Many
scholars and analysts attribute the global financial crisis to a relentless
profit-maximization mantra among managers and business practitioners,
coupled with overly competitive and self-interested behavior (Holland,
2009; Jacobs, 2009). Business managers seem to be completely oblivious to
the moral dimensions of decision making, with success in the business world
continuing to be sadly defined in terms of money and power, brushing aside
broader moral questions of meaning and purpose and values of integrity
and responsibility (Hedges, 2009).
The results of such reckless behavior have been devastating to stakeholders
across the globe (Brenkert, 2004). Various news stories have highlighted
business scandals, fraud, corruption, falsification, exploitation, discrimination, pollution, deception, tax evasion, misconduct, and mismanagement of risk, among others. Various Wall Street darlings, including Enron,
WorldCom, Arthur Anderson, and Tyco have also joined a growing list of
irresponsible businesses that have hidden the true state of their precarious
finances, leading to bankruptcy and transferring significant costs to their
22
CSR and HRM for Workplace
Integrity: Advancing the
Business Ethics Agenda
Dima Jamali and Ali M. El Dirani
439
W. Amann et al. (eds.), Integrity in Organizations
© Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited 2013
440 Dima Jamali and Ali M. El Dirani
stakeholders in the process. Some of the more outrageous media headlines
pertained to the staggering bonuses and compensation packages of chief
executive officers (CEOs) while shareholder returns continued to decline.
For example the ex-CEO of the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), now government-owned, left the bank in 2009, with a pension plan award of £700,000,
although the financial performance of RBS resulted in 20,000 of the staff
losing their jobs that year (Griffiths, 2012). This event was the subject of
widespread public, political and media criticism. In 2012, the current CEO
of RBS was awarded an annual bonus of nearly £1million (Wilson, 2012),
which is roughly equivalent to the salary of ordinary employees and workers
over a lifetime, and it came just days after U.K. ministers announced a crackdown on executive pay. This bonus was described as immoral, and he was
urged to return the money as a gesture of good faith, which he reluctantly
agreed to do in light of the negative publicity.
The examples above, among a spectrum of similar scams and scandals
from across the globe, leave ordinary citizens and business observers with
a sense of resentment and confusion about the root causes of this behavior
and whom or what to blame. Should we blame the organizational system
and structure that emphasize shareholder value and the reckless pursuit
of short-term profits (Machold and Huse, 2010)? Should we blame the
educational system, including business schools, for failing to challenge
the strong entrenchment of utilitarian perspectives and economic paradigms and the focus on hard skills at the expense of more balanced business school educational experiences that nurture creativity, soft skills,
common sense, and moral balance (Jamali and Abdallah, 2010)? Or should
we blame the executives themselves for accepting to engage in irresponsible behavior and receive such bonuses and pensions regardless of any
ethical and moral justification? Many observers trace immoral and irresponsible behavior back to the level of the individual and the agency of
those responsible for running organizations through structures and rules
driven by ends and objectives (Brenkert, 2004). The moral and ethical
awareness of the individuals plays an important role in avoiding irresponsible decisions and behaviors.
Integrity has been referred to as the system of ethics and moral norms
which constitutes the individual shield that protects the organizational
system from immoral practices and policies and prevents organizational
decay (Collins, 2009). Workplace integrity is not a new concept, and what
we aim to do in this book chapter is to re-emphasize the importance and
benefits of promoting this orientation within organizations. We use the
umbrella of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and its theoretical and
managerial underpinning to highlight the importance of workplace integrity. We also focus on the strong affinities between an integrity agenda and
both the CSR and Human Resources Management (HRM) agendas. CSR has
been defined as business actions that reflect broader societal concerns and
CSR and HRM for Workplace Integrity 441
that respect the complex interdependence between business and society
(Gentile and Samuelson, 2005, p. 499). HRM, on the other hand, is concerned
with the management of people in organizations, both individually and
collectively. In this chapter, we specifically draw on the internal dimension
of CSR, which is still a less-explored area within the literature, and its synergies with the workplace integrity and HRM agenda. Our chapter therefore
starts by providing a definition of workplace integrity based on recent literature. We then highlight how workplace integrity has important interfaces
with both the CSR and HRM agendas, and how significant progress on the
workplace integrity front necessitates effective collaboration between CSR
and HRM practitioners to promote ethical conduct inside and outside the
firm. We also outline some practical recommendations for CSR and HRM
practitioners in taking the workplace integrity agenda forward and helping
it mature and advance.
