Fidelity and Integrity in the Relationship between Employee and Employer
Fidelity and Integrity in the Relationship between Employee and Employer

Summary/Abstract: The present text aims at a conceptual analysis of the legal and moral bases involved in building and understanding the employment relationship between employer and employee from the point of view of the idea of employee fidelity to the employer. That is why the text contains, on the one hand, a legal analysis of the presumptive primacy of the employer's interest in the employee in the partnership assumed by the employment contract, especially when the employee's obligation to fidelity to the employee is associated with the idea of loyalty, and on the other hand, the article goes beyond the legal framework of the employment relationship to that of the social and moral philosophy that the employee-employer relationship assumes. For example, in the core of the moral philosophy analysis is debated the theoretical basis on which a tacit assumption of the organizational values that the employee accepts by signing the employment contract can be based and by virtue of which the employer in turn can justifiably request from the employee a fidelity and loyalty beyond the explicit provisions of the employment contract. Finally, the article tries to show that an integrative concept such as integrity, borrowed as an extension from the field of business ethics (codes of ethics and professional integrity), can be a useful solution in the balanced distribution and understanding of obligations and permissions between employee and employer in the case of the unwritten moral area of the employment contract.

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