Thomas Klikauer (Auth.) - Seven Moralities of Human Resource Management-Palgrave Macmillan UK (2014) PDF

Seven Moralities of Human Resource Management
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Seven Moralities of Human
Resource Management
Thomas Klikauer
University of Western Sydney, Australia
© Thomas Klikauer 2014
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2014 978-1-137-45576-5
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Klikauer, Thomas, 1962–
Seven moralities of human resource management / Thomas Klikauer.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Personnel management--Moral and ethical aspects. 2. Business ethics.

I. Title.
HF5549.K546 2014
174'.4–dc23
2014024822
This book is dedicated to
Belinda Kwomo
Belinda Kwomo was a child’s name that came up on http://www.

poverty.com/ dying from a preventable illness, starvation, and poverty
at the time this book was concluded. About 25,000 people die every
day of hunger or hunger-related causes, according to the United
Nations. This is one person every three and a half seconds, as you can
see on the poverty.com website. Unfortunately, it is children who die
most often (www.poverty.com).
Royalties from this book will be donated to Oxfam (http://www.
oxfam.org/).
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Contents
List of Figures and Tables ix
Acknowledgements x
Prologue: The Seven Moralities of Human Resource Management 1

Kohlberg and the seven levels of morality 3
The ascendancy of the seven moralities of human resource 6
management
Human resource management and seven moralities 12
Introduction: Human Resource Management and Seven Moral 23

Philosophies
Seven HRM moralities and seven moral philosophies 38
Chapter 1 Morality 1: Disciplinary Action, Obedience, and 44
Punishment
Human resource management and obedience 51
Soliciting the cooperation of victims 63
Chapter 2 Morality 2: Performance Management and Rewards 69

HRM, intuitionism, and subjectivism 75
Hobbes’s ethics and HRM 77
Friedrich Nietzsche and the morality of HRM 83
Chapter 3 Morality 3: Organisational Culture and Workplace 91

Training
Aristotle and virtue ethics 93
HRM and modern virtue ethics 103
Chapter 4 Morality 4: The Legal Context, Fairness, and Equality 114

HRM’s policies and regulations 115
HRM and organisational order 128
Chapter 5 Morality 5: HRM and Utilitarianism 138

The happiness principle as HRM’s organisational 142
objective
HRM morality and Bentham and Mill 145
HRM’s morality and E. G. Moore 157
vii
viii Contents
Chapter 6 Morality 6: HRM and Universalism 161

Kant’s ethical philosophy: Means, human 171
resources, and ends
Chapter 7 Morality 7: Sustainability and the Natural 185

Environment
HRM morality and social ecology 201
HRM’s morality and environmental ethics 207
Chapter 8 Conclusion: Seven Moralities of HRM Examining 210

HRM Textbooks and Beyond
Seven HRM moralities and seven HRM areas 216
Assessing HRM’s overall level of morality 224
Notes 235
Bibliography 303
Index 357
List of Figures and Tables
Figures
P.1 From punishing HRM to holistic HRM 10

8.1 Seven HRM moralities in historical perspective 212
8.2 Seven HRM moralities in society and moral philosophy 225
8.3 HRM’s morality and areas of prime concerns 227
Tables
P.1 Seven stages of morality: General moral orientations 8

P.2 Seven countries and seven current HRM textbooks 20
I.1 Seven moralities and HRM’s motives 24
I.2 Seven HRM-moralities and seven levels of rationality 32
I.3 The structural elements of the seven moral philosophies 35
1.1 HRM’s golden rules for moral disengagement 59
3.1 HRM fixation on performance 93
3.2 HRM, employees, and Aristotle’s virtue ethics 99
7.1 The use of the term ‘environment’ by HRM 186
8.1 Subject areas of HRM textbooks 217
8.2 Eight highly relevant subject areas for HRM 218
8.3 The morality of textbook subjects 220
ix
Acknowledgements
My thanks go to those who have, in one way or another, assisted me in

writing this book: Roy Adams, Monica Belcourt, Richard Berta
(IT@UWS), Peter Boxall, Neil Bruton, Melinde Coetzee, David Collings,
Jarrod Haar, Bruce Kaufman, Michael Marchington, Rasoava
Rijamampianina, Gert Roodt, Aaron Schat, Randall Schuler, Hermann
Schwind, Bill Sewell, Scott Snel, and Conrad Viedge. In addition, many
of my postgraduate students, as current and former HR managers, pro-
vided unique insights into the reality of working in Human Resource
Management. I would like to express my gratitude to my friend
Khalida Malik, my wife Katja, and my children Noah and Lara. My
appreciation also goes to the German Hans-Böckler-Foudation for sup-
porting my studies in Germany, the USA, and Great Britain. Finally,
I would like to thank Palgrave’s team, especially Virginia Thorp, Liz
Barlow, Ursula Gavin, and, above all, Shirley Tan.
x
Prologue: The Seven Moralities of
Human Resource Management
Seven Moralities of Human Resource Management moves the key contours

of an earlier book, Seven Management Moralities (2012), forward to a
new field. However, it does not seek to ‘reinvent the wheel’.1 Since the
basic structure and conceptual framework of the present book closely
follow that presented in Seven Management Moralities, providing a sub-
stantial introduction to Lawrence Kohlberg’s model of morality, it
carries forward these introductory explanations as well as the previous
framework.2 At the same time, this book is designed to apply an estab-
lished framework to human resource management (HRM), viewed as
‘the human side of the enterprise’ (McGregor 1960 & 2006).
Nevertheless, in contrast to Seven Management Moralities, it does not
focus on general management but on an organisational sub-field. As a
consequence, it is structured in such a way that it reflects on key HRM
themes such as recruitment and selection, performance management,
occupational health and safety, employment relations, rewards, and
remuneration.
Although HRM has tended to hold itself aloof from concern with
business ethics and ethics in general, it remains intimately linked to
morality (Kant) and societal ethics (Hegel).3 In contrast to other man-
agement areas such as operations management, accounting and
finance, and marketing, HRM is privileged to have the most direct rela-
tionship with people outside of the four key management areas. Such
human-to-human relationships – and with them human morality –
developed a very long time ago. Ever since human beings left behind
animalistic ape-to-ape relationships and the ‘animal kingdom’ and
moved towards group- and tribe-based human-to-human relationships,
their interactions became places of increasingly more sophisticated
social behaviours that involved the development of moral codes. These
1
2 Seven Moralities of Human Resource Management
codes told humans how to behave and how to distinguish right from
wrong. As a consequence, morality remains intimately linked to all
forms of human-to-human contact. HRM is no exception. At some
point in human history people began to contemplate and study their
human-to-human relationships and moral behaviour in more struc-
tured ways. Leaving superstitions, religion, invented irrational belief-
systems and unsubstantiated mythologies behind, a field of more
systematic contemplation emerged that eventually became known as
moral philosophy.4
In historical terms, one of the earliest surviving written moral codes
was created by the Egyptian ruling class around the third millennium
BCE. These writings stipulated two key rules: ‘those who have bread are
urged to share it with the hungry’ and ‘honesty is the best policy’. The
codification of Babylonian Law by Hammurabi (1728–1686 BCE) set
forth principles such as ‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth’. But the
‘eye-for-an-eye’ rule applied only to victims who were members of the
patrician class. If it concerned the eye of a commoner, the punishment
was a fine of a quantity of silver (Singer 1985:5). Hence class relations
played a role in early ethics just as they do today. Similarly, HRM in
organisations from small and medium enterprises to large multi-
national food corporations such as Nestlé, Unilever, McDonalds, etc.
does not share its ‘bread with the hungry’. Every day about one billion
people go to sleep hungry while a similar number are willingly exposed
to obesity. Secondly, Babylon’s ‘honesty is the best policy’ is also
broken by HRM because it is neither open nor truthful as it operates, in
many cases, behind the backs of employees when recruitment deci-
sions are kept confidential, when wages, salaries and managerial
bonuses are not made public and when plans for dismissal are cooked
up between general management and HRM long before the victims
know about it (Schrijvers 2004). This has reached such a level that a US
car manufacturer’s ‘open door policy’ became an international joke
(Moore 1989) while Macklin (2007) urges HR managers to ‘always
remember the lies you have told yesterday’. Quite apart from these
more current HRM issues, moral codes and conflicting behaviours have
a long history (Afzalur 2010:158 & 169).
Once set in motion, an early version of ‘code-vs.-reality’ contradic-
tions and class relations of morality – or what George Orwell (1945)
called ‘some are more equal than others’ – gained currency.5 This
seems to have defined a class-based approach just as Karl Marx once
noticed: ‘the ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its
ruling class’.6 This almost Nietzschean view has been a sign of morality
Prologue 3
throughout human history and, as it still appears today, remains virtu-

ally unchallenged.7 In line with history, Greece’s foremost moral
philosopher, Aristotle (384–322 BCE) thought it was moral to own
slaves while medieval, feudalism-stabilising, religious, and church-
based morality legitimised peasants bound to soil and denigrated
women by allotting them an animal-like non-status (DeCrane 2004).
Today’s capitalist business ethics legitimises charging interest on bor-
rowed capital and surplus extraction of workers as perfectly moral.8 As
the German philosopher Hegel (1770–1831) wrote, morality ‘must not
be considered…in isolation but rather must be seen as a dependent
movement in totality, in its connection with all the other determina-
tions which make up the character of a nation and an epoch’.9 Almost
from the start of written records, morality has had an intimate connec-
tion to history and was used to legitimise those who rule over those
who are ruled. In other words, ‘from the point of view of the low, no
historic change has ever meant much more than a change in the name
of their masters’ (Orwell 1949:210).10 This remains the case when
moral philosophy, individual morality (Kant), social ethics of a moral
life [Hegel’s Sittlichkeit], and meta-ethics are concerned.11 All of them
have their place inside Kohlberg’s framework of morality.12
Kohlberg and the seven levels of morality
The concept of morality put forward by American ethicist, philo-

sopher, and psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg (1927–1987) delivers a
comprehensive and ordered framework covering virtually all of moral
philosophy.13 It has been applied to all forms of ‘human-to-human’
interaction and most notably this includes HRM.14 Kohlberg’s moral
stages were developed through a series of longitudinal, empirical, and
multi-cultural studies. HRM shares many of the underlying principles
of these stages of morality. Kohlberg’s work is empirically based on a
multi-disciplinary approach that combines psychology, sociology, cul-
tural studies, anthropology, and moral philosophy. It represents an
inclusive model that has been applied to a wide range of subjects, and
in a somewhat non-systematic and preliminary form even to HRM.15 In
addition to this work, the current book presents the first systematic
approach to assessing the morality of HRM in the light of Kohlberg’s
moral framework.
Seven Moralities of Human Resource Management furthers these initial
approaches by providing a more comprehensive and systematic study
in a book-length discussion. The seven stages are universal, sequential,
ascending, all-inclusive, and irreversible. Most importantly, however,

they should not be confused with variances of standard moral philo-
sophy. Instead, they depict the essence of morality at seven different
levels. The sequences and irreversibility of these stages show that each
following stage is superior to the previous one. In short, this book
builds on classical moral philosophy creating foundations for an order-
ing framework of morality. It provides, as French philosopher Paul-
Michel Foucault (1926–1984) would say, an ‘Order of Things’ (1970).
In this context, the term morality is used to refer to moral codes of
conduct and behaviours displayed by HRM. This is about normative
morality because it refers to a code of conduct that – given a specified
condition such as HRM – is put forward by rational HR-managers.
To achieve a universal, analytical, and comprehensive framework of
morality, the seven stages of morality apply to just about every single
form of human conduct, moral codes of ethics, actors, institutions,
organisations, and, of course, to HRM (Rawls 2010:99; Klikauer 2012).
At the highest level, HRM develops a morality that goes beyond organ-
isations reflecting the morality of a wider society at international,
global, and universal level, and through holistic environmental and
animal ethics.16 Achieving this level of morality reflects on something
that might best be called modern morality because it is a truthful
reflection of the basic principles of modernity founded in the French
Revolution’s (1789) liberté, egalité, fraternité that have been applied to
all humans as codified in The Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
At the lowest level, HRM’s morality is formed through authoritarianism
and individual advancement where behaviour is shaped through fear,
repression, aggression, harassment, submission, individual advances, and
egocentrism. An HR-manager’s morality is geared towards making others
believe that actions are sanctioned by HRM’s organisational power. HRM
demands that subordinates act in accordance with organisational direc-
tives that are solely based on the former’s need to avoid being punished
by HRM. HRM – which operates under the maxim: moral is what evades
penalties – calls this disciplinary action. Punishment avoidance regimes
represent organisational morality because HRM as an organisational
group has substantial power over others and it can follow individualised
preferences. On the next level, morality is geared towards whatever serves
the power of individual HR-managers. In its less selfish expression it
serves HRM itself or a company either in the form of punishment avoid-
ance or organisational selfishness.
At this level, HR-managers often fail to conceptualise two issues:
They have not developed an understanding of HRM as a moral entity
Prologue 5
and they do not view an organisation as a moral unit either. Instead,

morality is seen to be whatever achieves and supports selfish gains. It is
a form of instrumental hedonism based on favourable exchanges
found in Managerialism’s zero-sum games.17 Nearly every form of
conduct is seen as a transaction that practically always advances HRM’s
self-interest at the expense of others. HRM views itself as more impor-
tant than organisational goals. However, in those cases where punish-
ment avoidance regimes and the selfish advancement of organisational
goals merge, HRM’s actions will seek to accommodate both.
All of this somewhat reflects a pre-modern form of morality. Beyond
that morality ceases to be based on individualism and selfishness but
on what is seen to be good for HRM as a group or even for the organ-
isation.18 This is the level of morality where HR-managers convert
selfish behaviours in favour of a morality that is created by HRM for
HRM as being part of a dominant, hegemonic, managerial power-
structure inside a company. Moral rules are created by HRM for an
organisation in the form of HR policies.19 This sort of morality might
be viewed as moral behaviour reflecting informal and formal organisa-
tional policies that rank below the level of society’s moral expecta-
tions. It is a version of morality that is still locked in a pre-societal form
of pre-modernity. It is a purely organisational view of morality ‘before’
a higher social unit – that of modern society – is taken into account. At
HRM’s organisational level, formal and informal policies regulate
morality in different ways (Runhaar & Runhaar 2012). Informality
relies on an organisational culture and organisationally established
customs and patterns of behaviour. Formality has codified, well-
structured, and officially announced moral norms at its core.
Common to both informality and formality, however, is their
reliance on HRM’s organisational prerogative because both strongly
support organisational hierarchies, asymmetrical power relations, top-
down approaches, and a clear division of labour between those who
manage and those who are managed. The most significant difference
between both, however, is that HRM’s informality is hidden by operat-
ing in stealth and therefore is fitting to certain HRM paradigms, e.g. an
‘old boys network’ as a set of information relationships developed
among male managers and CEOs (Schwind et al. 2013:165). Morality
in a formalised and codified version on the other side is geared towards
the adherence to official HRM codes of moral behaviours that can be
formulated in extensive HR manuals, policy portfolios, and official
company documents (Beardwell & Claydon 2011:348). It establishes
‘officialdom’ and an official-ism where none exists (Gunnigle et al.
2011:343). However, HRM’s move from informal to formal approaches

to morality is still significant. It shifts from lower, organisationally, and
informally determined moral norms towards a higher level of morality.
Higher level HRM codifies, formalises, and ‘official-ises’ – make
official – moral rules.20 Their semi-public announcement through HRM
as such is vital (Gould 2013). This also indicates a significant shift of
morality from what is good for HRM towards what is good for an
organisation. In some cases this might well be the same while in others
what might be good for HRM may not be good for an organisation.
Hence, conflicting and contradictory structural imperatives can lead to
tensions, conflicts, moral dilemmas, and contradictions over moral
issues at an organisational level when ‘HRM-vs.-organisation’ conflicts
occur (Klikauer 2012:13).
Apart from moral dilemmas and internal contradictions, HRM’s
morality at higher levels also reflects an ethical consciousness that
transcends the confinements of an organisation (Figure P.1, levels 5–7).
It is no longer found in HR policies and questions such as ‘what is
good for the company?’. Instead, HRM has to surpass organisational
limitations that confine moral thinking, acting, and behaviours. At this
level of morality, HRM’s moral behaviour is almost exclusively based
on an interchange between moralities from outside an organisation.
This level of moral awareness is expressed in the truthful and
real essence of morality. It can no longer be simply operated as a PR-
exercise found in mission statements, corporate PR, and perceptions
(Jackson et al. 2012:303). In addition, HRM can no longer be an indi-
vidual and ‘selfish’ actor (self-serving HRM) and, simultaneously, can
no longer see itself as a purely organisation-internal actor. Instead,
HRM has to be a truly social, universal, and holistic actor. It has to be
modern representing a true reflection of all social and universal moral
norms that are drawn from a holistic approach that includes environ-
mental-, land-, and animal welfare ethics. In fact, these have become
moral imperatives in a Kantian understanding rather than issues HRM
needs ‘to deal with’ (Reath 2013; Schwind et al. 2013:35). In short,
HRM has to leave the self-serving moralities behind when ascending
the levels of morality.
The ascendancy of the seven moralities of human resource