Defining workplace integrity
There is ongoing controversy or disagreement in the literature as to whether
integrity is a characteristic of individuals or business organizations. Some
argue that the integrity of the firm is shaped and moulded by the integrity
of its employees at the individual level. Integrity is certainly an important
value or characteristic at the personal level that forms an important ingredient of the moral compass of an individual. However, workplace integrity
constitutes a higher-level conception referring to the systems and processes
that organizations need to craft systematically in order to promote integrity
at work. Building workplace integrity revolves around developing and maintaining an ensemble of effective systems and processes that can encourage
and sustain integrity at work, and responsibility for doing so falls invariably
on the top management team of an organization. This central idea will be
further elaborated below.
At the individual level, integrity is about making the correct choice, when
necessary, between right and wrong. A simple example is whether an individual employee should tell the truth or lie, should cut corners or work hard,
should be involved in scamming or not, should misreport actions or report
actions as happened. It might become more complex, especially when individuals are not directly involved in wrongdoing, but they know about it.
Here, the individual might be faced by questions relating to ignoring the
wrongdoing or blowing the whistle. Another more complex option might
be when individuals need to decide to accept or turn down a position being
offered by a company that is involved in wrongdoing or even selling products that cause harm to health and society, such as alcohol or tobacco. A
higher level of complexity is involved when individuals are faced with
wrongdoing that their company is involved in, but which is not within the
department or domain or role of the individual.
442 Dima Jamali and Ali M. El Dirani
Workplace integrity, however, moves beyond the level of the individual
to crafting the requisite policies, processes and structures that are crucial
to promoting integrity at work. In this respect, there are important foundational underpinnings that need to be systematically crafted by organizations that are serious about integrity and responsibility, starting with ethical
leadership, rules, regulations and relevant policies and processes. Ethical
leadership sets the tone for integrity in the organization by modeling integrity through both words and action. Integrity is also related to the nature
of organizational rules and regulations in question; for example, the availability of a written code of ethics, a performance-appraisal system that
focuses on means as well as ends, and a rewards system that is attuned
to ethics and ethical behavior (Robbins, Coulter, Sidani and Jamali, 2011).
Organizations that want to go the extra mile can also introduce regular
ethics training sessions to clarify acceptable and unacceptable practices and
reinforce the organization’s standards of conduct. Some organizations have
also introduced ethics officers and ethics counselors in addition to formal
protective mechanisms for whistle-blowers (Robbins et al., 2011).
Major organizations have moved beyond the level of the individual and
recognized the importance of workplace integrity for business success and
social responsibility. For example, at Deloitte, workplace integrity is part
of the organization’s social responsibility, with a strong emphasis on the
ethical foundations of decision making and the need for good business decisions that are also rightful (Deloitte, 2012). At Microsoft, integrity represents
an important cornerstone of both the corporate governance and corporate
social responsibility agendas and is reinforced through a sophisticated
system of policies, processes and structures (Microsoft, 2012). At Western
Digital Corporation workplace integrity revolves around fostering a culture
of honesty and professional conduct in the organization (Western Digital,
2012). What these examples make clear is that major corporations are realizing that organizational circumstances can make it easier, or more difficult,
to act with integrity. Within a business, an organization’s context sometimes makes it difficult for even the best-intentioned person to act ethically,
or it can make it difficult for a dishonest person to act unethically (Hartman
and Des Jardins, 2010). Specifically, there is a growing and daunting realization that responsibility for the circumstances that can encourage ethical
behavior and discourage unethical behavior falls to the business management and executive team and to the specific standards, policies and practices that organizations craft purposively and strategically to nurture and
sustain workplace integrity.
Internal CSR and synergies with workplace integrity
The World Bank defines CSR as “the commitment of business to managing
and improving the economic, environmental and social implications of its
CSR and HRM for Workplace Integrity 443
activities at the firm, local, regional and global levels.” Another classical,
guiding framework comes from Davis’s 1973 model in which he defines
CSR as, “The firm’s consideration of and response to issues beyond narrow
economic, technical and legal requirements to accomplish social benefits
along with the traditional economic gains which the firm seeks.” This
concept of going beyond the legal, economic and technical requirements
was further expanded by Carroll (1979), as he provided a rising pyramidal
framework for conceptualizing CSR. The base of the pyramid comprises the
economic responsibilities of a firm, followed by the legal responsibilities,
the ethical responsibilities and, lastly, the philanthropic. Carroll posits that
these subsequent levels of the pyramid represent the approach to CSR taken
by most companies. When they move from one level to the next in the
pyramid, they are advancing in CSR practice and attending to their responsibility towards a wider spectrum of stakeholders.
