HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

AND

ETHICAL PROFESSIONALISM IN CORPORATE SECTOR

-         A case observed from Prabhu Bank Ltd.

Corporate sectors of every country represents a part of dynamic economy. Accompanying the economy for social welfare through accountable governance and ethical values of management towards its stakeholders is called the responsible business conduct. Therefore, corporate sectors cannot only be defined being screws and jacks of an economic system rather should be considered as the drivers as well. These drivers completely rely upon the managers who unconditionally owes moral values, responsibility and multi-fold features apart from corporate mission and vision to stimulate limited resources as input and achieve desired outcome. Managers’ overall spheres (both intrinsic and extrinsic) are derived by the corporate policy in which the Human Resource (HR) system plays an important role. The HR Management System is a part of whole organizational structure guided and implemented by executives, managers, and stakeholders to attain various objectives of an organization. HR System is only such unit consisting of manager as a leader, therefore, in the eyes of such managers inputs are employees and employees are assets from whom generation of output is possible. Such inputs are limited under the guidance of limited policy formulated by the administration. So, managing employee assets is a very complicated task.

Human Resource Management is commonly understood as the management of employees within an organization that includes from the need and procedures of recruitment, job analysis, placement, allocation and assignment, succession planning and retirement and so on. In a simpler term, Human Resource Management is managing persons and their placement. Given the conditional fact that there may be numerous standard definitions; the genuine understanding of Human Resource Management are only two things:

i) Person Who Works

ii) Person Where S/He Works

This is how each micro level enterprise to the biggest corporate houses run.

As part of the ethical HR Management System of the corporate sector, ethics is very hard to define and is rather a vague term because in an organization where hundreds and thousands of employees work together under the same policy, managers always go short circuit. Each day HR Managers are challenged by their job because controlling the sense of human beings and using them to attain corporate mission is difficult. Not only difficult it is an abusive work to handle grievances and dissatisfaction on various grounds. Thus, management of such an abusive work is not a joke. Here managers should be tactful, unbiased, sometimes restrictive, and sometimes liberal to arrange every working mechanism to comply values of every blueprint policy of an organization.

During press meet and Annual General Meetings all corporate house managers often announce with an honor and pride that every success and outcomes is the collective effort of their valued employees. But in the grounds of reality, managers owe credit worthiness because they continuously push up employees for the maintenance of compliance, accountability, and ethos of set mission, vision and values of their organization. As such, one should understand that every managers are the part of organizational system and administration guided by the Human Resource Framework (HRF). The morale and efficiency of every wise managers leads result – oriented, happy employees with relatively progressive outcome. On this regard, it also should not be overlooked that low income earners also have equally efficient managers and happy employees. The work culture and environment in practice plays a vital role in the corporate sector.

Ethics are moral principles that governs a person’s behavior. While conducting any activity person’s behavior and intuition are tested during work accomplishment. The intuition and behavior is a moral principle called ethics. Therefore, professional ethics of an employee may be characterized by the honesty, integrity, accountability, confidentiality, and discipline both inside and outside the organization. Professional ethics encompass personal, organizational and corporate standard of behavior. So, HR Management System are supposed to set professional framework for each employee however there is no certain limitations on being ethically professional because the aim, objectives, nature of aggression, public and family relations of each employee differs from one another. Even it contrasts with the set framework. In the ethical professional environment, abstract factors like,

i) Conflict of Interest

ii) Corporate Politics

iii) Intentions and Motives

plays a crucial role for maintaining a peaceful working environment. These factors are uncontrollable through limited policy but can be administered through corporate disciplinary action. Every employee’s personal life and periphery differs from each other. Intentions and vested motives to influence any one employee’s personal behavior, character, domestic life and freedom, biasness, unwanted affairs, harassment, etc. does not fall under the magnifying glass of HR Managers therefore in corporate houses such things should be magnified in order to minimize negativity. This discipline would then only encourage better productivity and satisfied employees. Similarly, corporate politics inside an organization give rise to unconditional chaos concerning favoritism, biased positioning, placement recommendation, promotions and delegation of authority to wrong employee resulting unethical professional practice. This is a loophole in the organizational system, thus whole management structure and division of work will be affected. Every individual has their own reason and potentiality to perform any task given. Their techniques, capabilities, interest, factor of motivation, and such numerous abstract qualities differs creating conflict of interest if the same task has been divided among individual employees. Sometimes greed, egotism, attitudes and undue influence from one to other can also create conflict of interest. Generally Executives and HR Managers overlook these abstract factors which may be the root cause of organizational failure.

In context to the banking industry in Nepal, from the recent banking practice, merger and integration have brought a lot of changes and challenge to the HR Management System. The set up rules and regulations, policies, manuals, practices, environment and diversities of human resources from each institution varies from one to another. Obviously, in the course of integration, the two or more different set-up environment bringing under same roof is one most complicated task. There, one’s resources and practices does not complement to the other. Systematization and harmonization to stimulate both employees and work for common objectives has become an absolute challenge even now and then; the set of placement, delegation of authority, training employees, developing job potentiality and skills and so on to reform management structure should be tactful and justified. Actually, in private banks accountability of Board of Directors and management is observed being limited with some policy lacking to restrict them until whole integration process is completely. Handling over the keys for some returns can be interpreted as only the transfer of ownership, ethically, it should not be the total transfer of risk and responsibility. If so is continued, this sort of malpractice creates monopoly and coalition among executives, management personnel, shareholders and employees. Similarly, ethical practice at banks have to be optimally implemented so that wrong and incapable employees are not provided with authority. In case of excess and short number of employees in one department does not also mean to dump at another department. The degree of sensitiveness of a department, capacity of employee to respond to such sensitiveness, confidential, knowledgeable and skilled employee at the right place may be overlooked due to dumping practice even though it is managed for short period of time. Frequent change and transfer of employees also does not reflect managed work culture. Therefore, abstract factors that are hidden but affects environment pertaining to conflict of interest, intentional motives, corporate politics, workplace affairs, sexual harassment, one’s dominance and influence over other colleague, chaos and corporate rumors breed does not symbolize ethical practice and organizational culture professional.

In real practice, above abstract factors played negative role in management system to understand their human resource in proper place. Despite organizational effort and outcome being revealed from financial figures be progressive or regressive but ethics in corporate profession is certainly a question mark to the HR Managers, Executives, Department Chiefs and even employees. Even though, policies and frameworks so enacted limits corporate mechanisms in place but satisfied employees will be found to be relatively in a lower number. Meanwhile, favoritism and strong influence over colleagues for vested motive may result into authority delegation in the wrong hand. For better corporate management structure such malpractice should be abolished at utmost level through disciplinary action. Employees to their colleagues should also be reliable, honest and discipline rather provoking and poking into others personal life. Satisfied employees always manages personal and professional balance with high integrity. Thus HR Managers should be very much careful while handling human resources for better and ethical professional culture at every corporate sectors.