management
When HRM advances from the limited moral stage of being self-
serving, it enters the stage of modern morality. However, such upward
Prologue 7
movement cannot be seen as jumping from one box to another. These

movements are not defined as clear-cut separations but as extensions
of previous levels in order to ascend to higher levels of morality. In
other words, each level establishes a dialectic relationship to the other
ones whilst being on a progressively ascending scale.21 Rather than
determining a linear relationship it is an inter-connecting relationship.
Crucial to an understanding of these levels is that they always repre-
sent an improvement to previous morality levels. In sharp contrast to
many traditional philosophies on morality such as virtue ethics,
Kantian ethics, and utilitarianism, this model of moral improvement
encompasses increasing intellectual and cognitive ability, critical
reflection, advancing self-development, and a drive towards Kant’s self-
determination and self-actualisation (Hegel) as inbuilt factors. But
improvements are not simply achieved by stepping up. Instead there is
openness in the process of stepping upwards. This openness avoids
‘hard’ borders between Kohlberg’s stages. However, by the time HRM’s
morality has arrived at level 3 (virtue ethics), for example, next to all
traces of those moralities that were linked to the lowest groups – pun-
ishment and selfishness – have been extinguished. Nonetheless, there
are still remnants of previous moral stages found at each proceeding
stage. But core elements of morality firmly define the morality of each
level. What defines each stage is the essence of a thing (Hegel) rather
than what is accidental and what remains from a lower level (Magee
2010:63).
A seven stage classification offers a refined model that enables a fine-
tuned understanding of HRM’s morality reaching beyond the tradi-
tional triage of virtue ethics, utilitarianism, and Kantian ethics.22 The
seven-stage model allows the clarification of three aspects: a) the
identification of HRM’s behaviour and its overall morality by linking it
to key elements that define certain levels; b) a positioning of HRM in a
comprehensive framework of morality and; c) most importantly, it
delivers assistance on how to improve HRM’s moral standing (Keenoy
1990; Jack 2012). To outline the seven stages of morality, Table P.1
shows fundamental moral orientations as a general overview and iden-
tifying metaphors for each stage.
Table P.1 shows a general overview of the seven levels of morality.23 In
fact, it lists eight stages because it includes a stage called ‘zero’ which,
however, can be excluded when examining HRM.24 Like virtually all
moral philosophers, psychologists, and evolutional theorists, Kohlberg
agreed with the notion that human beings need ‘the other’ to develop a
moral consciousness and that in order to develop an understanding of
Table P.1 Seven stages of morality: General moral orientations
Stage HRM’s Basic Orientations Identifier
0 Impulsive and amoral Baby & Newborn

1 Obedience, permissiveness, and avoidance of Prison, KZ25
punishment
2 Personal benefits & rewards and getting a Individualism
good deal for oneself
3 Conforming to social expectations, gaining Social Groups
approval; reciprocity, shared norms, and Peers
interpersonal associations, norm maintenance
4 Protecting law-&-order; rules based, Law & Order
maintaining existing systems of official
arrangements and structures unquestioned
as a given; law-abiding Formal Rules
5 Promoting justice and welfare within a wider Society &
community, communitarian; defined through Democracy
open and reasonable debates
6 Defending everyone’s right to justice; Universalism &
supporting and promoting universal welfare; Human Rights
and all ethical actions are universally applied
7 Respecting the cosmos as an integral whole; The Natural
an openness extending well beyond Environment
humanity; inclusive towards animals,
plants, and the environment
oneself and morality, and to be able to have ethical reflections, indi-

viduals living in a society depend on ‘the other’.26 We are not isolated
‘Robinson Crusoes’ (1719).27 Leaving romantic, literary fantasies, and
racist-conservative illusions aside, in the real world morality is socially
constructed with ‘the other’ as a crucial reference point for critical
reflection (Wheeler 1995).28 Without ‘the other’ moral understanding is
impossible. Moral behaviour is not God-given, inborn, and intrinsic to
human nature. Instead it is created by human beings based on a life with
others in some sort of social setting. This began even before human
evolution started and not surprisingly, evolutionary ethics has proven
this point beyond any reasonable doubt.29
Necessarily, all seven levels of morality involve the ‘other’ at an
ascending level of moral consciousness that starts from two basic
levels: punishment and selfishness. While punishment and individual
selfishness are located at the lower end of the seven-stage morality
Prologue 9
spectrum, the change from punishment regimes towards individual

rewards has been celebrated as one of the most significant advance-
ments in HRM thinking (McGregor 1960 & 2006).30 But the seven
stages offer more than punishment, selfishness, and rewards.31 On the
ascending scale of moralities punishment and selfishness are followed
by a genuine understanding of an extended social environment such as
family, relatives, peers, social and work groups, individual membership
in cooperative and communal undertakings, social union, associations,
and communities (stage 3).32 HRM’s drive towards individualism – e.g.
through performance related pay – might be a reflection on what
became known as the ‘lion-dilemma’.33 Sachs et al. (2004:137) have
emphasised that a ‘lion has two choices – hunt cooperatively or don’t
hunt at all’. For the evolution of human society this translates into
‘live cooperatively or do not live at all’.34 Hence, the human quest for
cooperating and living together has established refined structures.
At stage 4, morality is no longer based on these somewhat limited
social settings (tribes, groups, and modern business organisational set-
tings). Human beings and their moral behaviour moved on to enlarged
social units: society and its laws. This is where HRM meets legal bodies,
state regulations, labour law, OHS-laws, and other regulative instru-
ments.35 The subsequent fifth stage shows morality beyond that. It
emphasises general social and economic welfare, political rights, and
openness in debates and democratic procedures.36 Morality is estab-
lished through societal instruments with formalised legal structures
and democratic participation. Finally, at stage 6 the previous societal
level moves onto a universal level.37 In short, morality experiences an
ever increasing level of complexity and abstract understanding
demanding higher levels of cognition and awareness. Hence, stage 7 is
the most intellectually demanding stage where ethical behaviour
enters the realm of the morality of animals, plant life, and environ-
mental ethics (Hodgson 2013:197).
Figure P.1 depicts a clear ranking of intellectual comprehension on
an ascending scale. It indicates when HRM moves upward on the
ladder of morality by demonstrating increased cognitive levels. It also
shows when HRM regresses to an earlier stage of morality by showing a
decrease of cognitive levels of moral comprehension, intellectual
capacity, reflection, and critical self-evaluation. In other words, one
finds ‘The Banality of Evil’ (Arendt 1994) at the lower end of morality
while sophisticated forms of human morality are located at the
opposite end. Starting at lower levels, humans develop a sense of
extended family, kin, tribes, close and distant relatives, groups, peers,
6 Holistic
Universal HRM
5 HRM
4 HRM
3 Organisational & Society
2 HRM HRM
1 Individual- As a Group
Individual HR-Managers
+ Fear
Figure P.1 From punishing HRM to holistic HRM
social-organisational settings (school and work), local cultures, local

communities, regions, and states, until a comprehension of global,
international, and universal level is reached at the higher levels.
Beyond that, stage 7 indicates the inclusion of environmental ethics.
When HRM’s morality is positioned at the seven different levels, at
each stage HRM focuses on a different core element that defines its
moral standing. This is shown in Figure P.1.
Figure P.1 indicates that HRM’s morality at the first level is based on
regimes of overpowering dependency, fear, control, policing, punish-
ment, harassment, violence, bullying, aggression, and feuds. It is the
opposite of a forgive-and-forget morality. It applies violence, bullying,
coercion, intimidation, harassment, disciplinary action, surveillance,
retribution, duress, mental anguish, and physical terror. At the next
level of an expanding moral universe, HRM moves from being based
on dread, extreme insecurity, and the organisation and utility of fear
towards a hyper-individualistic level of selfishness and egocentrism –
‘individualism and competition are good’.38 This is the level of ‘I
should get more because I want it and I deserve it!’39
At the third level, individual managers start to conceptualise HRM as
a group and an institution. They understand themselves as part of the
group of HRM. It is the level of ‘all us HR-managers should get more’.
Individuals move towards being part of a group. Social norms and
moral codes are no longer developed by individuals to serve individual
advancement, careers, monetary gains, promotions, and other selfish
Prologue 11
goals. Instead, HRM’s morality is developed inside organisational set-

tings with functioning relationships. At this level, HRM can move
between morality based on HRM as a group and morality based on
overall organisational values. Increasingly, however, HRM leaves the
morality of ‘groupism’ behind and engages in moral behaviours that
take the organisational level into account (Ellison 2006).
At stage 4, HRM as a group starts to conceptualise the full extent of
organisational settings. HRM’s behaviour becomes directed towards the
good of a company – organisational objectives, shareholder value, and
profit maximisation – rather than serving advantages of HRM as a
group. But most important for the stage of law-and-order is that HRM
becomes increasingly aware of society and its laws. It experiences con-
tradictions between its own business enshrined in profit-making and
legal regulations that prevent profit-maximisation through laws such
as OHS, labour laws, and the legal support for trade unions. HRM is in
conflict with the morality of business and the morality of the wider
society (MacIntyre 1983; Klikauer 2010) but it no longer takes these
simply into account as a good law-abiding corporate citizen. Instead of
it being a PR-exercise, HRM’s moral behaviour is a truthful, earnest,
sincere, and honest reflection of society’s laws and moral standards
(Macklin 2007). At stage 5, the organisational level that defined previ-
ous stages is factually surpassed when HRM adopts a broad approach
developing a comprehension of being part of a wider democratic
society.40 It ends the traditional ‘external-vs.-internal’ thinking found,
for example, in stakeholder concepts.41 It converts HRM’s organisa-
tional prerogative of a ‘self-given’ right to manage into a democratic
perspective. At this stage morality is based on the ineffable and
unthinkable: democratic HRM.42
Once HRM is able to conceptualise universal norms, it becomes truly
universal and represents the moral norms of the entirety of humanity.
This includes more than just ‘complying to human rights legislation’
(Schwind et al. 2013:36) but an active support toward a Hegelian actu-
alisation of, for example, the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of
Human Rights. The morality of level 6 demands action, not just com-
pliance as outlined at the lower level of morality (4). At stage 6, HRM
has left punishment, individual selfishness, ‘groupism’, compliance,
company-orientation, and even the specifics of individual societies
(level 5) behind. At this stage, HRM becomes a universal moral actor.
But the universalism of stage 6 can be moved up to an even higher
level of morality. Stage 6 is transcended when HRM is able to focus on
holistic morality. This is achieved by becoming conscious of plant and
animal life and the natural environment in general in a morally

responsible way. HRM not only realises itself as being part of the uni-
versality of humanity but also as part of the natural environment. At
this level of awareness, environmental ethics uses the term ‘sustainabil-
ity’ markedly different from what today’s HRM has in mind:
• ‘sustaining a competitive advantage’ (Jackson et al. 2012:11);

• ‘sustaining a safe working environment’ and ‘managing for sustain-
ability downshifting’ (Kramar et al. 2011 & 2014);
• a ‘sustained competitive advantage’ (Macky 2009:13f.);
• ‘sustaining progress’ (Gunnigle et al. 2011:330);
• ‘as key to continuous improvement in productivity’ and ‘to be a sus-
tainable pork producer’ (Schwind et al. 2013:29&43).
The linguistic and perhaps even ideologically driven misappropriation

of the term ‘sustainability’ is a clear testimony to the mindset of
today’s HRM and its textbook writers.43 Very much aligned to this,
there have been cases where HR managers have been invited by general
management to so-called ‘sustainability meetings’ that had nothing to
do with the proper understanding of the term ‘sustainability’ but were
meant as ‘sustaining the business in the face of increased competition’.
In sum, the term ‘sustainability’ has nothing to do with the way ‘a sus-
tainable organisation understands how to successfully tap its know-
ledge base and optimise its resources accordingly’ (Schwind et al.
2013:282). Once HRM no longer reinforces its ideological message of
‘sustaining competition’ and moves on to the truthful meaning of ‘sus-
tainability’ as Saussurian ‘signifier’ of stage 7, HRM has reached its final
destination of being a moral actor, thoroughly reflecting of all its sur-
roundings (Saussure 1906–1913). To actualise this, HRM has to move
outside its current paradigm as outlined in its textbooks (Kuhn 1970;
Fuller 2003).
Human resource management and seven moralities
Historically, those who engaged in a discussion on morality have posi-

tioned themselves somewhat outside the dominant paradigm of their
time and specific subjects. HRM and its textbooks are no exception. By
being part of general management, HRM’s approach to human-to-
human relationships has never been to place primacy on morality but
instead HRM focuses on organisational technicalities such as, for
example, ‘balanced scorecards’.44 Hence HRM has never developed nor
Prologue 13
participated in philosophical debates on morality (Dale 2012:23).

Perhaps this is the reason why scholarly debate on HRM lacks any
awareness of the current field of moral philosophy (Sher 2012). Hence,
any elaboration on the morality of HRM has to be conducted from
‘outside’ the standard HRM-box.45 The task at hand needs to bridge the
ravine between two previously isolated fields, namely moral philo-
sophy and HRM. Since, moral philosophy has developed a range of
philosophical approaches to ethics, standard ethics as presented in
HRM textbooks cuts too short to show the full range of moral philo-
sophies.46 Hence, a wider approach such as the seven moralities of
HRM is able to deliver a fuller range of these philosophies.
Perhaps the ‘missing link’ between HRM and moral philosophy can
be found in the two different origins of these two fields. HRM and its
predecessors of factory overseers and personnel management have a
200+ year history found in the early factory administration of the
Satanic Mills that later converted into personnel management and
finally arrived at today’s HRM.47 Moral philosophy by contrast dates
back 2,500 years (Herman 2000). Non-slave and therefore free Greek
citizens, for example, experienced an ethical, wisdom-based (e.g.
philosophia ϕιλοσοϕία as love of wisdom), and ‘beautiful’ human
freedom. The Greek citizens enjoying this were called Spartans and
Athenians. But for the great majority of the people of the slave society,
access to such a life was consciously and deliberately rendered imposs-
ible inside Greek’s slave economy. For many, this also carries weight
inside organisational HRM regimes. Experiencing ethical life was made
impossible for human beings per se. Only the selected few were in pos-
session of inalienable rights.
In the history of today’s HRM regimes, Greek ‘slaves-vs.-citizens’
have turned into Hegel’s feudal master-&-slaves followed by early capi-
talism’s labour-vs.-factory overseers and capitalism’s workers-vs.-man-
agement (personnel management), then moved on to late-capitalism’s
‘human resources- vs.-HRM’ (Thornthwaite 2012:313f.). This represents
and perhaps heightens the ideological level of HRM’s dehumanising
‘human beings → human resource’ conversion.48 Human beings are no
longer human beings but human resources and as such treated accord-
ingly.49 HRM’s vertical and hierarchical top-down relationship contra-
dicts the horizontal citizen-to-citizen (one person – one vote)
relationship that still constitutes the basis for all modern societies. And
HRM’s ‘human beings → human resources’ conversion is not found in
humanity’s concept of ‘inalienable human rights’. It rather represents
the total opposite. It is a prerogative of HRM’s self-invented ‘right’ to
manage and to issue directives via HR policies (Schwind et al.

