RESPONSIBLE ENTREPRENEURSHIP VISION DEVELOPMENT AND ETHICS

Rediscovering ethics and the importance of human resource management… 277
ests and change appealing to diverse stakeholders through means not always related to market
logic (Harris, Sapienza & Bowie, 2009). The relationship between ethics and
entrepreneurship seems to be problematic and contradictory. The entrepreneurs are regarded
as creative innovators and praised for their contribution in developing society by creating new
products and employment opportunities, spreading new ideas and values. Thereby, stakeholders
and observers tend to criticize the entrepreneurs because of being willing to compromise
moral values. Some ethical issues tend to emerge in the context of entrepreneurship: the organizational
norms that offer moral guidance should drive ethical judgement capabilities of the
entrepreneurs; developing new business can drive the entrepreneur to do almost anything to
succeed. According to the principle of beneficence that prescribes to actively do good emphasizing
the responsibility to contribute positively to social change, the entrepreneurship is necessarily
linked to ethics because of being part of the solution with regard to social and
environmental issues (Fisscher, Frenkel, Lurie & Nijhof, 2005).
Managing human resources for developing entrepreneurship
and organization
The achievement of competitive advantages relies on human resources, on the legs and
capabilities of people involved to contribute for entrepreneurial project. Human resource systems
may be a means to promulgating an ethical culture in that ethics pervade selection and
staffing, performance appraisal, compensation, and retention decisions (Buckley et.al., 2001).
Human resource systems should serve some strategic objectives influencing employee knowledge,
skills and abilities, employee motivation and effort, the opportunities for employees to
contribute (Lepak, Liao, Chung & Harden, 2006). Human resources play a significant role
by helping creation of Ricardian rents, as component of organizational capabilities that generate
nontraditional Ricardian rents, and source of technological and managerial innovation
as to contribute to produce entrepreneurial rents (Chadwick & Dabu, 2009). New organizational
forms tend to create new roles enhancing the status of human resource management
(Miles & Snow, 1980). Human resources management practices support to build an environment
encouraging cooperation and development of human and social capital. Human resource
management practices should link coherently with business needs of the firm. Human resource
policies and practices should be conceived and interpreted as behavioral patterns for sustaining
human resources capabilities (Kamoche, 1996). Successful entrepreneurship also requires
specific skills to organize and manage the activities associated with innovation and change.
Human resources help to sustain the competitive advantage being strategically significant as
components of organizational capabilities that help to generate entrepreneurial rents and source
of technological and managerial innovation. Corporate entrepreneurship relying on the ability
of an organization to learn through exploration of new knowledge and exploitation of existing
knowledge involves organizational learning and implies collaboration and individual
commitment that human resource management practices can influence and increase as an
important driver of success. Firms seek to fit human resource management practices, employee
skills, and employee behaviors to the immediate competitive needs of the firm as dictated by
the strategy. These practices and systems exert influence on innovation and tend to encourage
internal and external knowledge acquisition and integration, contributing to growth and
survival of new firms. For example, the incentive compensation is used in high tech firms