Ethics in Employee Selection: What You Want to Know but are Afraid to Ask

摘要

Despite the fact that diversity management in the workplace has been regulated by equal employment opportunity legislation for decades, the topic of ethics in employee selection has not been widely examined. It can be argued that most managers’ modus operandi considers what is legal the same as what is ethical. This narrow mindset coupled with the dominant utilitarian view in decision making may explain why corporate managers around the world are conflicted when it comes to making ethical hiring decisions. For example, according to a recent survey of college graduates with incomes in the top quarter of their occupational group, forty-three percent of British respondents, fifty-six percent of Americans and sixty percent of Swedes continue to agree with Milton Friedman's classic 1970 [1] assertion “the social responsibility of business is to increase its profit” [2]. Given such survey results, it is not surprising to see that in order to satisfy multiple corporate stakeholders, managers are prone to making decisions that may be legal (i.e., hiring based on merit), but not ethical (i.e., poaching talent from competitors, making it an unfair hiring practice).