The stakeholder approach to CSR has also been widely popularized in
recent years in accounting for and explaining CSR. Pioneered by Freeman
(1984), this approach understands business as a function of the corporate
value chain. Freeman’s (1984) work helped to reconceptualize the nature of
the firm to encourage consideration of new external stakeholders, beyond
the traditional pool – shareholders, customers, employees, and suppliers –
legitimizing in turn new forms of managerial understanding and action.
The primary stakeholders in the supply chain are producers, distributors,
suppliers, employees, consumers, investors, the community and oftentimes the environment, dubbed a silent stakeholder. From this perspective,
organizations are expected to manage responsibly an extended web of stakeholder interests across increasingly permeable organizational boundaries
and acknowledge a duty of care towards traditional interest groups as well
as silent stakeholders, such as local communities and the environment.
Furthermore, it is possible to infer from the discussion above relating to
stakeholder theory that CSR has two main dimensions, internal and external
(figure 22.1). Internal CSR entails according systematic attention to in-house
priorities and due diligence to internal stakeholders, which addresses issues
relating to skills and education, workplace health and safety, working conditions, human rights, equity considerations, equal opportunity and labor
rights (Jamali et al., 2008). With respect to External CSR – which admittedly receives more attention – priority shifts to the need for corporations to
assume their duties as citizens, and to accord due diligence to their external
stakeholders, the community and the natural environment (Munilla and
Miles, 2005; Jamali et al., 2008).
Examples of internal CSR practices that are relevant to employees include
health and safety at work, development of worker skills, well-being and satisfaction, quality of work and social equity. Others include: a family-friendly
work environment, equitable wage and reward system, open and flexible
communication system, and work life balance. Implementation of such CSR
444 Dima Jamali and Ali M. El Dirani
practice fosters a work environment that is likely to satisfy the employee
by way of going beyond what is legally expected of the HR department. We
argue in this chapter that integrity is an important aspect or component of
internal CSR that needs to be accorded more systematic consideration by
organizations going forward (figure 22.2). This is precisely the area where
CSR overlaps with the workplace integrity agenda, as illustrated below.
Workplace integrity is an important component of the internal CSR
agenda because it directs attention to values of ethics and compassion
that complement the responsible orientation of the firm. Aside from issues
pertaining to worker skills, training, pay, benefits and the quality of the
work environment, which fall under internal CSR, workplace integrity is
an important ingredient because it constitutes the basic underpinning or
foundation on which a genuine responsible agenda can be safely erected.
Figure 22.1 Internal and external dimensions of CSR
Internal CSR External CSR
CSR
Attention to in-house priorities and
diligence to internal stakeholders
Attention to community and external
stakeholders
• community issues
• social issues
• environmental issues
• skills and education
• workplace health and safety
• working conditions
• human rights
• equity considerations
• labor rights
Figure 22.2 Workplace integrity: part of the internal dimension of CSR
• Workplace safety
• Equal opportunity
• Workplace integrity
External
CSR
Internal
CSR
• Community
• Natural environment
CSR and HRM for Workplace Integrity 445
In other words, without systematic attention to workplace integrity as part
of an organization’s internal CSR agenda, there is a real danger or risk that
all other initiatives (and particularly external CSR orientations) might fall
apart or be characterized as insincere and misaligned. The basic reasoning
for this is simple: namely that, before an organization can safely start to
export and diffuse its CSR externally, it should first accord attention to its
internal or in-house responsibilities and priorities and lay the foundation
for a solid internal CSR agenda which has ethics and integrity at its core.