2013:372). HRM established vertical and therefore non-horizontal rela-
tionships that are neither ‘beautiful’ nor are they based on moral
philosophy, human wisdom, or human beings. They have not primarily
been developed out of moral concerns but out of functional and per-
formance management concerns.
In other words, modern capitalism and its influence on the society of
our post-Enlightenment period have skilfully separated the ethical life
of a community from the functionalities of today’s workplaces. It was
German philosopher Adorno (1944) who noted ‘there can be no way of
living a false life correctly’. Managerialism portrays human beings,
human resources, life, and morality as isolated and disconnected issues
(Klikauer 2013). In Hegelian terms, there is a stark rift between com-
munity spirit and corporate spirit found in the realm dominated by
HRM. This contradiction between ‘existence inside organisational HRM
regimes’ and community life outside of work is signified in the moral
gap between community expectations and the behaviour of modern
business corporations.50 These contradictions can be viewed from the
well-known Hegelian ‘thesis – anti-thesis – synthesis’ model (Aching
2012; Dutta 2012). On this epistemological basis, an investigation into
HRM’s moralities needs to focus on a theoretical-moral framework as
‘thesis’. This is to be contrasted to an ‘anti-thesis’ (HRM) to reach a
conclusion (synthesis) on HRM’s morality. Such an intellectual enter-
prise seeks to reconstruct moral philosophy and HRM in the light of
the seven moralities outlined above to re-establish a wholeness that
once identified the field of moral philosophy and its linkage to social
and organisational phenomena (Hegel).
At a second level, such an investigation needs to reconstruct and
perhaps even reconcile the material with the ideal world in a ‘moral
philosophy-vs.-HRM’ approach. It needs to engage in the ideal side of
human living in terms of morality and contrast these with the material
existence of human beings inside organisational HRM regimes. Such a
‘material-vs.-ideal’ examination carries forward the specifics of HRM
regimes that are contrasted with the specifics of the seven morality
levels. It concerns a philosopher’s ‘world of thought’ and the ‘world’ of
factual existence inside organisational HRM regimes. In other words,
the key task of moral philosophy is to restore, albeit only at a critical,
cognitive, and intellectual level, a sense of wholeness and holistic com-
pleteness of human life. Such a project encounters moral philosophy as
a provider of a kind of totality-in-thought to replace the organisational
and rather one-dimensional totality of naïve organisational existence
Prologue 15
presented in standard HRM textbooks and framed as ‘high-commit-

ment’.51 Simultaneously, HRM textbooks tend to present the modern
workplace as an unconscious mirroring of the employment situation of
most managers and HRM-professors, i.e. nine-to-five five-days-a-week
in regular employment. Textbooks tend to marginalise but never
totally exclude the issue of precarious work to keep up the fig leaf
ideology of ‘we covered the issue’ even though it is not even awarded a
‘token’ chapter and presented as if HR-managers had nothing to do
with it while HRM is the inventor and the ‘Willing Executioner’
(Goldhagen 1996) of precarious work. Meanwhile, textbooks frame
HRM’s success of constantly increasing McJobs, atypical, and precari-
ous employment as ‘marginalised work arrangement’.52
Hence, all aspects of moral philosophy – rather than the limitations
of the triage of standard managerial ethics: virtue ethics, Kant, and util-
itarianism – have to be highlighted. This relates to the pretence that
HRM is a history-free subject dedicated only to the technicalities of
organisational issues such as performance management. But the
violent and often brutal historical continuum from factory overseers to
administrators to personnel managers to eventually HR-managers can
no longer be neglected and reframed under positivism and
Managerialism.53 HRM’s factual existence, operative modes, and organ-
isational behaviours inside companies, capitalism, the legal framework,
and social, environmental, and moral expectation have to be included.
Even though HRM never grows tired of rehearsing its company-
linkage, it remains absolutely inseparable from the wider realm of
managerial capitalism, society, human rights, and the natural environ-
ment. HRM has never and does not exist inside a company-vacuum in
which it is cocooned and can go about its own business.54
Seen from HRM’s foremost determining factor, HRM is, for example,
inextricably linked to labour and industrial relations (IR) because IR
sets the wider framework in which HRM exists in each country.
Dunlop’s ‘three actors’ (1958) of state agencies, employer federations,
and trade unions simply force HRM to adhere to supra-HRM arrange-
ments developed by either these three actors as a cooperative element
or even by regulatory arrangements developed by just one of them, e.g.
state regulations, labour law, etc. As much as HRM seeks to present
them as just ‘environmental conditions’ (Schwind et al. 2013:192),
they remain factual determinations and limitations to HRM.
HRM is strongly exposed to occupational health and safety and
labour law to which it is forced to live up to as the fourth level of
morality indicates.55 While in some national states, labour law is an
outcome of a collaborative effort of all three actors under consultative

mechanisms, in other states it was unilaterally created by state agen-
cies. Disregarding the way labour law is created, HRM is bound by it.
Similarly, many industries have established associations above indi-
vidual workplaces such as employers’ federations at national level. They
issue policies, codes of conduct, etc. which individual industries and
companies are demanded to adhere to because of their membership of
supra-organisational associations. Finally, in companies covered by col-
lective bargaining and collective agreements negotiated between com-
panies and trade unions, HRM is destined to fulfil these contractual
obligations.56 In sum, HRM is not the ‘free-floating’ organisational
institution that standard HRM textbooks portray it to be. Instead, it is
inextricably linked to all three actors – the state, employers, and trade
unions – as well as to other realms above companies, e.g. economics,
history, politics, society, the ideology of Managerialism, and the inter-
national level under the ideology of globalisation.57
In other words, what French philosopher Descartes (1596–1650) called
‘passion of the soul’ and Kant named ‘moral intentions’, the mechanism
of HRM’s motivations is to a large extent predetermined by ‘externalities’
(Managerialism) as well as by external actors (states, employers, trade
unions) and institutions (legal bodies, industry policies, etc.). In philo-
sophical terms this relates to the famous question of ‘are we free?’ and ‘is
HRM free to act?’. Philosophically, this question has been answered in
the negative.58 Placed in the sociological ‘actor-vs.-structure’ dichotomy,
HRM is to a large extent not determined by individual HR managers – in
spite of HRM’s prime ideology of individualism – but by structural deter-
minants such as general management, business strategies, trade unions,
labour law, labour markets, economic and market factors, globalisation,
and so on (Giddens 1979 & 2013; Velasquez 2012:149).
Inside organisations, however, some forms of HRM – in sweatshops,
etc. – still seek to portray themselves as well as the depending con-
stituencies – employees, subordinates, and underlings – as machine-
like, instinct-driven, animal-like creatures. This can be found in the
continuing prevalence of behaviourism’s ‘semi-starved rat = human
resource’ equation. These rats = human materials – human resources –
are set in motion through HRM’s favourite reward and performance
instrumentalities as propagated by Herzberg.59 HRM’s version of behav-
iourism’s ‘managing a rat’ is seamlessly applied to ‘managing people’
so that human behaviour can be manipulated, modified, and adjusted
to become organisational behaviour.60 This is HRM’s ‘human behav-
iour → organisational behaviour’ conversion. Skinner himself noted,
Prologue 17
what a fascinating thing! Total control of a living organism… The

underlying assumption [of behaviourism], according to one critic,
seems to be that ‘the semi-starved rat in the box, with virtually
nothing to do but press on a lever for food, captures the essence of
virtually all human behaviour.61
In HRM terms, control through semi-starved-rat-behaviourism is

achieved through McGregor’s X→Y theory. HRM’s X→Y stick-&-carrot
morality operates at lower levels of fear (electrocuting a rat equals
firing a worker) levelled up slightly to rewards (food for rats = wages for
workers). In sum, both – punishing and rewarding – as well as the ideo-
logical equation of ‘semi-starved rat equals human being’ signifies very
much the core of HRM’s current belief-system. In philosophical terms,
HRM’s rat=human represents the height of inhumanity because it
equalises non-equals, namely animals and human beings.
Nonetheless, HRM emphasises rewards believing that human beings
are doomed to an endless striving for Herzberg’s intrinsic and extrinsic
rewards and satisfaction.62 This is portrayed as an eternal chain of
‘desire→gratification→reward’ that is assumed to be elementary to the
‘human=rat’ condition. It is a myth that constituted the ‘Tyranny of
the Textbook’ (Jobrack 2011) and has been placed in every HRM text-
book.63 HRM’s rat=human formula presents human beings as ‘a
machine or passionate animal’. This is HRM’s ‘heart of darkness’
(Conrad 1899) and its gloomy acquiescence in an unsecured know-
ledge that people are little input-output apparatuses propelled onto a
never receding fata morgana of work→reward→satisfaction, skilfully
supported by an overall ideology of consumers that concludes an
eternal and circular rat-race of:
work→reward→satisfaction→shopping→work→reward→satisfaction→shopping
In line with a denigrating ideology, HRM thinks it only needs to engineer

a functional process that links human resources to performance for
rewards while externally the ideology of ‘greed is good’ and petty-middle
class wealth signified in cheap consumer goods and brands enforces addi-
tional constraints on the human condition. Set against that is philo-
sophy’s project of a moral human being that has left behind the animalist
‘desire-reward-satisfaction’ structure and has developed a conscious, self-
conscious, self-determined (Kant), self-actualising (Hegel), and mündige
(Adorno) life amidst a moral community of what Hegel calls Sittlichkeit or
moral life. But none of Enlightenment’s philosophies on human beings
as moral beings in a moral community can be found in standard HRM

textbooks. In some cases remnants of moral philosophy are presented but
portrayed as totally disconnected to HRM’s overall project of converting
human beings into human resources and an existence based on perfor-
mance management and KPIs.64 While these moralities are neatly segre-
gated from HRM’s overall textbook ideology so that abstract,
incomprehensible, and inconsequential philosophies cannot interfere
with the real world of HRM, performance management has assumed a
God-given status in HRM.65
The event of Enlightenment has played a significant role in tran-
scending the dark ages of feudal regimes that attempted to define cen-
turies of human suffering as ‘God-given’ (Nietzsche 1886 &1886a),
signified in Hobbes’ bellum omnium contra omnes (Hobbes 1651; Gert
2010). Enlightenment has truly detached human beings from these
forms of ‘morality’ that are crudely inadequate as an image of human
morality. Perhaps one of the strongest signifiers of modernity has been
the invention of modern management techniques that started with the
conversion of the traditional 18th and 19th century factory overseer
into a more modern factory management. To some extent, this has
been associated with Taylor’s ‘workers-equals-ox’ crypto-scientific man-
agement. With this, the basic parameters of HRM’s immorality have
been set as a path of dependency.66 Perhaps today’s HRM manifests
itself in three ways:
a) in the organisational reality of HRM in which HR ‘managers as

heroes have written their own account of HRM’ resulting in a
rather one-dimensional view of HRM as covered by Rawls’ ‘veil of
ignorance’;67
b) in the conceptual-curricular way that is taught in management
schools as expressed in textbooks (Meyer et al. 2010; Leahy 2012);
and
c) in the reality of working life under HRM-regimes.68
In this book, the purpose is that of (b) when examining HRM in

general as it appears in seven textbooks. Unlike Wright’s earlier study
of a comparison of fifty ‘British-vs.-US’ textbooks, this analysis of the
morality of HRM uses less textbooks but covers more countries.69 By
approaching HRM in a broader way, this book is, as a consequence, not
about HRM in a specific organisation but an assessment of HRM text-
books from the viewpoint of seven moralities. Hence, this book is not
about individual managers but the textbook version of HRM as taught
Prologue 19
in business schools.70 Most HRM textbooks like to present a coherent

body of managerial, organisational, technical, and engineering-like
knowledge for students in HRM to assist them in their work in HR
departments as HR managers (Townley 1994; Klikauer 2008). Similar to
other fields in social science, organisational behaviour, and manage-
ment studies, there are nevertheless some rather substantial differences
within HRM:71
• the first difference can be found it the way HRM appears in text-
books and in reality;
• the second problem is that, like many fields, HRM too shows some
internal incoherence and contradictions;
• the third problem is a ‘mainstream-vs.-critical’ approach to HRM
that is perhaps a reflection of a similar division found in standard
management vs. critical management studies (Alvesson 2008;
Klikauer 2011a); and
• the fourth is a division between what is considered to be ‘strategic’
and ‘day-to-day’ HRM.72
Quite commonly, HRM is often perceived as having four core areas –

recruitment and selection, performance management, remuneration
and pay systems, and employee training and development.73 However,
the range of HRM activities goes well beyond that. Teaching HRM in
the seven Anglo-Saxon countries that are examined in this book relies
predominantly on textbooks. For the purpose of this book, these text-
books are used for an analysis and assessment of HRM’s overall moral-
ity. Upon an initial assessment, the seven HRM textbooks (Table P.2
below) show some surprising commonalities but also a few startling
differences.
Table P.2 shows textbooks used in seven countries with a tradition of
HRM based on its Anglo-Saxon heritage of early industrialism, devel-
oped market economies, workshops that became factories, and a subse-
quent shift from manufacturing to the service industry resulting in a
move from factory-overseers → personnel management → HRM. The
last two columns of Table P.2 contain the number of chapters as well
as the total number of pages of each textbook. On average, for
example, HRM students are asked to study 623 pages of HRM text
during their course. The selection of textbooks from each country was
not based on what HRM academics in these seven countries perceive to
be the ‘best’ textbook but on what they thought is the ‘most used’ one.
Table P.2 Seven countries and seven current HRM textbooks
No. Country Textbook Chapters Pages
1 Australia Kramar, R., Bartram, T. & De Cieri, H. 18 722

2011. Human Resource Management in
Australia – Strategy, People, Performance
(4th ed.), Sydney: McGraw-Hill.74
2 Canada Schwind, H., Das, H. & Wagar, T. 2013. 15 594
Canadian HRM – A Strategic Approach
(9th ed.), Whitby, ON: McGraw-Hill
Ryerson.
3 Great Britain Beardwell, J. & Claydon, T. 2011. 17 709
Human Resource Management: A
Contemporary Approach (6th ed.),
London: Financial Times Press.
4 Ireland Gunnigle, P., Heraty N. & Morley M. J. 14 445
2011. Human Resource Management in
Ireland, Dublin: Gill & Macmillan.
5 New Zealand Macky, K. (eds) 2009. Managing Human 13 462
Resources: Contemporary Perspectives in
New Zealand. Sydney: McGraw Hill.
6 South Africa Grobler, P. A. et al. 2011. Human 17 673
Resource Management in South Africa
(4th ed.), Andover: Cengage Learning.75
7 USA Jackson, S. E., Schuler, R. S. & Werner, 14 668
S. 2012. Managing Human Resources
(11th ed.), Mason: South Western
Cengage Learning.
This avoids a narrowing down to ‘introductory texts’ and to ‘cross-

cultural’ issues (Fisher & Southey 2005:599ff.). For the selection of
HRM textbooks the method of triangulation was used. A substantial
number of textbook authors and general HRM academics were polled
in each country in order to gauge the most commonly nominated
‘most-used’ textbook. This was necessary after it became increasingly
obvious that commercial textbook publishers are an unreliable source
as some publishers promoted their own publication rather than pre-
senting a truthful picture. The same can be said about some textbook
writers. Overall, however, the choice of which textbook is actually used
became increasingly less relevant because there are by far more com-
monalities among HRM textbooks than what divides them. In short,
Prologue 21
significant overarching commonalities are found in virtually all HRM

textbooks.
This also applies to HRM and morality. On the upswing, virtually no
textbook sees HRM and morality as totally irrelevant and absolutely
disconnected issues. On the down side however, morality in these
seven textbooks features more often than not as a ‘side-issue’ in teach-
ing HRM. Still, all HRM textbooks address morality, which protects
their authors against the claim of not including it, yet confine morality
to a side-show. Hence, the inclusion of a token chapter on morality has
become important to textbook writers. Apart from the fig-leaf chapter
presented as a ‘textbook view’ on morality, there are very few
significant books on ‘HRM Ethics’.76 Equally rare are substantial articles
on ‘moral philosophy and HRM’.77 The result is a somewhat underde-
veloped field of ‘the moral philosophy of HRM’. By comparison, man-
agement ethics has made substantial progress with specific books,
textbooks, articles, and even explicit business ethics journals.78 Hence
there is a need to further our understanding of ‘HRM and Ethics’ which
this book tries to achieve by providing an overview of HRM as pre-
sented in textbooks from seven countries seen from the perspective of
Kohlbergian morality.79
To accomplish this, the book is structured in a specific way. After this
introduction’s brief prologue to the seven moralities of HRM, the
second chapter highlights HRM and the seven moral philosophies that
underpin the seven stages of morality. Following on, the core of the
book provides seven chapters detailing HRM and moral philosophy at
each of the seven levels. The first core chapter highlights HRM’s use of
disciplinary action, its obedience and punishment regimes. The second
core chapter outlines what is perhaps the key of HRM, namely perfor-
mance management. This is linked to the moral philosophies of intu-
itionism and subjectivism and the two predominant philosophers of
personal achievement and individual success, namely Hobbes and
Nietzsche. The third core chapter which outlines virtue ethics discusses
HRM’s workplace culture as well as training, development, and HR
planning. This is followed by the fourth level of morality sketching out
the legal context in which HRM operates. It is linked to the key
philosophies that underpin this stage such as legal positivism, Rawls’
‘justice as fairness’, and the problem of organisational order. In HRM
terminology, it relates to HR policies, regulations, and the organisa-
tional order HRM maintains (Legge 1998:22; Stone 2014:121ff.).
The fifth part examines HRM’s morality in the light of the moral
philosophy of utilitarianism relating it to welfare issues, HRM, and to
utilitarianism’s key dictum of ‘the happiness principle’. This chapter

