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Corporate Psychopathy: Can ‘Search and Destroy’ and ‘Hearts and Minds’ Military Metaphors Inspire HRM Solutions?

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Abstract

Corporate psychopathy (CP) thrives perhaps as the most significant threat to ethical corporate behaviour around the world. We argue that Human Resources Management (HRM) professionals should formulate strategic solutions metaphorically by balancing what strategic military planners famously call ‘Search and Destroy’ (SD) and ‘Hearts and Minds’ (HM) counter-terrorist strategy. We argue that these military metaphors offer creative inspiration to help academics and practitioners theorise CP in richer, more reflective and more balanced and complementary ways. An appreciation of both metaphors is likely to favour the use of hybrid strategies comprising SD and HM elements, which may provide the best HRM solutions to CP for the same reasons as the military now considers parallel hybrid solutions optimal for combating terrorist and guerrilla insurgency.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Management, University of Southampton, Room 4045, Building 2, Southampton, SO17 1BJ, UK

    Alasdair J. Marshall, Melanie J. Ashleigh & Denise Baden

  2. Faculty of Management, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa

    Udechukwu Ojiako

  3. Adam Smith Business School, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK

    Marco G. D. Guidi

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  1. Alasdair J. Marshall
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  2. Melanie J. Ashleigh
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  3. Denise Baden
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  4. Udechukwu Ojiako
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  5. Marco G. D. Guidi
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Correspondence to Alasdair J. Marshall.

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Marshall, A.J., Ashleigh, M.J., Baden, D. et al. Corporate Psychopathy: Can ‘Search and Destroy’ and ‘Hearts and Minds’ Military Metaphors Inspire HRM Solutions?. J Bus Ethics 128, 495–504 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-014-2117-8

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