Synergies of HRM, CSR and workplace integrity
In this chapter, we capitalize on the above discussed synergies between
workplace integrity and CSR and their benefits to re-emphasize the importance of workplace integrity and redirect the attention to its benefits
compared to the harm that might result when integrity is ignored. We posit,
however, that the other important partner in a workplace integrity agenda
is, of course, HRM, and we argue that HRM has an important role to play
in promoting the workplace integrity agenda. We especially benefit here
from the growing literature on the role of HRM in CSR (Lockwood, 2004;
SHRM, 2007; Fenwick and Bierema, 2008; Preuss, Haunschild, and Matten,
2009; Strandberg, 2009; El Dirani, Jamali, and Harwood, 2010) to explore
the potential HR contributions in promoting workplace integrity.
Why is HRM an important complementary actor in relation to both
the CSR and integrity management agendas? According to Ehnert (2009),
Matten and Moon (2008), Porter and Kramer (2006), and Clarkson (1995),
translating CSR into managerial practices, and managing the CSR change
and the relationship with stakeholders, are the real challenges that organizations should be concerned about. What HR can do in this context is
provide the tools to change organizational behavior and integrate CSR into
organizational processes and, thus, reflect CSR strategies in practice (Mees
and Bonham, 2004). HRM brings important expertise and knowledge in
highlighting priorities relevant to the business and its employees, executing
organizational strategies, managing the change, ensuring business efficiency and engaging stakeholders. HRM is also dedicated to human capital
and community advancement (Schuler and Jackson, 2006). Hatcher (2002)
suggests that HRM professionals have been complicit in helping to create
organizations and workplaces that do little to enhance the human spirit or
protect the environment. In brief, HR has a crucial role to play in embedding
social responsibility and workplace integrity in the organizational fabric.
Furthermore, many of the internal CSR practices (e.g., employee engagement, ethical conduct, employee moral awareness, diversity, workplace
safety and health conditions, workplace green practices, employee volunteering activities) constitute domains within which HRM can add value
leading to concrete outcome benefits across the board, including employee
446 Dima Jamali and Ali M. El Dirani
retention and commitment (Redington, 2005; Meyer and Parfyonova,
2010; Meyer, Stanley, and Parfyonova, 2011). The HR agenda often reflects
commitments to ethics and integrity, in addition to responsibility and
sustainability (Fenwick, 2005; Fenwick and Bierema, 2008) and therefore
cross-connects clearly and decisively with both the internal CSR and workplace integrity agendas. Both the success of CSR and internal workplace
integrity agenda depend on processes, people, coordination, communication and delivery. HR already has the necessary skills to handle these tasks
competently and concurrently, and to bring both CSR and workplace integrity into the action.
Within this platform, HRM can nicely contribute to workplace integrity
and benefit from its various interfaces with the internal CSR dimension
to build the organizations’ culture around integrity principles and ethical
values. In this context, we outline here three important domains for HRM’s
contributions to the internal CSR and workplace integrity agendas, namely:
hiring employees possessing integrity, building and institutionalizing workplace integrity, and organizing employees’ participation in CSR activities. As
will be shown below, each of these essential best practices can go a long way
in promoting the workplace integrity agenda, and all of them fall squarely
within the traditional domain of HRM.
1 Hiring employees who possess integrity
In organizations where workplace integrity and ethical orientations are
engrained in the culture and core values and principles, the criteria by
which employees are hired, promoted and trained to be future decision
makers should be carefully designed. Those organizations are interested in
hiring individuals who not only possess talent, skills, experience, education and knowledge but also possess integrity. The significance of integrity at the individual level, and its role in creating workplace integrity, are
as valuable as the individual’s work performance and outcome results. The
job of HRM in this sense is to ensure to the extent possible that new hires
are honest and possess integrity. This could be done through background
history checks. References could be contacted to inquire more about the
integrity characteristics that the potential employees hold, and this allows
HR to be aware of any wrongdoing or suspect reputation for the employee in
question. In addition, HR can include questions or cases in the interviewing
process which entail ethical dilemmas and ask candidates to evaluate them
proactively. In other words, through the role of HRM, companies can filter
out or avoid ‘unethical’ employees from the start by making sure that
ethical behavior is a clear core competency required by all management
and executive jobs, and is part of the company’s recruitment and selection
skills, its annual performance review and its reward systems (Collins, 2009).
Furthermore, the literature features a variety of ethics-related job screening
techniques, such as integrity tests and background checks, for companies to
CSR and HRM for Workplace Integrity 447
screen candidates for ethics. Building on Collins’s work, table 22.1 features
a five-step process for evaluating the ethics of job candidates.