includes key philosophers of utilitarianism such as Bentham, Mill, and
Moore. This is advanced at the next stage of Kantian universal ethics
highlighting some of Kant’s key categorical imperatives that outline
Kantian ‘moral duties’ constructed as intentions and behaviours that
‘must be’ displayed. The final stage discusses what lies beyond Kantian
humanity and universalism, namely environmental ethics. This
chapter focuses on HRM’s role in respect to sustainability and the
natural environment. It also includes a detailed discussion of social
ecology including anthropocentrism, the biotic community, species
protection, Deep Ecology, biospheric egalitarianism, the biospherical
net, the new animists, bioregionalism, sentient beings, Albert
Schweitzer’s ‘Reverence for Life’, teleological-centre-of-life, responsive
cohesion, ecosystems and the biophysical world, social ecology, mutu-
alistic interrelations, ecological interdependence, life-centred ethics,
and the utilitarian ethics concept of equal consideration (Singer). The
book concludes with an assessment of HRM when measured against
the morality of the seven stages.
Introduction: Human Resource
Management and Seven Moral
Philosophies
This section outlines the link between HRM and moral philosophy.80 It
also shows several examples of moral dilemmas such as bribe-taking
and blaming which lead to three different versions of blame allocation
depending on the stage of morality.81 Immoral activities such as, for
example, bribe-taking are part of the reality of HRM just as much as
different styles of HRM and its right to manage. None of them operate
inside a moral vacuum, nor are these acts neutral, natural, purely tech-
nical, unavoidable, or value-free. Instead, they define seven styles,
seven prerogatives, and seven different forms of HRM. In short, seven
realities of HRM underpinned by seven basic moral philosophies can
be detected. These underpinnings are different at each level. Before
highlighting specifics such as styles and prerogatives, Table I.1 shows
some moral motives behind some general HRM actions.
The prime motive for action inside stage 1 in Table I.1 is fear of pun-
ishment. People under managerial control are forced to act irrationally
out of fear of being punished by management. At this stage ‘things are
just good and bad’ with no justification and explanation. They have to
be accepted and followed.82 The Banality of Evil (Levi 1959, Arendt
1994) creates a system under which good acts are rewarded while bad
ones are punished. The basis of punishment is managerial power and
authority. One of the core studies designed to understand authority
was conducted by the American social psychologist Stanley Milgram
(1933–1984).
It reflects a scenario that converts ‘he’ or ‘she’ into ‘it’ – a resource or
human resource in HR-terms. ‘It’ rather than s/he enters into the
authoritarian system of HRM with no democracy or internal ‘rights of
self-determination’, thereby contradicting Kantian ethics. Constructed
as ‘it’, a person – now a human resource – is an ‘object of power’ and
23
Table I.1 Seven moralities and HRM’s motives
Stage Moral Motives
1 People act irrationally out of fear of being punished by HRM

Guiding principles are fear, dread, and terror created by those in
authority
2 HRM’s motives are selfishness, seeking pleasure, and all gains are
reserved for HR-managers83
Calculating risks & payoffs of HRM actions is vital for its own
existence
3 Avoiding disapproval, condemnation, downgrading, and
denunciation by top-management
Wanting to be praised, liked, admired, and seen as being part of a
team, rather than shamed
4 Performing managerial and formal duties and responsibilities as told
by top-management
Meeting official and codified company standards and objectives as set
by top-management
Working for the best interests of the company even when it goes
against self-interest
5 Following principles that serve the best interests of the great majority
inside a particular society
Striving to be reasonable, just, and displaying purposeful action
under societal norms.
6 Applying well-thought universal principles to HRM and the company
Share information in an open debate beyond corporate boundaries
Be non-defensive with other managers, employees, trade unions,
external stakeholders, etc.
7 Respecting, preserving, and supporting all intrinsic values of the
cosmos with its wider environmental harmonies (animals and plants)
no longer capable of viewing himself as acting out of his own purpose.

Individual behaviour is converted into organisational behaviour when
‘human’ beings become ‘organisation’ beings. His/her own purpose is
replaced by an organisational purpose. He comes to see himself as an
agent of management. This has been the case ever since the American
mechanical engineer Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856–1915) invented
what can be called the vertical division of labour. The vicious circle of
top-down HRM is completed when an agent is reduced to executing
the wishes of a superior person (cf. Milgram 1974). In the world of
work, this superior person is HRM.
Introduction 25
Under such a system, human action and morality are guided by fear,
intimidation, dread, and terror created by those in managerial author-
ity. HRM’s motive is established through the idea that coercion and
fear lead to results with fear being seen as a motivator for human
action. This managerial approach has been labelled ‘HRM by Fear’.
Under these conditions, individuals are willing to go to great lengths to
obey someone in authority. While pre-HRM’s factory administration
established physical and corporal punishment during the 18th and
19th century, today’s HRM relies on the latent elements used in punish-
ing regimes associated with penal systems, panoptical surveillance and
control regimes, prisons, cat- or birch rod, gallows, pillory, hard labour,
reformatories, workhouses, labour camps, the Gulag, and even concen-
tration camps. English philosopher Zygmunt Bauman (1989 & 2008)
has comprehensively established the link between the underlying prin-
ciples of such punishment facilities and modern management. Key to
both is that ‘real victims are often separated from those who oppress
and abuse them so that the following formula becomes operative: in
general, the less human the victim, the more cruel and painful is the
justifiable punishment’ (Damico 1982:422).
HRM achieves such a dehumanisation through two elements: Firstly,
the dehumanising vertical division of labour that has been established
long before Taylor’s ‘Principles of Scientific Management’ aided a
quasi-scientific legitimacy to HRM’s degradation of labour as an
animal-like ‘cog in a wheel’.84 Taylor’s quasi-scientific work cemented
the top-down division and distance between labour and general man-
agement (Klikauer 2007:150). Secondly, HRM initiates dehumanisation
through a raft of linguistic techniques. For example, it turns human
beings into figures on a balanced scorecard that ‘balances’ (sic!)
humans expressed as numbers with profit-making that is also expressed
in numbers.85 While punishing regimes often rely on rather crude
methods, more sophisticated methods favour a generally induced hege-
monic ideology of selfishness, individualism, subjectivism, and
egoism.86
A more advanced version of morality is constructed under selfishness
with a lack of consideration for others. This is the ‘Me-Myself-and-I’
version of HRM. At stage 2, fear is replaced by egocentrism, self-
advancement, and narcissism.87 At this level, HRM gains selfish plea-
sure when its own and economic gains are exclusively reserved for
HR-managers. To achieve such personal advancement even at a cost to
others, HRM calculates risks, payoffs, costs, and benefits to enable
the creation of managerial actions purely designed to further its own
interest. This is an extremely instrumental view representing a

Kingdom of Means rather than Kant’s Kingdom of Ends. At stage 1 and
2, instruments of fear and self-interest range above those of an
advancement of the company. Both stages are followed by stage 3 that
converts HRM into a full-fledged ‘member-of-society perspective’
(Crain 2005:156).
Stage 3 represents company-level morality where HRM starts to view
a company as a social entity to which HRM belongs and in which
ethical cohesion and reciprocity are established. The golden rule is:
‘do-as-you-would-be-done-by!’. HRM has developed a moral under-
standing of the company as a social institution that goes beyond an
unrestricted pursuit of profit-taking and self-interest, seeking ‘libera-
tion from selfish cravings’.88 These interests are superseded by interests
directed towards the organisation with an integrated sense of a corpo-
rate community based on social settings rather than monetary impera-
tives. Contradictions between selfishness and company interests are
solved in favour of company interests. At stage 3, HRM seeks to avoid
disapproval, condemnation, downgrading, and denunciation by adher-
ing to accepted virtues. Simultaneously, it designs a company culture
based on the same principles so that employees can be made to fit into
an organisationally determined culture.89 One of the core dilemmas at
this level is that between virtues and managerial prerogatives. On the
one hand, HRM wants to be praised, liked, admired, and seen as being
part of a socially constructed team rather than being shamed. On the
other hand, it installs a corporate culture that creates, maintains, and
fosters subordinates. Overall, HRM remains one of the key determining
factors for company culture.
When moving from exclusiveness (stage 2) to inclusiveness (stage 3),
HRM maintains a clear division between itself and employees at a for-
malised level. The issue of taking bribes clarifies this. It marks a move
from stage 2 to 3 when bribes are taken primarily when they are legit-
imised by a group – a group of HR managers for example. The example
of bribe-taking also clarifies the next move from stage 3 to 4 (Klikauer
2012:24). While at stage 3 bribes are acceptable because they benefit
HRM as a group and/or a company,90 at stage 4, HRM can no longer see
them as acceptable because bribe-taking violates common and criminal
law. A morality linked to law and order starts to gain moral inputs
from external sources beyond the confinements of companies, e.g.
common and criminal law. Bribe-taking can be justified internally but
not externally when society’s laws and legal framework set parameters
for moral and immoral behaviour (Schwind et al. 2013:27).
Introduction 27
At the first three stages, however, a morality exemplified in the idea

‘it’s wrong only if it doesn’t work or you get caught’ is seen to be
acceptable. At stage 2, detection would come from disapproving top-
management, at stage 3 it could come from organisational members or
a group of such members, while at stage 4 it would come from society’s
law and order regime. Meanwhile, at company level, performing man-
agerially defined formal duties and responsibilities as officially issued
by HRM becomes the norm at stage 3 as long as it does not violate the
law that defines stage 4 (Dusterhoff et al. 2013). Key elements of stage
3 are also applied when HRM defines its actions through MBO (man-
agement by objectives) and MBR (management by results). This is
achieved through formal performance measurements, codified bottom-
line indicators, key performance indicators, and formalised perfor-
mance related pay systems. Meeting codified HR standards as set by
HRM becomes the guiding principle.
At stage 4, working for the best interest of the company as officially
outlined is conducted even when it goes against managerial self-
interests and company culture. Moral behaviour guided by codified
rules overtakes a morality based on punishment, selfishness, and informal
culture. However, HRM’s morality remains strictly divided into two
sub-groups: lower groups are made to rely on informal rules while
higher groups can rely on formal, officially announced, and codified
company policies, norms, and procedures. Any low-to-high move is
also a move from implicit to explicit moral rules. Formal, codified rules
that govern HRM’s morality also identify the final stage of company-
based morality at level 4. This stage denotes three crucial forms of
morality:
• firstly, there is an embedded acceptance of HRM’s culture and

virtues by all, seen as a given and unchangeable;
• secondly, there is a sharp division between HR-policies and ex-
ternally defined law-and-order provisions seen as mere externalities;
and
• finally, rather than being law-abiding, HRM sees itself more as a
guarantor of order while laws and formal provisions are seen as a
‘supporting’ order.
Law-&-order is reversed to order-&-then-law because HR-policies are

viewed as the prime institution. External laws take second place. They
are often viewed as restraining HR-policies and HRM’s right to manage,
e.g. anti-discrimination laws, unfair dismissal laws, labour laws, etc.
Stage 5 represents modern HRM morality under the following prin-

ciple: whatever serves the best interests of the public majority inside a
particular society sets the moral standards. HRM’s morality operates
outside a particular company exceeding the company’s confinements
but remains inside society. At stage 5, HRM’s morality strives to be rea-
sonable, just, and socially purposeful conducted under societal norms
set externally. Its morality is no longer a reflection of internal realities
but of external ones. It is not stakeholders but the public that defines
morality. Society is not reduced to a function and position inside the
managerial orbit. It is the other way around as HRM sees itself as an
organic part of society. HRM’s morality strongly reflects the wider
society.
Stage 6 is reached when well thought-out universal principles are
applied by HRM under the slogan ‘put yourself in the other guy’s shoes
when you decide’.91 The key distinction between stages 5 and 6 rests
on the differentiation between moral norms set forth by a society
versus moral norms that are universally applicable. The global public
ceases to be seen as an external entity. Instead, it is viewed as an inter-
nal part of HRM’s morality. The universal public is seen as part of a
universal community just as HRM itself. At the seventh stage, HRM
moves beyond the confinements of universal humanity by respecting,
preserving, and supporting all intrinsic values of the cosmos in its
wider environmental harmonies (Radkau 2013). It includes animal
ethics and an obligation to the other creatures with whom we share
this plant as outlined in environmental ethics.
Levels 1 to 7 sketch out HRM’s morality based on key moral philo-
sophies. The somewhat contentious relationship between HRM and
moral philosophy starts at the origin of moral philosophy namely its
single most relevant issue: human life. This is in sharp contrast to
HRM’s key issue of, for example, performance management that
applies instrumental-rational principles to human resources to make
them do what they otherwise would not do.92 Since there is no single
rational principle operative in either HRM or moral philosophy, several
versions of rationality need to be examined. The essence of HRM and
moral philosophy is a combination of structure, rational principles,
values, and value judgements.
Virtually the entirety of moral philosophy agrees with, perhaps, the
single most important and universal statement in ethical thinking:
killing is wrong. Its Biblical origins date back to Cain and Abel and the
Talmudic-Jewish, Anglican, Reformed, and other Christian, Orthodox,
Catholic, Lutheran, etc. traditions. All agree on the Ten Command-
Introduction 29
ments’ ‘You shall not kill!’ No society has ever existed in which arbi-
trary killing was allowed. The preservation of human life has its origin
in evolution because no functioning social structure can allow the
indiscriminate killing of its members. Hence, the prevention of killing
and the value of human life are absolute goods in moral philosophy,
not relative ones. In other words, ‘killing is wrong’ is an absolute and
cannot be made relative. There cannot be any condition assigned to
killing in order to make it ‘a bit’, ‘somewhat’, ‘for some more than
others’, or ‘in some circumstances’ right to kill. Not surprisingly, the
absolute right of life and the prohibition of killing have been
enshrined in article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
However, while there is an absolute prohibition of killing there seem to
be some relatives that have been attached to the value of human life.
Some people are valued differently by others. HRM is one of the prime
areas in which this takes place.
Much of this starts at the early stage of morality where HRM con-
fuses human life with its function inside a process that is driven by the
money and power code (Jackson et al. 2012:91). Human life is only of
value to HRM when it delivers performance useful to general manage-
ment. It views human life as an object of power (Bauman 1989) inside
a value chain, not as a subjective existence. Human life is reduced to a
function inside a pre-designed and asymmetrical hierarchy. This con-
verts human subjects into objects of managerial power. At stage 2, this
sort of instrumentalism uses human life for a service directed towards
selfish needs. The value of human life for HRM is defined by its contri-
bution towards HRM’s egocentricity and selfishness. It moves human
life from being an object of managerial power plays in stage 1 towards
being an object that supports managerial goals. With this move, the
value of human life that HRM assigns to humans increases slightly.
At stage 3, HRM values human life because of its capacity to under-
stand general management, takes on its position, fits into its mode of
operations, and shows friendliness and support for management.
Human life is no longer valued as an object of managerial power that
can simply be directed towards managerial egocentricity but as the
carrier of a managerial culture. HRM values human life because of its
ability to be part of a pre-designed managerial culture and because of its
ability to enhance such a culture. This is achieved through the conver-
sion of human- into organisational behaviour to create an organisation-
instead of a human man.93 Individuality becomes pure ideology in a
standardised organisational reality that is enhanced through corporate
existence paralleled by Managerialism’s ideology of individualism.
The more a corporate machine demands the replacement of an indi-

vidual identity by a corporate one, the more individualism takes on an
ideological character. Viewed from the sociological ‘structure-vs.-
agency’ model, it is not the individual that shapes the corporation but
the corporation that shapes the individual’s existence.94 In the struc-
ture/agency fight, it is the corporate structure (HRM) that wins over
agency (employees). Individuality is removed making the individual
subservient to corporate missions, standardised employment contracts,
corporate culture, HRM’s demand to fit in, and behavioural
modifications (Orwell’s Newspeak), i.e. manipulation through a sophis-
ticated HRM-machinery of performance management, e.g. perfor-
mance related pay, key performance indicators, balanced scorecards,
career management, and so on. In short, HRM values human life for its
ability to FIFO: fit in or f*** off!95
At the next stage, HRM values human life because of its ability to
convert informal HRM cultures into formalised-codified rules as
defined by HRM. It is the adaptability of human life to pre-set and
managerially defined rules – HRM’s ability to interpret, apply and act –
and the formal function of human beings inside a managerially
defined structure that is of value to companies. The value of human
life for HRM rests in its ability to adapt to a neatly codified set of rules,
HR policies, regulations, and formalised procedures.
At level 5, HRM values human life because of its inherent capacity to
exist in a relationship with society, its ability to create democratic deci-
sion-making structures, and its capacity to promote human, social, eco-
nomic welfare, and fairness.96 HRM values human life because it has
created a sophisticated body of inalienable human rights. At level 6,
HRM’s value of human life lies in its capability to transfer these forms
of morality to a universal level. In addition to democracy and welfare,
stage 6 includes a focus on the universal expression of human rights.97
At this stage, HRM would value human life not because it can achieve
KPIs – key performance indicators (Kenny 2012; kpiinstitute.org) – but
because it has an inherent ability to create universal human rights and
to apply them universally without any exception. The process of estab-
lishing a moral value of life is no longer enshrined in democratic selec-
tion processes but moves beyond that when it enters communicative
ethics. Hence, HRM values human life because of its ability to engage
in domination-free forms of communication directed towards reaching
common understanding and converting communication into com-
municative action under the premises of communicative ethics.98
Introduction 31
Communicative ethics is based on themes such as finding common

