Ethics‑Oriented HRM Systems, Moral Attentiveness, and Deviant Workplace Behavior
Explore the impact of ethics-oriented HRM systems and moral attentiveness on deviant workplace behavior. Understand how ethical practices can enhance organizational culture and employee conduct.
QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH
Realyn Manalo
5/16/20253 min read
Modern workplaces are facing growing ethical challenges that extend beyond compliance and into the behavioral fabric of organizations. As companies adopt technology-driven HR systems and navigate increasingly diverse workforces, traditional approaches to mitigating deviant workplace behavior may fall short. Ethics-oriented Human Resource Management (HRM) systems have emerged as a critical strategy to foster moral behavior, yet their practical impact remains under-explored, especially in hybrid, remote, and multicultural work environments. With rising incidents of workplace misconduct, from minor violations to serious ethical breaches, there is an urgent need to understand how employee traits—like moral attentiveness—interact with organizational systems to prevent deviant behavior. This topic matters not only to HR professionals and business leaders but also to public policy advocates aiming to build cultures of integrity in both private and public sectors.
Who Can Use These Topics
This research is ideal for students and professionals pursuing the following courses or strands:
College Programs:
BS in Human Resource Management
BS in Psychology
BS in Business Administration – Major in Management or Organizational Behavior
BS in Public Administration
BS in Criminology
BS in Social Work
Senior High School Strands:
Humanities and Social Sciences (HUMSS)
Accountancy, Business, and Management (ABM)
General Academic Strand (GAS)
Why This Topic Needs Research
The link between ethics-driven HR systems and deviant workplace behavior is gaining attention, but key gaps remain:
Limited research across sectors and cultures: While ethics-oriented HRM systems reduce deviant behavior through moral attentiveness, their performance in remote or digitally enabled environments remains unclear (Shahzad et al., 2024).
Overlooked mediating factors in leadership studies: Research confirmed the role of organizational justice but didn’t include moral attentiveness or assess gender diversity and private-sector variation (Tufan et al., 2023).
E-HRM's unintended consequences unaddressed: Social networking under E-HRM was linked to deviance, yet the mitigating role of digital ethics training and culture was not tested (Nayak et al., 2022).
Lack of cross-level behavior frameworks: While top management insights defined unethical conduct, interactions between HR systems and individual-level traits were not examined (Jha & Singh, 2023).
Public sector ethics understudied at the individual level: Existing work focused on policy and governance, neglecting how ethics-oriented HRM interacts with employees’ personal values in government organizations (Rojak, 2024).
Constructive deviance misunderstood: The dual nature of deviant behavior (e.g., whistleblowing vs. rule-breaking) was conceptually outlined, but not empirically linked to ethics-oriented HRM or moral attentiveness (Alina et al., 2024).
Culture-specific models are lacking: While workplace culture affects deviance, few studies tested how HRM ethics systems and moral attentiveness interact in culturally diverse organizations (Bujang et al., 2024).
Feasibility & Challenges by Target Group
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References
Alina, P. I., Cimino, A., & Coniglio, I. M. (2024). A business ethics perspective on constructive deviant behavior in organizations: A literature review and an integrated framework proposal. Business Ethics, the Environment & Responsibility, 1-20.
Bujang, M. A. B., Kamaluddin, M. R., Mat Basir, S., Munusamy, S., & Jhee Jiow, H. (2024). Impacts of workplace culture on deviant workplace behavior: a systematic review. Sage Open, 14(2), 21582440241247976.
Jha, J. K., & Singh, M. (2023). Who cares about ethical practices at workplace? A taxonomy of employees’ unethical conduct from top management perspective. International Journal of Organizational Analysis, 31(2), 317-339.
Nayak, S., Budhwar, P., Pereira, V., & Malik, A. (2021). Exploring the dark-side of E-HRM: a study of social networking sites and deviant workplace behavior. International Journal of Manpower, 43(1), 89-115.
Rojak, J. A. (2024). Public Ethics and HR Governance in Public Administration. Bulletin of Science, Technology and Society, 3(3), 7-13.
Shahzad, K., Hong, Y., Muller, A., DeSisto, M., & Rizvi, F. (2024). An investigation of the relationship between ethics-oriented HRM systems, moral attentiveness, and deviant workplace behavior. Journal of Business Ethics, 192(3), 591-608.
Tufan, C., Namal, M. K., Arpat, B., Yesil, Y., & Mert, I. S. (2023). The mediating effect of organizational justice perception on the relationship between ethical leadership and workplace deviant behaviors. Sustainability, 15(2), 1342.