Whereas all the steps in table 22.1 aim at differentiating ethical job candidates from the unethical ones, the candidate’s level of integrity is specifically put to the test usually at the behavioral and informational review
stage. Integrity tests, also known as honesty tests, typically help the HR
department gather information pertaining to the candidate’s attitudes and
reactions/or behavior in relation to unethical scenarios in the workplace.
In this regard, the subject of theft and forgery are brought up. The most
widely known honesty tests include the Stanton Survey, the Reid Report
and the Personnel Selection Inventory (PSI). According to Stein and Murphy
(1993) integrity tests might follow one of four approaches: having the candidate admit to witnessing or actually performing an illegal or questionable
activity; having the candidate share his/her opinion regarding illegal or
questionable behavior; checking for personality traits related to dishonesty; or noting the candidate’s reaction to a hypothetical situation featuring
dishonest behavior.
Applying these simple candidate-screening techniques goes a long way in
enhancing integrity in the workplace. Moreover, this sends a clear message
to stakeholders, including customers, investors, the community and most
importantly future candidates that the firm’s standing on ethics matters.
Some studies (Ones, Viswesvaran, and Schmidt, 1993) have concluded that
individuals with high integrity are less likely to later engage in unethical
behavior such as theft, breaking rules, having high absenteeism or disciplinary problems, and cheating. Congratulations – you just have hired the
Table 22.1 Job screening techniques
Job Screen Technique – Step Explanation
1. Legal Ground Rules: gather and use information in a way that does not
discriminate against job candidates based on their race, color, religion, gender,
national origin, age, or disability.
2. Behavioral Information Review: collect behavioral information from resumes,
reference checks, background checks, and integrity tests.
3. Personality Traits: obtain measures for personality traits such as
conscientiousness, organizational citizenship behavior, social dominance, and
bullying.
4. Interview Questions: interview the job finalists about their responses to ethical
dilemmas experienced at previous workplaces and how they would respond
to ethical dilemmas experienced by current employees. In addition, clarify
inconsistencies and ambiguities that arise during the previous two job screening
steps.
5. Other Tests: where appropriate, conduct alcohol, drug, and polygraph tests as a
final test of the job finalist’s integrity.
448 Dima Jamali and Ali M. El Dirani
perfect job candidate – the person is experienced, intelligent, energetic and
has high integrity.
2 Building/institutionalizing workplace integrity
Despite having an effective screening procedure, many ethical employees
will find themselves at times unintentionally performing an ethical
breach or, worse, forced by their surroundings to behave unethically. For
this reason, effective screening, while necessary, is not enough. By having
a set of early unethical detectors put in place, HRM can contribute to
institutionalizing workplace integrity effectively within the workplace. In
this case, having a unified code of ethics is important because when an
organization hires an employee, it not only hires a person with unique
job skills, but also an individual with a particular moral code. Unethical
situations may also be contextually induced: in a 2007 survey conducted
by the Society for Human Resource Management and the Ethics Resource
Center (SHRM)1 24 per cent of the ethical breaches happened either on a
periodical, fairly often, or all-the-time basis (SHRM, 2007); of this 24 per
cent, the ethical breaches resulted as a response to: following the boss’s
directives (49 per cent); meeting overly aggressive financial or business
objectives (48 per cent); helping the organization survive (40 per cent);
meeting schedule pressures (35 per cent); and wanting to be a team player
(27 per cent).
In order to eliminate, or at best reduce, the chances of ethical breaches,
introducing a unified code of ethics and code of conduct is essential. These
two sets of documents can act as undisputed reference points across the
organization, providing clear guidelines for employees to apply when
making decisions pertaining to ethical breaches or otherwise (Collins,
2009). On one hand, the code of ethics describes what constitutes ethical
behavior in the context of the firm’s sense of morality and fairness, while
the code of conduct provides a clear description of what can be viewed
as acceptable behavior/unacceptable behavior. Both provide a sense of
direction and orientation for employees facing ethical dilemmas. These
documents serve to provide guidance about standards of acceptable and
professional behavior within the organization and reinforce the desired
conduct.
Furthermore, HRM can hold seminars and training sessions regarding
integrity and adherence to ethical and moral norms. During these, case
studies could be presented to employees and examples from recent or
current business scandals to sensitize employees and assert the importance
of integrity in avoiding such scandals. HRM can also open communication
with employees and reward whistle-blowers in order to motivate employees
to disclose any wrongdoing they are aware of, both directly or indirectly.
