A MULTILEVEL MODEL OF ETHICAL BEHAVIOR AND CORPORATE GOVERNANCE IN HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

Abstract

Ethical conduct and corporate governance, when applied to Human Resource Management (HRM), are a serious necessity to organizational sustainability and accountable decision-making. The study deals with the issue of the beneficial impact of ethical conduct in HRM on corporate governance and the degree of guarantee that the governance processes provide to ethical conduct during recruitment, training, and performance appraisals. The study applied a quantitative survey in the form of a mixed-methods research design and content analysis to gather data, and further analyzed it with the help of Regression Analysis, Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), and ANOVA. The statistical findings indicate that there is a positive significant correlation between ethical HRM behavior and corporate governance effectiveness (β = 0.45, p = 0.03), and the SEM fit indices (CFI = 0.92, RMSEA = 0.07) produce some confirmation that ethical HRM practices do increase the level of organizational transparency and accountability, the results of the ANOVA (F (2, 87) = 3.54, p = 0.02) show that the differences in ethical HR decision-making exist in organizations In addition, content analysis reveals that 70% of organizations that have strong governance structures report positive ethics based HR decision making processes. The research arrives at the conclusion that, as much as ethical practice in HRM improves the success of corporate governance, effective governance systems are necessary in promoting integrity in the fundamental HR practices. Such results indicate that companies should cease to focus on procedural change and adopt a multilevel framework that incorporates both ethical leadership and structural responsibility to reduce the hierarchy bottleneck and bring about long-term organizational success.