agreement and mutual understanding on a universal level.
At stage 7, universalism, Kantian universal ethics, and communica-
tive ethics (stage 6) are moved beyond the realm of humanity and
applied to the environment to create environmental ethics. Hence,
HRM values human life because only humans have the ability to go
beyond their own species. For HRM, it is the human ability to go
beyond its own horizon so that non-human creatures living on earth
are included. In short, HRM values humans for their ability to include
non-human life.
In sum, HRM values human life differently at different levels
depending on the overall character of morality found at each level. At
the lowest level, it means disregard for human life unless the latter can
be converted into an ‘object of power’. The highest levels denote an
inherent value of human life because of the ability to develop abstract
and universal codes of ethics (stage 6) that encompass environmental
ethics (stage 7).99 Depending on the overall level of HRM’s morality,
the usefulness of human life is seen as something that can be applied
by HRM in a game of power (stage 1) or as a supplier of selfish needs to
HRM (stage 2). These issues define the value of human life at the lowest
moral levels. At the two upper levels, the value of human life is
enshrined in its ability to engage in abstract and universal rule-making
and in an application of universal rules to entities beyond human life.
Just like all other levels of morality, the two highest and the two lowest
levels follow different versions of rationality.
HRM rationalises its use of human life by ensuring its actions appear
rational and dependent on the levels of morality. Historically, however,
rationality is a modern concept that only moved to the centre stage of
modern philosophy at the dawn of Enlightenment. The beginning of
modern philosophical thinking and with it rationality has been associ-
ated with one name: René Descartes (1596–1650) and his writings, A
Discourse on Method (1637), Meditations on First Philosophy (1641),
Principles of Philosophy (1644), and The Passions of the Soul (1649).
During the Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries, society’s foun-
dation shifted from feudalism’s God-given order to rational
justification. Enlightenment and capitalism were soon followed by the
organisation of capitalist firms and management. But modern capital-
ism, companies, management, and HRM rely on a very specific version
of rationality – instrumental rationality – that has been divorced from
the original philosophical Enlightenment version of rationality.100
Once the original philosophical meaning disappeared, HRM was

quick to make managerial rationality part of its own ideology, particu-
larly since Max Weber’s writings on bureaucracy and rationality were
published.101 Hence, HRM can pride itself as being rational and has
even invented a so-called rational science in the form of establishing
HRM as an academic discipline. But rationality is not, as some have
tried to make us believe, a neutral, engineering-like, technical, and
natural affair. Instead, it is an organisational, value-laden, deeply soci-
ological, and moral issue. Nevertheless, HRM often seeks to justify its
moral and immoral decisions on rational grounds. With that, the issue
of rationality becomes central to HRM morality. As HRM operates dif-
ferent versions of morality, it also operates different versions of ratio-
nality. The way in which the seven levels of HRM-morality are linked
to the seven rationalities is shown in Table I.2.
Table I.2 provides an overview of the rationalities used by HRM to
justify moral and immoral action, beginning with the rationality of
irrationality.102 This is used when irrational and immoral goals, often
Table I.2 Seven HRM-moralities and seven levels of rationality
No. HRM Rationalities Definitions, Underpinnings, and

Philosophies
1 Rationality of Irrationality Rationality in the service of irrational

goals set by authoritarian means
2 Cost-Benefit Rationality Calculation of gains based on
assumptions, and the prisoner dilemma
3 Sociological Rationality Group-oriented rationality based on
commonality of interests; collective
action
4 System-Rationality Input-output control directed towards
status-quo and static equilibrium
5 Communicative Rationality Application of communicative ethics to
find agreement on what is rational
6 Universal-Humanistic Extension of no. 5 but applied
Rationality universally based on application of
human rights
7 Holistic-Environmental Extension of no. 5 & 6 but applied to
Rationality cosmic totality (animal welfare & plant
life)
Introduction 33
set by authoritarian leaders with a boot-camp-like mentality, are sup-

ported by HRM (Diefenbach 2013). In HRM literature this sort of a
‘rationality of irrationality’ is justified by those Bartiz (1960) calls the
‘Servants of Power’.103 The rational application of means for irrational
ends found its most extreme expression in the Nazi death-machinery
of the Holocaust. In the Nazi-version of managerial rationality, Fayol’s
(1916) planning, organising, commanding, coordinating, and control-
ling was used for cattle trains, Eichmann’s railroad time tabling,
recruitment methods for the SS, selection methods at the Auschwitz
camp, slave-, labour-, and death-camps, the use of Menschenmaterial
(human resources) under SS-like strict cost-benefit-analyses, the man-
agement of gas chambers, and the highly profitable re-distribution of
human hair, spectacles, clothes, etc. to German industry feeding the
Nazi war machine. These are all examples of a meticulous Nazi-plan to
exterminate millions of people by applying modern management tech-
niques (Bauman 1989). They served the extreme irrational end of exter-
minating the Jewish people who the Nazis and their slave-labour-using
industry friends (the Nazi’s Freundeskreis Heinrich Himmler SS) defined
as Untermenschen or sub-humans. During the Second World War,
Krupp, Bosch, Hoechst, Bayer, Deutsche Bank, Daimler Benz, Dresdner
Bank, and Volkswagen, all of them used slave labour, with impunity.
The bourgeois banker of Switzerland stored gold for the Nazis. Many a
businessman was an ethical shell or worse. This was the subjugation of
life to the power of death.104 Today, none of this exists but the ratio-
nality of irrationality enshrined in modern management (Bauman
1989) carries on when rational means serve irrational and immoral
ends.
At level 2, irrationalities and immoralities are used inside cost-benefit
rationalities that justify and legitimise their use. In this version of
rationality the ends justify the means and everything is framed as a
zero-sum prisoner dilemma to serve personal gains (Kramar et al.
2011:540). It is when HRM locks itself in cut-throat competition within
a zero-sum game of competition based on cost-benefit and ‘them-vs.-
us’ rationalities.105 Rationality is reduced to means-ends and win-lose
situations. These are often associated with market forces creating
winners and losers in a ‘winner takes it all’ immorality. It is the ‘me,
myself, and I’ approach in ‘The Age of Me-First’ (Crittenden 1984).
Morality is not defined by morally conscious actors but assigned to
market forces, competitive advantage, and the so-called invisible hand
that mysteriously transforms selfish gains into common goods.106
Rationality and morality are depersonalised and dehumanised when
shifted to illusive and sometimes deliberately dysfunctional con-

structed models such as cost-benefit- and transaction-cost-analysis,
risk-analysis, input-output models, prisoner dilemma, etc.107 In that
way, HRM seeks to excuse itself from morality by referring to so-called
value-neutral technicalities. In reality, these remain ideology-laden and
anything but neutral.
A more social approach to rationality is exercised when group-based
definitions of rationality replace the selfish models of stage 2. At this
level, HRM starts to use rationality in order to serve itself as a group or
a company rather than egocentric and selfish goals of a single
manager. Simultaneously, rationality is no longer confined to self-
invented technical systems but has become part of a socially con-
structed reality. This – to some extent – marks a shift from structure
towards agency in which a collective of HR-actors defines rationality
for the benefit of a company. Morality ceases to be seen as neutral
when it enters the human domain of morally conscious actors.
Rationality no longer serves selfish goals but collective goals and
company interests. This is the stage where rationality and moral virtues
depend on each other. But it is still a version of rationality that is inter-
nally defined by company-based HRM. External inputs into rationality
only start to manifest themselves at the next level. At stage 4, rational-
ity is linked to wider systems such as society, the rationality of a legal
system, law and order. It is enshrined in legalistic and judicial systems.
These set parameters of HRM’s rationality by adopting an approach
that can be summed up as ‘what is legal is rational’ and as ‘the ratio-
nality of the law’. But all this remains a version of internal-vs.-external
and company-vs.-society that prevails albeit with the emphasising of
external rationalities.
Engagements with the wider society deepen at level 5 when open
and non-defensive forms of communication are sought to create a
version of rationality – communicative rationality – aligned to society.
Rational means further already weakened borders between company
and society.108 The goal is set towards using rational forms of com-
munication to allow an elimination of such borders so that HRM can
become ‘one’ with society. At this stage, rational is what enhances
communication based on ‘communicative ethics’ improving social
welfare and democracy beyond company confinements. Rationality is
no longer restricted to the application of instrumental rationality (e.g.
stage 1–4) but to the critical rationality Kant had in mind. The ratio-
nality of stage 5 is further enhanced at stage 6 when it is elevated to
universalism. Linking rationality with universalism leads to a universal
Introduction 35
rationality defined as the use of methods that can be applied univer-

sally and that are directed towards universal human rights, global
ethics, and the enhancement of humanity (Kant). The final stage 7
applies principles of communicative rationality (5) and universal ratio-
nality (6) to the realm beyond humanity (7). It enters the level of envi-
ronmental ethics with land rights, plant life, and animal morality.
In sum, rationality and morality are not disconnected as positivism
portrays (Searle 1996). Instead, HRM’s self-invented belief-system that
one is value-free while the other is value-laden, carries both values and
moral implications. When rational means affect or harm others, they
enter the domain of morality. General rationality – and with it HRM’s
instrumental rational application of tools such as cost-benefit analysis,
etc. – fulfils this by affecting others in various ways.109 But HRM’s ratio-
nal actions not only affect others, they are also able to create different
versions of rationality that can be viewed from seven moral perspec-
tives ranging from irrational goals at stage 1 to the rationality of envi-
ronmental ethics.110 The rational actions and behaviours depicted by
HRM follow seven basic versions of morality that underwrite all its
activities, rationalities, HRM styles, key ideas, and so on. As a brief
overview these elements of HRM’s morality are summed up in Table
I.3:111
Table I.3 The structural elements of the seven moral philosophies
No. Structural Elements of Stages Description
1 Heteronomous Morality Same for same; HRM steals from me,

I can steal from HRM
2 Individualistic-instrumental Minimising negative costs for the self,
Morality norms have no fixed values
3 Interpersonal-normative Trusting relationships among people,
Morality shared by inter-personal relationships
4 Social-System Morality Generalised members of society, formal
institutions, law-and-order, regulative
5 Human Rights & Social Maximising and protecting individuals’
Welfare Morality rights and welfare, social cooperation
6 Morality of Universalism Reversible, prescriptive universal ethical
principles, moral decision-making
7 Holistic Morality Inclusion of environmental ethics,
concern of everything living, nature,
& earth
Stage 1 (Table I.3) is a version of morality that defines HR-actions as

either good or bad. HRM makes considerable efforts to make sure that
subordinates view these actions as unchangeable. They are presented as
inherent in managerial authority.112 HRM’s punishment regimes, dis-
ciplinary action, and rewards structures are perceived to be the sole indi-
cators for morally good or bad behaviours and highly dependent on
HRM’s authority. Retributive justice is guided by egocentric and het-
eronomous elements.113 HRM’s disciplining differs from actor to actor
and from situation to situation.114 Employees tend to confuse HRM’s
authority with their own position inside managerial regimes. They are
likely to internalise the domineering structure of managerial power. It
becomes part of their identity confusing their role as subordinates and
followers with that of HR when they are told, for example, that they
are part of a great company team. The result is an unquestioned accept-
ance of HRM’s authority. At stage 2, awareness of each HR-manager’s
own interests starts to emerge. Ethics moves from moral control to
moral conformity. A moral relativity develops out of an understanding
that different persons can have different, yet equally valid,
justifications for their claims to justice.115 But still, moral categories
such as good and bad, HRM-actions, and HR-actors are not seen as pos-
sessing any inherent value other than serving the selfishness of indi-
vidual HR-managers.
At stage 3, HRM’s egocentricity and selfishness are replaced by HR-
groups and peers existing in companies. Morality is based on interper-
sonal relationships and loyalty maintained by members of HRM’s peer
groups.116 Punishment and selfishness are replaced by HRM’s approval
and disapproval. Justice is operated on the basis of a coordinated usage
of equality by HR-managers in such a group. Within HRM-groups,
shared values and a common culture define moral issues. The creation
of internal cultures and shared values is altered at the next level of
morality where culture and shared values shift from being defined by a
group to a higher level of abstraction as larger social entities come into
play.
At stage 4, informal group-based moralities are replaced by system-
atic forms of ethics that are established on the basis of larger units.
This is a move from a group to society and from internal to external.
The level of abstraction increases with the creation of generalised
members of society. Morality is defined inside formal institutions oper-
ating in a system of authority that maintains morality. These institu-
tions are directed towards the common good and social welfare. Moral
rules are expressed in formal regulations, laws, and order and need to
Introduction 37
be maintained so that the status quo and the equilibrium of systems

theory and legal positivism are upheld.
The core of stage 5 is a conversion from top-down and leadership-
follower relations into the Enlightenment promise of equality of all.
Leaders and followers cease to exist when former leaders become
spokespersons of a democratic will of the people (Rousseau 1755). Out
of democratic decision-making processes prescriptive general ethical
principles are created. In short, morality moves from an unquestioning
acceptance of law and order towards rule-making. Bauman (1987)
called this a move from ‘interpreters’ to ‘legislators’. The role of law-
followers moves to democratic law-makers. Rule interpretations and
simple rule abiding have moved on to democratic rule creation. Stage 5
includes the awareness that moral rules are created by people in demo-
cratic-moral institutions. This represents a move away from all four
previous moral stages that were based on authoritarianism (Karp 2013).
At level 6, rule-creation under the morality of stage 5 is transferred to
the universal realm. It includes a level of awareness geared towards
putting oneself in someone else’s shoes. Reversibility and reciprocity
indicate a greater understanding of others and the effects certain HR
actions can have on others – or what Native Americans call ‘walk a
mile in my moccasins and you will know my journey’. It means that
HRM can only conduct actions if they bring no harm to others, thus
reflecting utilitarianism’s ‘No Harm Principle’.117 Finally, utilitarianism
also demands that any HR-action must favour the least well off in a
company and in society to establish the utilitarian principle of ‘deliver-
ing the greatest good for the greatest number of people’.118 To achieve
this, HRM’s decision-making processes are based on democracy geared
towards moral ends.
At stage 6, simple democratic legitimacy that has been one of the
core determining factors for stage 5 is no longer enough. HR-policies,
for example, have to contain categorical imperatives (Kant), i.e. moral
demands directed towards universalism. This includes HRM’s ‘active’
engagement, support, and promotion of universal human rights. At
the final stage, these ethical principles are applied to human beings
and to animals, nature, and the environment in general. Holistic
morality includes environmental ethics. It is the application of, for
example, Kant’s categorical imperative of ‘act in such a way that you
treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any
other, always at the same time as an end and never merely as a means
to an end’. This shows the highest level of morality and perhaps even
the beginning of moral philosophy.
Seven HRM moralities and seven moral philosophies
Like almost all moral philosophies, the seven moralities (e.g. Table I.1
& I.2) are based on orientations, intentions, objectives, purposes, and
motives that drive moral and immoral behaviours. Many are based on
the intentions of people who operate under the condition of HRM as a
top-down, commanding, authoritarian, and controlling institution. To
be considered morally good, the outcome or consequence of an HRM
action has to be morally good (cf. consequentialism and utilitarian-
ism). However, morality does not stop there. The ‘intention’ with
which an HRM action is conducted is of foremost importance when
considering whether or not something is moral.
Beyond utilitarianism, Kantian ethics looks primarily at the impor-
tance of orientations, motives, and intentions that are formulated in
Kant’s famous categorical imperative.119 For Kant, ethics can never be
formulated in hypothetical constructions (e.g. ‘if-then’). He insists that
ethics can only occur in the categorical imperative (you must).120 In
other words, ethics for Kant means that morality is an absolute.
Accordingly, it can never be made dependent on a condition to some-
thing, someone, or some situation. Under Kantian ethics it is imposs-
ible for HRM to argue:
• if markets, general management, a company, etc. were different,

then HRM could have acted morally,
• if we would live in an ideal world, we could have acted morally, or
• under other circumstances HRM would have acted morally.
But Kantian ethics is not the only moral philosophy that applies to
HRM. In the seven stage model there are seven different moral philo-
sophies underpinning HRM. They are able to ascertain whether HRM acts
morally or immorally and to which degree. But these seven levels also
carry strong connotations to general social, psychological and human
theory that has contributed to our understanding of human behaviour
(Klikauer 2012). These are general theories – not moral philosophies.
Not surprisingly, Kohlberg (1958, 1976; cf. Walsh 2000) himself has
linked moral philosophy to the seven stages. Locke (1980) and more
recently Hinman (2008:300) and Klikauer (2012) have enhanced
Kohlberg’s original outline by connecting traditional moral theories to
the stage model. For example, stage 5 carries strong connotations to
social contract theory and utilitarianism while stage 6 is reflective of
Kant’s ethics of universalism and Rawls’ justice.121 Stage 5 and 6, just as
Introduction 39
all other stages, correspond to philosophies, philosophers, morals, and

ethical theories (Klikauer 2012:59f.).
Moral philosophy at level 1: bellum omnium contra omnes

