University of Twente Student Theses
Moral dilemmas of human resource professionals at the Dutch Ministry of Defence
Pacholke, S. (2016) Moral dilemmas of human resource professionals at the Dutch Ministry of Defence.
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| Abstract: | Nowadays, moral dilemmas are present in a great variety of different jobs and situations in life. A group that especially runs the risk to deal with moral dilemmas in organizational settings are human resource professionals. However, a high amount of research with regard to moral dilemmas uses theoretical moral dilemmas and there is little to no research done so far about the specific moral dilemmas that human resource professionals experience. Therefore, the recent research focuses on exploring and categorizing the content and the context of moral dilemmas that human resource professionals experience. In order to do so, three raters analysed narrative transcripts of moral decision making trainings of approximately 513 human resource professionals of the Dutch Ministry of Defence with the help of a coding scheme. In particular, it was researched which different topics of moral dilemmas were reported, if the dilemmas were rather impersonal or personal in nature and which deontological and teleological arguments were used to support the different action alternatives within the moral dilemmas. The degree of personal involvement and the division into teleological and deontological arguments were taken into account because these factors might have a serious impact on the decision making process. Basically, seven different types of moral dilemmas were identified: Entitlement to get advice; Insights/knowledge about sensitive data; Contradicting/inappropriate official guidelines vs. own beliefs/values; Scope of responsibility; Hierarchical pressure; Organizational interest vs. individual interest; and Impartiality. 57.3% of the 231 analysed cases of moral dilemmas were rated as rather impersonal and 42.7% of the cases as rather personal. Also, a variety of different contradicting official guidelines (deontological arguments) concerning human resource professionals at the Dutch Ministry of Defence were identified, as well as contradicting possible consequences (teleological arguments) of the moral decisions made by the human resource professionals. |
| Item Type: | Essay (Bachelor) |
| Faculty: | BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences |
| Subject: | 77 psychology |
| Programme: | Psychology BSc (56604) |
| Link to this item: | https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/70080 |
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