Disrupting Misaligned Values and Actions in HRD: A Consideration of the Ethical Issues

What dilemmas emerge when misalignment exists between individual and organization values? What ethical challenges do such value disconnects create? What is HRD’s ethical responsibility in addressing such disconnection? How does HRD help create intentional conditions for the system to examine itself and see how its espoused theories contradict its theories-in-use? This chapter explores misaligned values, particularly in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. It questions HRD’s role in creating or correcting such disconnection and troubles the ethical implications. The chapter will delve into these ethical and value contradictions and consider how the field can help create more continuity in value that is consistent with action in hopes of creating a new, transformed, ethical “normal.”