Even before the development of philosophical concepts regarding
human ethics had started, early humans displayed a significant body of
moral conduct. Investigations into animal behaviour and evolutionary
ethics have shown that even pre-human primates and animals have
had some rudimentary forms of inner-group moralities based on
socially structured rules. These included forms of collectivism, coopera-
tion, reciprocity, mutualism, and altruism in the form of kinship rela-
tions and beyond.122 These forms also involved a development of
punishment strategies for non-compliance with group and species
specific moral rules.123 At times these punishing regimes were rather
brutal and they even included the execution of offenders. The philo-
sophical underpinning of such punishment regimes carries connota-
tions to the works of both Hobbes and Nietzsche.124 Both have
developed versions of morality for punishment regimes relevant to
stage 1.
Other moral philosophies and philosophers who have contributed to
this were Marquis de Sade’s (1740–1814) moral idea that crimes are
pleasurable (1787), Bentham’s writings on punishment, and Hegel’s
ideas on retribution. Perhaps the two key philosophies on punishment
remain Hobbes’ Dog-of-War and Nietzsche’s slave-morality and moral
nihilism. More recent contributions are Camus’ Reflections on the
Guillotine, Goldman’s Paradox of Punishment (1979), and Foucault’s
Discipline and Punishment (1995).125 Most notable are those works
dealing with the single most abhorrent version of punishment: the
German Nazi Holocaust. Some of the most distinguished philosophical
reflections on the immorality of the Holocaust are from Emmanuel
Levinas (1906–1995), Adorno’s Mediation on Metaphysis: After
Auschwitz (1973), Zygmunt Bauman (1989), and Stanley Milgram
(1974). More recent moral studies on punishment in general are
Pojman’s Defence of the Death Penalty (2007) and Welch’s
Foucaultian/Nietzsche Analysis of Guantanamo (2009).
Moral philosophy at level 2: Moral egoism

Stage 2 represents a move from ‘You Stab My Back, I’ll Stab Yours’
(Buchanan 2007) that signified stage 1 to the maxim of ‘you scratch
my back I’ll scratch yours’ signifying stage 2.126 The latter carries con-
notations of moral egoism, selfishness, heightened individualism, and
self-centredness. Philosophies connected to such a morality have been

highlighted as ‘moral egoism’, those parts of classical virtue ethics that
demand moral behaviour to be directed towards personal benefits and
even Hedonism.127 However, the ethics of stage 2 also links to moral
relativism as moral rules are not created at a universal level. Instead
they are applied on a case-by-case basis, inside specific groups and set-
tings. Lastly, even sections of Hobbesian ethics that do not relate to his
bellum omnium contra omnes – a fight of all against all – are associated
with personal advancement. Historically, philosophical ideas on
selfishness, subjectivism, and egoism date back to Pittacus (640–568
BC) and Protagoras (490–420 BC). More recent philosophies on
selfishness and moral egoism are to be found in Hume, Hutcheson, and
even Marquis de Sade’s (1787) ‘Self-Gratification’. Selfish virtues are
also prevalent in the ideological writings of Herbert Spencer
(1820–1903), the inventor of the ideology of ‘the survival of the fittest’
(cf. Principles of Biology, 1880).128
Moral philosophy at level 3: Virtue ethics

In contrast to selfishness, level three’s ‘good boy/nice girl’ maxim
demands conformity to group specific moral codes of behaviour. Those
sections of virtue ethics that relate to groups (e.g. in Aristotelian phi-
losophy) are representative of this stage.129 Two of the core philo-
sophies relevant to this are altruism and benevolence to others,
understood as the ability to enhance the good and to limit the harm
done to others. Similarly, moral behaviours at this level do not rely on
formal and codified rules but more often on informal agreements.130
Most importantly, stage 3 is the classical home of virtue ethics as ini-
tially outlined by Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle.131 More recent philo-
sophical theories on virtue ethics are Emmanuel Levinas’ ‘The Self’,
Ridley’s The Origins of Virtue, and Foot’s Virtues and Vices (1978).
Traditional philosophies concerning conformism (cf. Nietzsche’s herd
mentality) and the fitting into groups and society are to be found in
Locke’s Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693) and Rousseau’s
Emile, or On Education (1762). A more modern approach is found in
Rachels’ ‘Morality, Parents & Children’. Finally, this stage is also associ-
ated with issues such as altruism and moral reciprocity (cf. Kropotkin’s
‘Mutual Aid’ and Nagel’s ‘Altruism’).
Moral philosophy at level 4: Legal positivism, contract theory, and

justice
At level 4, the informal group-based rules of level 3 are codified and
related to law and order. This stage can be seen as a form of anti-Wager
Introduction 41
(Pascal) when an outdated set of moral rules (codified law) is replaced

by a new set of rules (changing laws because of society’s advancements
and progress). Pascal’s ‘Wager’ recommended maintaining the older set
of rules as the safer option. Level 4 carries connotations of modern
methods of truth finding that became prevalent with Enlightenment.
Other relevant philosophies to the moral philosophy of stage 4 are
some parts of Kant’s ideas on moral duties; John Rawls’ (1921–2002)
justice; legal positivism; consequentialism in a version that has legally
prescribed outcomes; and even Hegelian state theory.132 More recently,
Nussbaum’s Hiding from Humanity: Disgust, Shame, and the Law (2004),
the legal philosophy of John Finnis, and Rohr’s Ethics for Bureaucrats
(1979) have dealt with the moral philosophy of stage 4.
Moral philosophy at level 5: Utilitarianism and justice as fairness

As the ascendancy of morality becomes more marked in the later stages
of morality (5–7), classical and modern elements of moral philosophy
become increasingly evident in the last three stages. Stage 5, for
example, remains the classical home of utilitarianism. It also carries
some elements of Hegelian philosophy (notably ‘recognition’ and
‘alienation’), moral theories on democracy, liberalism, justice, welfare,
and, above all, communicative ethics. Stage 5 is also the point where
Hegel’s most ethical concept of moral life is expressed as Sittlichkeit. It
is based on general agreements on individual rights set communica-
tively by relying on communicative ethics. In turn, communicative
ethics standards are defined by the whole of society through critical
reflections. These set procedural rules that govern ‘Ideal Speech’
(Habermas 1997). Stage 5 demands an open debate among discourse
participants (Kohlberg et al. 1983:13). Stage 5 also represents social
contract theory (Gauthier; Scanlon) and those sections of Nozick’s
(1974) and Rawlsian philosophy that relate to justice (cf. John Dewey
1859–1952, Wood 1972, Iris Marion Young’s ‘Displacing the
Distributive Paradigm’, Agnes Heller’s ‘Beyond Justice’, Améry’s radical
humanism).133 But the key to stage 5 remains utilitarianism.134
Moral philosophy at level 6: Kantian ethics

Stage 6 also touches on sections of Habermas’ communicative ethics
(1990) and communicative theory (1997) because both contain ele-
ments that can be applied universally. This is the case when commun-
ication moves towards universally accepted moral rules for discourses.
The core of stage 6, however, is manifested in Kantian ethics
(Korsgaard 1996). It is not Hare’s Universal Prescriptivism, but Kant’s
Categorical Imperative and Kingdom of Ends.135 It is the home of
universalism (Protagoras, Stoics, Rousseau, Karl Marx, Lukes (1985),

Gomberg’s Universalism and Optimism, and Hare’s Universalisable
Moral Judgements). Kant’s categorical imperatives are replicated in the
philosophy of G. W. F. Hegel (1770–1831) when the Hegelian ethics of
Sittlichkeit and Mündigkeit become universal. As a continuation of
both, Adorno, Horkheimer, and Marcuse’s philosophical writings on
modernity also relate to stage 6. Finally, this stage includes interna-
tional and global ethics (Pogge, Singer’s ‘Famine, Affluence, and
Morality’, Arthur’s ‘Famine Relief’, Mandle’s ‘Global Justice’), the ethics
of human rights, and Global Feminist Ethics.
Moral philosophy at level 7: Environmental ethics

The final and highest stage carries on to land rights, environmental
ethics, and animal morality. It is the application of universalism and
Kantian moral philosophy to the sphere beyond humanity.
Paradoxically, the writings of perhaps one of the greatest moral
philosophers – Kant – are problematic when it comes to environmental
ethics.136 For example, Kant saw the shooting of a dog as morally
wrong. But he saw it as a violation of the ‘human’ moral duty because
we must practice kindness towards animals. For Kant, the crucial issue
wasn’t the dog because a dog cannot make a judgement. A dog, as any
other animal for that matter, is incapable of moral judgement. For
Kant, the human is at the centre and it is through humans that
animals receive ethical consideration. Animals in-themselves are
almost unworthy of morality.
Similarly, it was only recently that utilitarianism – level 5 – started to
include animals. Hence, when an animal feels pain and is hurt,
humans have a moral duty to prevent this because of utilitarianism’s
no harm principle. While for Kant the ‘human’ agency takes the prime
role (showing kindness), for recent utilitarian ethics it is the animal
itself (feel pain) that is at the centre. The outcome of both moral
philosophies is that we must practice kindness towards animals (Kant)
and avoid harming them (utilitarianism). The latter view is repre-
sented, for example, by utilitarian philosopher Peter Singer.
In conclusion, it has been shown that there are seven different ways
in which HRM sees the value of human life and what lies beyond. This
ranges from treating human life as an object of power at the lower end
to the environmental-holistic approach reaching beyond humanity at
the top end. These seven levels are also linked to the seven ways in
which HRM rationalises its own actions and moral behaviours and mis-
behaviours. The value of human life, its treatment by HRM, and its
Introduction 43
rationalisation are linked to seven structural elements that underpin

virtually all forms of HRM’s moral stance. General theories developed
in human and social science have strongly contributed to our under-
standing of moral behaviour at each of the seven levels of morality.
These levels need to be scrutinised in much greater detail by relating
them to HRM.
The key philosophical contribution to understand HRM’s behaviour
at stage 1, for example, has been the work of British moral philosopher
Zygmunt Bauman and American psychologist and ethicist Stanley
Milgram. At stage 2, key moral philosophies to understand selfishness
come from moral egoism, Hobbes and Nietzsche; at stage 3 the concept
of virtue ethics (Aristotle) has contributed to our understanding of
HRM. At stage 4 these are philosophies on the law – legal positivism –,
the state, social order, bureaucracy, and justice. But justice is also one
of the prime issues of stage 5 and 6. At level 5, however, the core
philosophy remains that of utilitarianism. Stage 6 is the stage of Kantian
morality while the final stage – 7 – is the application of universalism to
environmental ethics. Having clarified the specifics of the seven-stage
model in the introductory scene, the following chapters are designed
to deepen our understanding of HRM’s morality based on key moral
philosophers and philosophies that have made significant contribu-
tions to each stage of morality. The following seven chapters apply key
moral philosophies that define each stage to the practices – Aristotle’s
praxis – of Human Resource Management.137
1
Morality 1: Disciplinary Action,
Obedience, and Punishment
Stage 1 of the seven stage model indicates the lowest level of morality.
It concerns obedience and punishment. As such it is intimately linked
to a rather negative side of the human experience.138 At this stage,
human behaviour features obedience to authority and submission to
punishment regimes, including the fear of punishment (MacKinnon
2013:158). This fear persists in many societies despite advances in
criminology in the form of a move away from punishment and
towards reforming people. A factual decline in crime rates, however,
has been paralleled by an increase in crime reporting by corporate mass
media. This leads to the popular view punishment is important in
society.139 The world of HRM is not isolated from these developments
and punishment regimes are still prevalent in the form of punitive HR
policies such as disciplinary action.140 Under such regimes, HRM does
not view individuals as human beings but as underlings, subordinates,
and objects of HR power.141 They are perceived to be in need of do-
mestication as outlined in McGregor’s Theory X.142
Historically, this has been the task of 18th and 19th century work-
houses, prison-factories, and the like.143 These were places from which
the factory administration of the ‘Satanic Mills’, personnel manage-
ment, and later HRM originated.144 The ‘M’ in HRM is found in
‘maneggiare’ which means to handle tools and horse domestication
(cf. French manège for riding school, Salle du Manège). This equates
horses with human beings while viewing both as tools to be handled
through disciplining.145 The moral ‘human→human’ relationship is
relinquished and replaced by the immoral ‘human→horse’ relationship
that HRM continues as superior→subordinate relationship in which
underlings are often forced to act according to a Nietzsche-like will of
HRM.146 In such regimes underlings are made to fear punishment from
44
Morality 1: Disciplinary Action, Obedience, and Punishment 45
above while HRM creates the appearance of being the sole source of
authoritarian power.147 Guiding principles are fear, anxiety, force, retri-
bution, cruelty, ‘strike-back’ vengeance, and even mental and physical
terror created by those in authority.148
In HRM terms, these are fair and unfair, lawful and unlawful discrim-
inations, harassment, social exclusion, betrayal, vengeance, ostracism,
stereotyping, invasion of privacy (drug testing, etc.), bullying by HRM
against interviewees during recruitment and selection, during promo-
tion and performance assessments, etc.149 In sum, while HRM text-
books pretend that HRM fights against these forms of violence and
terror appearing as protector, it simultaneously is structurally empow-
ered to use these methods against employees as perpetrator because of
HRM’s organisational position of having direct – for example discip-
linary – power over people. This is not conceptualised in HRM.
Meanwhile inside managerial regimes, HRM – like management in
general – appears to be defined by a staunch lack of self-reflection and
self-criticism.
The three philosophers who have predominantly dealt with such
regimes are Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli (1469–1527), Thomas
Hobbes (1588–1679), and Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844–1900).150
None of them, however, is a prime exponent of moral philosophy.
Machiavelli was not a philosopher but a strategic political writer focus-
ing mainly on power, how to achieve, and how to maintain it. Power
was to be used in support of and as a benefit to The Prince (1532) – his
most important work. Hobbes and Nietzsche were more concerned
with personal advantage over others than with punishment
(Koritansky 2011). Hobbes saw this as bellum omnium contra omnes
meaning ‘the war of all against all’.151 Nietzsche viewed it as exercising
the right of the strong superhuman against the weak.152 Nevertheless,
significant and more modern contributions to the ethics of punish-
ment and obedience have been made. The American psychologist and
moralist Stanley Milgram (1933–1984) and the Polish-British moral
philosopher Zygmunt Bauman (born 1925) have significantly
advanced psychological and philosophical understanding of punish-
ment and obedience. Milgram’s obedience theories and Bauman’s
20th century masterpiece Modernity and the Holocaust remain fundamental.
Like Lawrence Kohlberg (1927–1987), Milgram and Bauman were con-
cerned with perhaps the most elementary question of the 20th century:
how could the Nazi Holocaust happen? Like Kohlberg, they thought
that obedience to authority was linked to the immorality of the pun-
ishment regimes in German concentration camps.153
In order to discuss the first stage of the morality of obedience to

