1. How far was Britishstores’ original employment policy ‘ethical’ in modern terms? What sort of ethical principles did it draw upon? Which elements would be acceptable today, and which would not? 

2. How justified was the decision to prevent trade union organisation and is it still appropriate today? Consider the arguments for and against and the principles involved. 

3. Construct an ethical case in favour of the flexible firm solution proposed by the director of marketing, explaining which principles you draw on. 

4. Which stakeholder groups should take priority when push comes to shove? What duty, if any, does the company owe to its employees and shareholders in a modern free market society?

The field of Employment and Business Ethics is a complex and novel one for most Human Resource Management (HRM) students. It involves new concepts and ways of thinking about personnel issues. The main chapter attempts to provide a condensed, introductory overview of the field, while stressing that Ethics is not a separate issue to be pegged onto HRM but part-andparcel of most decisions that companies and managers make concerning employees. I also stress that there is no one easy ‘right answer’, since this subject necessarily involves political and other value judgements about what is the ‘right thing to do’. Students will tend to use commonsense terms like ‘ethical’ and ‘fair’ as if everybody agrees what these mean. In truth, as the chapters argues, much ethical debate revolves around competing views of what is ‘just’, ‘right’ and so on. So, there should be plenty of opportunities for lively debate and the objective of teaching should be to develop this student engagement and reflection on the employment ethics issues. This author has his own views on these ethical issues, based on his upbringing and emotional response to topics, tempered – hopefully – by reason and evidence. But the objective of the chapter is not to teach the ‘right answer’ to an ethical problem that can be learnt by rote, but to equip the student to engage in a free and open debate, using established ethical theories from moral and political philosophy. So, the assumption should be that the students enter the class with their own moral views, also based on upbringing, political views and perhaps religious background. The chapter suggests how theory, reason and evidence can be used to refine, develop and sometimes rethink these assumptions. While the author believes that we can reach conclusions to ethical debates, the focus here is on learning the process of ethical thinking and debate in a liberal democratic society.