In particular, I define moral principles to be the guidelines people use to make moral judgment – to decide what is ethical and what is unethical. In this article, I examine five moral principles that have been widely studied by philosophers (Pojman, 1989; Rachels, 1999; Velasuez, 1998). These moral principles are also commonly used by people, even though they may not be aware of the formal arguments used by philosophers in developing and studying the principles. Before turning a description of the moral principles and examples of their application to human resource management ethical dilemmas, I next discuss whether it is even meaningful to search for universal moral principles, or whether the theory of ethical relativism is correct.