authority and punishment, the proceeding chapter has, after a short
general overview, two key parts. Part one deepens our understanding of
the implications and moral relevance that Milgram’s philosophy and
his empirical findings on obedience have for HRM.154 The second part
relates Bauman’s ethics of punishment to HRM. A brief introduction
provides some core elements relevant to obedience to authority and
punishment regimes.
During the mid-20th century, behavioural scientists such as the
American behaviourist Burrhus Frederic Skinner (1904–1990) began to
notice the effects of the fear of punishment.155 Skinner himself viewed
this as ‘…what a fascinating thing! Total control of a living organ-
ism’.156 He found that people can be manipulated by the fear of pun-
ishment and their behaviours can be re-designed. Punishment – along
with positive and negative reinforcement – became core elements of
Skinner’s theory on conditioning. HRM and organisational psychology
call this ‘behaviour modification’ or more truthfully ‘manipulation’.157
Smith (1982:58) noted that in the biological, animalistic, and
mechanical Skinner model people were regarded as reactive victims of
environmental causal forces with no freedom of choice or capacity for
self-direction.158 Skinner’s conditioning theory has been eagerly picked
up by the aforementioned Servants of Power (Baritz 1960). It entered vir-
tually very single HRM textbook in the form of organisational behav-
iour and organisational psychology. The Servants of Power applied
behaviourist models to HRM in a linear, accepting, unquestioning, and
positivist mode. As a consequence, HRM has established rafts of perfor-
mance measures with wages and salaries being the key elements of pos-
itive reinforcement.159 Negative reinforcement is represented by the
withdrawal and withholding of privileges, while punishment is repre-
sented in demotions, explicit threats to cut the piece rate, reprimands,
dismissals, wage cuts, disciplinary action, etc.160 Not surprisingly, the
resulting relationships at work often represent Jackall’s (1988 & 2006)
‘Moral Maze’ as designed by behaviourism. The morality of behav-
iourism can be summed up as stated by Kohn (1993:24 & 26): the
underlying assumption [of behaviourism], according to one critic,
seems to be that ‘the semi-starved rat in the box, with virtually
nothing to do but press on a lever for food, captures the essence of vir-
tually all human behaviour’. In Chomsky’s critique (1971:33) of
Skinnerian manipulation techniques, he highlighted that except when
physically restrained, a person is the least free or dignified when he is
under threat of punishment.161
For moral philosophy, behaviourism is full of ethical problems. Next

to Greek and modern virtue ethics (cf. friendship, affection, and a
feeling of solidarity, Adorno 1944 & 1971), Kantian ethics (self-
determination), Hegelian ethics (self-actualisation), and utilitarianism
(happiness principle), one of the most radically opposite ideas to live
under behaviourist punishment regimes comes from the moral philo-
sophy of existentialism. The core of existentialism rests on the premises
that there is no once and for all given ‘inherent’ human nature but that
our existence rests on social forces; that the concept of radical freedom is
linked to self-determination; that being human means being free; that
the invention of so-called ‘I must…’ necessities are delusions; and that
radical freedom means accepting responsibility.162
The moral philosophy of existentialism rejects behaviourism as
immoral. Yet, despite the contradiction between behaviourism and
three major moral philosophies, namely Aristotle, Kant, and utilitari-
anism, HRM still relies heavily on behaviourism as virtually every text-
book on HRM testifies. HR performance measures, key performance
indicators (Nankervis et al. 2014:199f.), performance related pay, etc.
are based on the HR assumption that workers are inherently lazy and
need to be forced to work (McGregor’s Theory X). Hence, they need to
be manipulated through punishment to manipulate their ‘human’
behaviour into ‘organisational’ behaviour for performance, i.e. share-
holder-value and profit-maximisation.163 False assumptions like these
are as often uncritically accepted and endlessly rehearsed as Maslow’s
‘Hierarchy of Needs’.164
Nevertheless, moral philosophy rejects the positivism of so-called
‘given facts’ that are portrayed as a once-and-for-all determined natural
hierarchy. According to moral philosophy, rather than depicting
human nature, assumptions like the hierarchy of needs and the basic
assumptions of behaviourism are socially constructed.165 The pre-
tended positivism remains ‘pre’-scriptive rather than ‘de’-scriptive. This
is the reason why many textbooks contain the thought-limiting and
disabling rather than enabling Maslowian hierarchy.166 The second
reason why The Servants of Power view Maslow as relevant is because
hierarchies and hierarchical thinking support HRM. Both Maslow’s and
HRM’s hierarchy are made to appear natural and unchangeable.
Hierarchies please political masters, HRM, and the market for HR text-
books. They confirm HRM’s system rather than producing the truth
about humans and humanity.
Ethics contains the concept of human freedom which clearly rejects
one of HRM’s favourite ideologies, the idea that people have a hierarchy
of needs that is set once and for all. But ethics is negated by HRM which
creates conditions of unfreedom under the ideological cover of self-
invented necessities such as the usual justification of unavoidable perfor-
mance implying performance management is ideologically linked to
market determinism, economic necessities, and the like (Beder 2006). In
HR textbooks determinism is typically covered up with invented facts-of-
life examples. Such HRM-like constructed deformations of human life
negate human freedom but stabilise asymmetrical power relations
between HRM and their underlings. Finally, if ethics denotes that being
human means being free, then HRM negates this by creating humans
who suffer unfreedom. To HRM, humans are no more than human
resources/materials – Menschenmaterial167 – ‘that’(!) represent a cost-factor
and costs have always to be kept low.168 These are ‘the hard facts of life’,
as HRM would say.169 HRM calls its focus on numbers, head-counts, and
the invented ‘hard facts of life’ ‘hard-HRM’.170 Human freedom does not
feature inside ‘hard’ HRM’s cost-benefit thinking and if it enters it, it is
seen as merely a cost. Meanwhile, being human is only of value to HRM
if it means being a human resource.
Being free and the absence of external forces that impede freedom
are two of the core elements of almost all versions of ethics ranging
from Aristotle to utilitarianism, Kant, Hegel, Rawls, Bauman, and
Adorno. The fear of punishment is an impediment to human freedom
and dignity (Bolton 2007). In other words, it is not only punishment
itself but the fear of it that eradicates the morality of freedom and
dignity. The fear of punishment is only superseded by physical
restraints – slave labour – as the strongest form of denial of freedom.171
Today, HRM hardly restrains ‘those who make things’ (Aristotle) phys-
ically. But the threat and fear of punishment has not ceased. In
Skinner’s model of obedience, punishment avoidance operates in a
highly dictatorial system operated by people in authority. For example,
adults who were raised in authoritarian homes under strict, harsh,
inconsistent, and emotionally repressive parental regimes are left with
a weak ego and low self-esteem (Miller 2002). They are the ideal raw
material for the human-being→human-resources conversion. They
have been made totally dependent on pleasing (positive reinforce-
ment) and obeying their parents. This structure is carried over into
authoritarian schooling (headmaster), the army (sergeant), university
(professor), and finally into work (HR-director).172 This represents the
total negation of Kant’s ethics of self-determination, Hegel’s ethics of
self-actualisation, and Adorno’s ethics of ‘Mündigkeit’ (Adorno 1971).
Virtually all individuals put through today’s education systems are
exposed to these authoritarian forms that systematically condition

individuals based on behaviourism using brownie points, stars, marks,
and HRM’s extrinsic-vs.-intrinsic rewards.173
In behaviourism as such as well as in HRM’s application of it, there are
always those who control and those who are controlled whether in labo-
ratory situations or HR settings.174 Skinnerian conditioning is a control-
ling top-down activity that suits HRM’s need for control.175
Simultaneously, it extinguishes the ethics of equality, self-actualisation,
Mündigkeit, justice, and freedom. Those exposed to behavioural
methods of mental manipulation are seen and treated as non-equals.
Obviously, they are denied any access to shaping the methods of pun-
ishment and those that create obedience. This occurs behind the backs
of the victims. Crucially, the manipulated are not even aware of the
fact that they are being manipulated. Unawareness, rather than
Kantian self-awareness, self-reflection, self-consciousness, and self-
determination, are essential for behaviourism’s behaviour manipula-
tion. This constitutes the very foundation of behaviourist
organisational psychology and HRM. In this model, HR policies, pro-
cedures, and rules are created in a non-democratic, authoritarian, and
dictatorial top-down way. They are created without any input and
awareness of those to whom they apply. It is no more than a deceptive
behind-your-back method that negates almost all versions of ethics
known today (Cahn 2012). HRM’s maze and Skinner’s maze-laboratories
represent a strict division between the two entities of those for whom
punishing models are designed, and those who design and administer
them. In HRM, as in Skinner’s animal laboratory, to avoid punishment,
HR policies must be precisely obeyed which results in the destruction
of ethics and moral behaviour.176
But HRM does not administer Skinner’s electrical shocks to animals
inside a box and the days of the overseer’s whip are long gone – at least
in the so-called developed world. However, on the basis of Skinner’s
behaviourism, HRM has invented somewhat more sophisticated sanc-
tioning regimes. In work regimes constructed by HRM – workplace
design177 – disobedience to HRM’s unilaterally defined punishment will
lead to penalties such as fines, demeaning work tasks, demotion, and
the loss of income and employment.178 For those who make things
(Aristotle) this is to be avoided. But HRM not only creates regimes that
punish, it also creates an organisational setup that diminishes the like-
lihood of punishment.179 To achieve this, corporations have been, and
still are, in dire need of supportive, uncritical, and affirmative academic
faculties such as HRM. With their assistance, they can create corporate
cultures, induction programmes, reward structures, behavioural adjust-

ment measures, and organisational behaviour. Once human beings
have been successfully converted into human resources who inter-
nalise HR policies, sanction regimes, and the rules of disciplinary
action, HRM initiated forms of punishment become less important.180
To achieve this, HRM demands strict rule-following by those on the
receiving end. The driving force behind this is individual self-preservation
which becomes an all-important mode of existing inside a company.
Through alienating control and regimes of disciplinary action, indi-
viduals become preoccupied with the demands of HRM and how to avoid
causing the HR department anger.181 This has been associated with the
rise of the ‘corporate psychopath’ when HRM’s recruitment practises,
for example, favour appealing terms such as ‘whatever it takes’, ‘career
minded’, ‘strong leadership’ etc.182 The non-textbook-based view of
workplace reality also reveals an increase in narcissism. Narcissistically
operating managers tend to manage through fear (Monk 1997:57). In
his seminal work on ‘The Authoritarian Character’, Adorno (1944:22)
summed this up as: these are the ones who humiliate others through
bossy privilege. Constructed in this way, such HR regimes are highly
authoritarian, governed by domination, and directed towards follow-
ing strict top-down hierarchies.183
At this stage HRM remains authoritarian based on power associated
with its position within an organisation and enshrined in what consti-
tutes a hierarchical relationship.184 The essence of HRM is that it
follows general management in keeping the cost down through hierar-
chies. It establishes chain-of-command and command-and-control
structures.185 Without hierarchy, authoritarian relationships are hardly
possible. This has a pyramid-like maxim: each level has authority over
the immediate below and over all echelons below that.186 Each actor is
confined to an HRM invented structure and has a clearly defined posi-
tion in which even those at the bottom are still made to believe that
they have subordinates (Butler 1997). In some cases, these lower levels
are externalised when power relations shift downward until external
individuals are viewed as inferior. The pressure engineered by HRM is
re-diverted to people outside of the workplace domain. These become
the places where HR regimes offload company-internal pressures onto
outsiders or what Managerialism calls ‘externalities’.187
As a result one finds harassment, mobbing, and bullying of partners,
beaten wives and girlfriends, husbands, children, pets, neighbours,
road-rage, violence at sports fields, against pub acquaintances, and
against friends.188 The core patterns of such cemented hierarchies
define organisational pathologies found in authoritarian, asymmetri-
cal, aggressive, violent, unequal, and domineering relationships inside

work and society. These pathologies are essential to authoritarian HRM
representing what Arendt (1994) called ‘The Banality of Evil’.189 In
pyramid-like hierarchical structures, the most powerful evil is found at
the most powerful level: the top (Essers et al. 2009). But there is worse
to come.
In a typical hierarchical setup of top-management with roughly four
sub-divisions below it – accounting, marketing, operations, and HRM –
the latter is seen as of minor relevance. HRM literature testifies to this
‘inferiority complex’ by constantly seeing itself as needing to prove to
be a worthy entity inside management. The devaluation of HRM as a
sub-group by top-management creates insecurities and low self-esteem
making HRM dependent on top-management. This is the ideological
blueprint for HRM trying to please its master – top-management – by
seeking to discipline, sanction and even destroy any perceived enemy
such as trade unions, etc. to fulfil the ideology of assisting the
company.
Hierarchy and authoritarianism are structurally set against those at
the bottom (employees) rather than against those who manage while
the pyramid-like hierarchy of companies works effectively against pro-
motion.190 Those in lower positions have a lesser chance to be pro-
moted. For them promotion is pure illusion. As a consequence, HRM
has an even greater need to keep the illusion of promotion and
promote-ability alive. Such authoritarian hierarchies exist in almost all
companies. Under authoritarian rule, they are of particular
significance. In contrast to one of HRM’s main ideologies, i.e. promo-
tion, each promotional level provides additional barriers ‘against’ pro-
motion. This asphyxiates individuals inside rigid, sharply divided, and
hardened borders structurally set against organisational mobility.191
Hierarchies, punishment, coercion, and disciplinary action are created
to stabilise and sustain HRM’s authority.192 In addition, HRM’s author-
ity is greatly supported by pay structures, HR praise and formal
appraisal systems, the illusion of promotion, the avoidance of discip-
linary action, and obedience.193 Nobody has better explained the issue
of obedience to authority and its moral implications than Stanley
Milgram.194
Human resource management and obedience
One of the foremost experts on obedience is Stanley Milgram with his

work ‘Obedience to Authority’ (1974).195 Perhaps his first key finding was
that situations powerfully override personal disposition as determinants
of social behaviour.196 When people face the moral dilemma between

what an authority demands of them and what their personal moral stan-
dards tell them, the former wins, especially inside authoritarian struc-
tures. Regimes with HRM determined structures and with HRM as the
sole authority are prime areas where this occurs: the authoritarian struc-
ture wins over individuals. HRM is even in a position to engineer specific
situations and systems that powerfully override personal moral disposi-
tions. When viewed from the sociological ‘agency-vs.-structure’ model, it
is likely that a workplace ‘structure’ as set up by HRM determines the
moral behaviour of ‘actors’.197 The principle moral agent is no longer the
self but HRM, situations created by HRM, and its authority. Milgram’s
obedience experiments have shown that ordinary people are much more
likely to obey HRM’s orders and perhaps even immoral orders when
authority is perceived to be legitimate.198
The key to obedience is that power is enshrined in institutions and
this is linked to the power of a person in authority.199 This is what
defines HRM.200 HR power can be seen as the capacity of HR managers
and the HR department to achieve corporate aims even in the face of
opposition and resistance (Bourdieu 1998; Scott 2008:184ff.).
Domination raises the probability of subordinates to obey HRM’s poli-
cies and commands. Hence, HRM’s domination entails the obedience
of HR-staff and – more importantly – non-HR staff. Both are made to
comply with the will of HR managers.201 It also means that those who
obey HRM’s rules will do so because they are made to believe that it is
in their own interest under ideologically laden phrases like ‘HR knows
what is best for you’ and ‘we are all in one boat’ (Klikauer 2008). These
forms of domination work best when HRM’s authority is accepted as
legitimate by non-HR staff. Hence, one of HRM’s key components is to
achieve ideological hegemony.
The ideology of accepting HRM as a legitimate authority has been
established through long-term traditional relationships between HRM
and employees. Historically, it started with slaves and masters, feudal
lords and peasants and continued with workers-vs.-bosses, employees-
vs.-employers, human resources vs. HRM. It has also been part of
everyone’s individual historical genealogy from obedience to parents,
teachers and school principals to line-managers and HR managers.
Milgram’s experiments have only brought to light what people are
forced to repeat over and over again. In sum, the willingness of people
to obey authority is no more than an expression of social dominance,
the acceptance of authority, and obedience that has long become a
structural part of everyday life.
Not surprisingly, modern HRM can claim legitimacy through HR

