Journal of Business Ethics 111 (1):85-96 (2012)
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Abstract |
This article examines the potential for moral agency in human resource management practice. It draws on an ethnographic study of human resource managers in a global organization to provide a theorized account of situated moral agency. This account suggests that within contemporary organizations, institutional structures—particularly the structures of Anglo-American market capitalism— threaten and constrain the capacity of HR
managers to exercise moral agency and hence engage in ethical behaviour. The contextualized explanation of HR management action directly addresses the question of whether HRM is inherently unethical. The discussion
draws on MacIntyre’s conceptualization of moral agency within contemporary
social structures. In practice, HR managers embody roles that may not be wholly compartmentalized. Alternative institutional structures can provide HR managers with a vocabulary of motives for people-centred HRM and widen
the scope for the exercising of moral agency, when enacted within reflective relational spaces that provide milieus for critical questioning of logics and values. This article aims to contribute to and extend debate on whether HRM can ever be ethical, and provide a means of reconnecting
business ethics with longstanding concerns in critical management studies.
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Keywords | human resource management ethics relational spaces critical realism |
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DOI | 10.1007/s10551-012-1440-1 |
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References found in this work BETA
After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory.Alasdair C. MacIntyre - 1983 - University of Notre Dame Press.
Structure, Agency and the Internal Conversation.Margaret S. Archer - 2003 - Cambridge University Press.
The Social Desirability Response Bias in Ethics Research.Donna M. Randall & Maria F. Fernandes - 1991 - Journal of Business Ethics 10 (11):805 - 817.
Pinto Fires and Personal Ethics: A Script Analysis of Missed Opportunities. [REVIEW]Dennis A. Gioia - 1992 - Journal of Business Ethics 11 (5-6):379 - 389.
View all 17 references / Add more references
Citations of this work BETA
Psychology and Business Ethics: A Multi-level Research Agenda.Gazi Islam - 2020 - Journal of Business Ethics 165 (1):1-13.
Moral Agents in Organisations? The Significance of Ethical Organisation Culture for Middle Managers’ Exercise of Moral Agency in Ethical Problems.Minna-Maaria Hiekkataipale & Anna-Maija Lämsä - 2019 - Journal of Business Ethics 155 (1):147-161.
Precarious Professionals: (In)Secure Identities and Moral Agency in Neocolonial Context.Joanne Jones & Kelly Thomson - 2017 - Journal of Business Ethics 146 (4):747-770.
Deepening Ethical Analysis in Business Ethics.Michelle Greenwood & R. Edward Freeman - 2018 - Journal of Business Ethics 147 (1):1-4.
The Challenges of Algorithm-Based HR Decision-Making for Personal Integrity.Ulrich Leicht-Deobald, Thorsten Busch, Christoph Schank, Antoinette Weibel, Simon Schafheitle, Isabelle Wildhaber & Gabriel Kasper - 2019 - Journal of Business Ethics 160 (2):377-392.
View all 15 citations / Add more citations
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