When employees feel that instead of being punished or dismissed when
they follow ethical standards honestly and transparently, they are being
CSR and HRM for Workplace Integrity 449
appreciated and recognized, they will be more confident to take decisions
on the basis of rightfulness and truthfulness. HR people might choose one
or two integrity values to promote and discuss in the workplace and get
employees engaged in driving and mobilizing ideas around these values. It
is not necessary to hold meetings for this purpose; it could be done through
intranet facilities or through internal media releases such as newspapers or
pamphlets. This is one way to make employees think about integrity values
and remind them that, besides their work performance, there is the concern
for ethics and morality in the workplace, which also needs to be placed front
and centre in terms of overall workplace identity.
3 Employees’ participation in community activities
Another area that draws on CSR–HRM interrelations and feeds the workplace integrity agenda is employees’ engagement in community activities,
or so-called “employee volunteering.” HRM can contribute to organizing
these programs, and promoting them among employees and sharing and
celebrating their success. These volunteer activities are beneficial for both
the employee as well as the community. On the employee level, volunteering programs increase employees’ morale and their sense of engagement with actions that have social and ethical dimensions, not just profit
and monetary gains. It reminds employees that their actions can have
important contributions in benefiting disadvantaged parties or people
within the society, such as orphans, elderly and the disabled. This is the
area within which CSR, HRM and integrity concerns intertwine for social
and ethical purposes. At the community level, employee volunteering
programs provide a skilled and talented volunteer pool, as employees devote
personal and professional skills to community needs, creating quantifiable social impact and helping bring community needs into focus. These
employee participation and community engagement activities are a very
good illustration of workplace integrity in action and represent a very good
actionable illustration of workplace integrity outside the boundaries of the
business organization.
Conclusion
In this chapter we embarked by illuminating the importance of workplace
integrity, both from the perspective of the individual and the perspective of
the organization. We then introduced CSR to our discussion, highlighting
the important synergies between an internal CSR agenda and workplace
integrity, especially its internal dimensions. Building on that we then
outlined the potential contribution of HR to the workplace integrity agenda,
making the case for better coordination between CSR and HR practitioners
to take the workplace integrity agenda to the next level. We, therefore, see
increasing convergence between CSR, HRM and workplace integrity, and
450 Dima Jamali and Ali M. El Dirani
that HR’s knowledge and expertise in dealing with ethical and social areas
are particularly essential for promoting the workplace integrity agenda.
Zooming in on HRM specifically, and on the potential contribution of
HRM to workplace integrity, we highlighted three important domains for
HRM’s contribution to the internal CSR and workplace integrity agendas,
namely: hiring employees possessing integrity, building and institutionalizing workplace integrity, and organizing employees’ participation in
CSR activities. The first domain is when HRM contributes to changing the
hiring criteria in order to allow an organization to harness integrity in its
prospective applicants. The second domain is when HRM contributes to
building a culture of integrity within the workplace through communicating about integrity in relation to its importance, complexity and principles, hence preparing proactive and moral employees who will become
future senior managers and decision makers. The final domain is when
HRM contributes to organizing employee volunteer activities that give
employees the opportunity to be engaged in programs that have noble
ethical and social orientation.
This chapter contributes to both theory and practice advancement
and development. On the theoretical level, we see that the study of the
synergies among workplace integrity, CSR and HRM could potentially
be translated into theoretical relationships and depicted within theoretical models that advance the knowledge and literature on these topics.
On the practice level, the areas that we suggested for HRM’s contribution
to workplace integrity represent guidance to both CSR and HRM practitioners for application. While the space given for us in this chapter is not
enough for exploring all areas and domains of synergy, intersection and
cross fertilization, in closing we reiterate the uncontested benefits from
effective collaboration between CSR and HRM practitioners who put the
workplace integrity agenda front and centre, which reflects positively on
overall employee well-being and empowerment. Indeed workplace integrity bolsters organizational commitment, employee satisfaction and loyalty
(Van Tulder, Van Wijk, and Kolk, 2009), which are important outcomes for
any organization, whether looking at this equation from an HRM or CSR
perspective.
Note
1. SHRM is the world’s largest association devoted to human resource management,
representing more than 250,000 members in over 140 countries (SHRM, 2007).
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