Contents

• Introduction 2
• The Organization and the work practice 3
• Government Policies, legislation and the Revolution of the 1960s 4
• HR Practices 7
• Conclusion 12
• References 13

Description

Organizations have grown and evolved since the second industrial revolution of the late 19th century. The efforts and dedication of several researchers such as H W Heinrich and more recently James Reason have brought in safe practices and methodologies to the work place. Hence there has been a drastic reduction in the number of accidents and fatalities at the workplace. Along with safe practices, ethical practices have also taken shape with the elimination of child labor, exploitation of workers through low wages, etc which have helped create a safe and satisfying environment at the workplace. These practices have turned into laws that are mandatory to be followed by organizations and rightly so. However, the effective implementation of such legislation becomes a challenge in some cases. Ex, if a legislation requires the use of helmets by all construction workers at a site, it is easy to implement and pretty straightforward to monitor, but if a law is open to interpretation such as in a retail market, if it is required that the customer must not be mislead about a product, all the conditions and situations of misleading the customer cannot be cited in the law and therefore implementation becomes difficult. At this juncture, the courts play an important role and must be consistent in their judgments. Such cased will go to court only when they are challenged by the government or some pressure group, etc and some organizations can go Scot free for several years and even decades. This can be tackled mainly be self regulation i.e. the internal units of the company such as the HR function, etc must monitor the practices followed within the company. Although monitoring from the government and dedicated groups can help in some situations, self regulation seems to be the long term solution (Park, 2005).