policies, rules and governing practices.202 HRM’s right to issue com-
mands that are obeyed has been based on workers’ belief in the formal
correctness and validity of HR policies and procedures.203 The develop-
ment of such formal HR policies is essential because HRM’s authority
works best through detachment. In that way, HRM is made to appear
independent of individual managers. Hence, HRM’s authority no
longer depends on individual managers – who might not be trusted.
Instead, it depends on HR engineered structures demanding obedience.
This coerces individuals into scripted behaviour and ritualises routine-
bound obedience to HR authority.204 HRM calls this the ‘conscript
mindset’ where employees are externally motivated (that is, they are
coerced by management) to perform’.205
Crucial to obedience to authority is that it never simply relies on
individuals but on HR processes, officialdom, rationality, rules, pro-
cedures, performance management, as well as modern recruitment and
selection processes.206 Monsters, psychopaths, sadists, and stupid but
evil people cannot mass manufacture compliance.207 It depends on
formal, objective, non-democratic, official, depoliticised, authoritarian,
impersonal, uncritically accepted, dehumanised, and ultimately
immoral HR policies.
The essence of obedience to HRM’s authority is that it has ‘not’
taken over older forms of control but continues to exist whether
McGregor’s ‘Theory X or Y’ is applied, whether performance manage-
ment is used, whether balanced scorecards are drawn up and so on.208
Packaged differently by HRM, the underlying element is that HRM
seeks to create obedience to authority. But this is not only found inside
HRM and workplaces but also in everyday life which is mirrored in the
authoritarian structure of organisational life. And not even the ritu-
alised obedience to cyclically rehearsed democratic elections can alter
that because they have been deliberately set up as far removed from
the sphere of HRM as possible. HRM remains free of democracy, if not
staunchly anti-democratic.
Instead, it is submission to an authority over which people have no
control that engineers and reinforces authority and domination.
Confined to authoritarian structures through socialisation – authoritar-
ian parents, schooling, and corporate mass media – and through a
history of 200 years of capitalism, plus roughly 100 years of personnel
management followed by HRM, people have internalised authoritarian
structures (Perelman 2011). This includes a subconscious adherence to
an authority-creating ‘money and power code’ operating as rewards
and policies in the HRM orbit.209 Without authoritarian structures life

has been made unthinkable. Hence, its extreme opposite – anarchy –
has to be portrayed as the worst imaginable evil of all and is to be
feared by everyone.210 Philosopher Erich Fromm (1900–1980) has
called this phenomenon ‘The Fear of Freedom’ (1960). Fromm’s thesis
is that humans are conditioned to live in authoritarian structures and
they are made to fear losing it. In exchange for materialistic petty-
wealth and consumerism, humans are made to accept the imperatives
of HRM that demand obedience. Disobedience is punished through
demotion, non-promotion, increases in workloads, unfavourable treat-
ment, demeaning work tasks, disciplinary action, job loss, and poverty
(Simon 1993). This represents an unspoken trade-off between work and
society as enforced through HRM. It also means that people have given
up expressing their individuality except for the cosmetic variations of
standardised consumer goods (brand A vs. brand B), and have been
made to accept their loneliness and powerlessness that is covered up
through shallow entertainment, sentimental music, and kitschy-
romantic Hollywood movies.
Individuals cease to be themselves adopting entirely the kind of per-
sonality offered to them by cultural patterns in and outside of work so
that they become exactly as all others are and as others expect them to
be.211 The discrepancy between the ‘I’ and the organisational world dis-
appears. Paradoxically, with it the fear of aloneness and powerlessness
rises. HR processes are perfect examples of this. For HRM the individual
has to cease to be him/herself because HRM does not depend on indi-
viduals who are themselves but on organisational members who have
accepted their assigned places as non-democratic corporate entities,
tools, and human resources. HRM depends on the modification –
better manipulation – of human personalities into personalities that
have been constructed as organisational personalities by HRM. Only
then are they useful to HRM. This is achieved through the application
of the psychology of behaviour modifications.212 The cultural pattern
offered to them is the sole existence for life inside HR regimes as well
as outside. Internally, this cultural pattern exists as organisational
culture created by HRM while on the outside a commercialised culture
organised through marketing, corporate movies, standardised mass-
taste, and marketable art that is reduced to saleability is to be found.
Oscillating between both worlds, individuals become exactly what all
others are. Inside a company they become what HRM expects them to
be. Aloneness, powerlessness, fatalism, feelings of despair and resent-
ment asphyxiate these individuals inside HRM’s organisational culture
internally and inside a material-commercial culture externally.
Internally, this is driven and organised by HRM that conceals the

pathologies of human aloneness and powerlessness.
On this, Milgram warned that when an individual merges into an
organisational structure, a new creature replaces formerly autonomous
individuals, unhindered by the limitations of individual morality, freed
of human inhibition, mindful only of the sanctions of those in corpo-
rate authority. Hence, while we would like to believe that when con-
fronted with a moral dilemma we will act as our conscious dictates,
Milgram’s obedience experiments teach us that in concrete work situa-
tions with powerful managerial constrains, our moral sense can be
easily trampled.213 This relates to HRM in five ways:
1. It is HRM’s intention to convert human beings into human

resources and to merge them into an organisational structure.
2. HRM converts previously autonomous individuals into
‘Organisation Men’ (Whyte 1961) asphyxiating them inside corpo-
rate hierarchies governed by HRM’s authoritarianism, thereby pre-
venting Kant’s moral philosophy of self-determination from
becoming reality.214
3. HRM’s prerogatives (the ‘authority that gives management the sanc-
tions to direct men’, Selekman 1959:75), organisational culture, its
hierarchy of command-and-control assures that human resources
are unhindered by the limitations of individual morality and freed
of human inhibition so that they obey HRM’s command rather than
morality.215
4. HRM needs humans to be mindful only of the sanctions of HR
authority. The sanctioning power of disciplinary action has to be
internalised.
5. HRM sets up concrete situations with powerful corporate constrains
enshrined in HR policies.
Consequently, HRM can easily trample our moral sense as Milgram’s

experiments have proven.216 His experiments are based on an authori-
tarian system consisting of a minimum of two persons sharing the
expectation that one institution has the right to manage and to ‘pre’-
scribe behaviour for all others. He also noted that a legitimate author-
ity is one that is perceived to be in a position of managerial control
within a given (work) situation and that the power of such an author-
ity (HRM) stems not from personal characteristics but from its per-
ceived position in a social structure.217 Magretta (2002:4) calls this
‘people in positions of institutional power’. HRM is in such a position
and surely remains an authoritarian system. It also consists of a
minimum of two persons – an HR manager and, at least, one

employee. Both share the expectation that HRM has the right to pre-
scribe behaviour for non-HR employees as outlined in numerous HR
policies. HRM also occupies a self-created position of control and is
perceived as such by employees. Crucially, the power of HRM’s author-
ity stems not from personal characteristics of individual HR managers
but from HRM’s institutional position in the managerial hierarchy.
Inside such obedience-reinforcing work regimes, there is a propensity
for people to accept definitions of action provided by legitimate
authority. That is, although a human resource performs a specific work
task, it(!) allows HRM’s authority to define its meaning.218 Once
employees have been made to accept HRM’s authority as legitimate,
they also accept to carry out HR-defined work tasks – e.g. HRM’s work-
place design – and allow HRM to define the meaning of such
actions.219 By doing so, those who obediently carry out HRM’s com-
mands deprive themselves not only of the meaning of such an act but
also of its morality. On this, Milgram (1974:74) noted,
with numbing regularity good people were seen to knuckle under

the demands of authority and perform actions that were callous and
severe. Men who are in everyday life responsible and decent were
seduced by the trappings of authority, by the control of their per-
ceptions, and by the uncritical acceptance of the experimenter’s
definition of the situation, into performing harsh acts.
Many of HRM’s own staff and non-managerial employees do perform

acts for HRM with numbing regularity. Equally, many employees
knuckle under the demands of HRM’s authority and perform actions
that are not self-directed but directed by HRM. And many are seduced
by the trappings of authority. Finally, too many uncritically accept
HRM’s definition of work related situations and perform immoral acts –
even for HRM (Macklin 2007). This is what Milgram calls ‘the agentic
shift’.220 Perhaps the most significant outcome of Milgram’s research is
the shift in moral responsibility from the individual to an authoritar-
ian structure (Milgram 1974; Blass 1992:279). What Milgram has
emphasised (1974:145f.; cf. 1973:76f.) goes to the core of the relation-
ship between HRM and morality:
the most far-reaching consequence of the agentic shift is that a man

feels responsible ‘to’ the authority directing him but feels no respon-
sibility ‘for’ the content of the actions that the authority prescribes.
This lies at the heart of Milgram’s work. It represents an HRM designed

shift of morality from ‘individual→authority’. It is no longer an indi-
vidual, a moral agent, human, employee, or worker who is made to feel
responsible. In authoritarian work regimes guided by HRM and the
much acclaimed organisational culture, employees are made to transfer
their individual responsibility to HRM. They are no longer responsible
towards the self but towards someone else. Self-conscious morality is
replaced by HRM’s immorality depriving humans of morality under
HRM’s authoritarian-hierarchical structures, by converting human
beings into Organisation Men (Whyte 1961), by the right of HRM to
direct employees, by hierarchical command-and-control structures, the
relentless application of McGregor’s Theory X instead of Theory Y, and
by a chain-of-command. In Milgram’s (1974:104) words,
it is not what subjects do but for whom they do it that counts.
Former individuals conduct an action for HRM who has disassociated

their action from human moral standings because morality has shifted
from the self towards HRM’s authority. This remains one of the key ele-
ments of HRM when based on obedience to authority. Simultaneously,
HRM can claim to be in the clear because immoral acts are carried out
by others.221 With that HRM has performed a ‘Harry Houdini’-like van-
ishing act of morality. Nobody is confronted with the consequences of
decisions to carry out immoral acts. The HR manager who might have
assumed moral responsibility has simply evaporated. Perhaps this is
the most common characteristic of managerially organised evil in
modern workplaces. It remains true for politically organised evil in
society as well as for HRM organised evils in modern workplaces. With
the elimination of morality acts are carried out on behalf of HRM while
obedience to HRM is secured. With the engineered demise of trade
unions, for example, there is virtually no resistance to HRM left.222 As
Blass (1992:282) noted, ‘any justification they might have offered for
refusing to continue would have involved an explicit or implicit con-
demnation of the authority’.223 Today, challenging HRM’s authority
has virtually been made impossible through a structure of socialisation,
HRM’s ideology – work hard, be competitive, etc. – cemented by corpo-
rate mass media, and sophisticated organisational communication
techniques.224 There is no longer any condemnation of authority,
neither implicit (absenteeism, work-to-rule, etc.) nor explicit (trade
unions). HRM is accepted as given.
In addition to Milgram’s obedience experiments, Asch’s (1955)

experiments have shown that group-pressure almost predetermines the
‘truth-vs.-conformity’ dilemma.225 As Asch (1955) found, conformity to
HRM alone seems to be enough in order to override moral truth. In
general, however, HRM is not about truth but about conformity to so-
called organisational goals and shareholder-value, the codeword for
profit-maximisation. Asch (1955), Milgram (1974), and Bauman (1989)
have stressed the importance of situational manipulation. Highly struc-
tured environments such as authoritarian-hierarchical workplaces
establish situational manipulation so that individuals are obedient to
HRM. Combined with the displacement of morality from the self to
the structure of HRM, obedience to authority becomes operational.
Milgram (1974) has shown how easily normal individuals can be
made to carry out inhuman commands (Blass 1992:304). The subjects
in his experiments were normal people who carried out inhuman com-
mands when placed in an authoritarian situation and under authority.
According to Milgram (1974) and Bauman (1989) neither the Nazis nor
the people in Milgram’s experiments needed monsters and psy-
chopaths to become ‘Willing Executors’ (Goldhagen 1996; Clegg et al.
2006:155) to carry out inhuman commands and immoral acts.
Ordinary people can be made to do it. Crucial is to place them inside
an authoritarian structure which overrides individual and societal
morality.226 ‘Ordinary humans become obedient subjects depicting a
limitless capacity to yield to authority using identical mental mecha-
nisms to reduce the strain of acting against helpless victims’.227 And
this is carried out under an authoritarian regime that does not neces-
sarily rely on strong punishment mechanisms because authoritarian
HRM structures alone are capable of achieving obedience to HRM.
There is not only a displacement of morality but also a willingness to
inflict pain on others that increases with distance.228 In short, there is
an inverse ratio between executioner and victim. The greater the dis-
tance between HR decisions and those affected by them, the greater the
cruelty of HRM.229 In other words, for an HR director it may be morally
painful to dismiss his personal assistant but it is easier to close a plant
in some distant country. To ensure that distance is maintained, HRM
has structurally isolated and, more importantly, insulated itself against
‘those who make things’ (Aristotle). This is done through a raft of
measures ranging from HR policies, separated car parks and refreshment
areas, from different floor levels (height=power) to business class air
travel (front=power), from outsourcing to global production networks.
In that way, most HR managers never see, touch, and even hear those
who are affected by cost-cutting measures. A hierarchical separation
between cause (HRM) and effect (dismissal of employees) has been

engineered. These sorts of separations not only represent physical but,
more importantly, moral distance.
MADD (moral attention deficit disorder), ‘amoral automata’, moral
disengagement,230 and ‘moral exclusion’231 increase with distance.232
HRM is at pains to engineer such a physical (outsourcing), organisa-
tional-departmental, and even mental (management-vs.-employees)
distance which together with hierarchy and a chain-of-commands
assist HRM to further remove themselves from any moral responsibil-
ities. To relinquish moral responsibility, HRM relies on several mechan-
isms of moral disengagement.233 Examples of these are:
Table 1.1 HRM’s golden rules for moral disengagement
No. Rules invented to relinquish moral responsibility
1 It is alright to do whatever it takes to protect your company.

2 Demoting an employee is no big deal when you consider others losing
their job during restructuring.
3 An employee who is a union member can be blamed for the trouble his
union causes.
4 It is okay to tell small lies because they don’t really do any harm.
5 Some employees deserve to be treated like animals.
6 Organisational misbehaviour is an employee’s own fault.
7 It is alright to discipline an employee who ‘bad-mouths’ the company.
8 To discipline obnoxious employees is just giving them ‘a lesson’.
9 Stealing from other employees is not as serious compared to stealing
from the company.
10 Any employee suggesting to break HR policies should be blamed when
other employees go ahead and do it.
11 If employees are not disciplined and controlled they should not be
blamed for organisational misconducts.
12 It is okay to treat employees badly if they behave like a ‘worm’.
13 It is okay to fight when your company’s honour and reputation is
threatened.
14 If an HRM decision has harmful results, it is unfair to blame any specific
HR manager for it.
15 Employees mistreated by other employees usually deserve it.
16 It is alright to lie to keep HRM and the company out of trouble.
17 Compared to the illegal things others do, what HRM does is not very
serious.
18 It is unfair to blame HRM which is a small part of management for harm
caused by a company.
19 HRM cannot be blamed for negative outcomes if general management
pressures HRM into doing it.
20 Insults exchanged among employees do not really hurt anyone.
Table 1.1 shows a few examples used by HRM to renounce moral

responsibility.234 Quite apart from these made-up and highly self-
deceptive belief-systems, one of the key elements of divesting HRM
from morality has been the use of hierarchies (Diefenbach 2013).
Mediating HRM’s action and splitting it between hierarchical-
managerial levels set apart by HRM’s hierarchy and authority and
cutting managerial action across functional specialisation is one of the
most salient and proudly advertised achievements of rational, func-
tional, objective, impersonal, and neutral HRM. The meaning of this is
that, immanently and irretrievably, the process of rationalisation
facilitates behaviour that is inhuman and cruel in its consequences, if
not in its intentions. The more rational the organisation of action, the
easier it is to cause suffering – and remain at peace with oneself.235 In
other words, HRM operates through mediated action by supporting
strictly hierarchical and pyramid-like organisations. Despite – or
perhaps because of – the ideology of de-layering, HRM retains layers
upon layers:
HRM-director → HR-managers → divisional-HRM → regional-HRM

→ plant-HRM → sectional-HRM236
In addition, hierarchies of authorities have to be maintained in the

HRM world. HRM has done this ever since its invention. The process of
instrumental rationality – not Kant’s critical rationality – is important
to HRM. It is manifested in hard-HRM’s idea that numbers are impor-
tant and in the rational act of allocating human resources (Schwind
et al. 2013:97; Phillips 2012:310). This sort of rationalisation converts
HR decisions from active into passive. It is no longer the HR manager
X who has decided – for example, a mass-dismissal and the ‘retention
of employees’ (Paauwe et al. 2013) – but a depersonalised HR depart-
ment that demands it. The deception through language knows no end
in HRM (Klikauer 2007 & 2008). Immorality is hidden behind the veil
of HR language that rationalises, naturalises, and eventually neutralises
HR decisions in order to appear moral where immorality is exercised. It
looks as if George Orwell’s ‘Nineteen-Eighty-Four’ remains true to his
ideas:
the more moral HR language becomes the more immoral the acts
that follow.
Finally, the more rational the HR organisation of action, the easier it is

to cause suffering. Suffering is never administered simply as suffering
but inside an HRM constructed process of rationalisation. The words
behind which suffering is administered are rationalised. In HRM ter-
minology, it is no longer called ‘firing’ and ‘kicking out’ but retrenching,
seeking other opportunities, set free, and let go of. This seeks to neu-
tralise ethical standards in the face of immoral behaviour. This sort of
HRM rationality seeks to neutralise the suffering of employees creating
a protective shield for HRM. While acts of immorality are committed,
rational HR managers remain at peace with themselves because they
are not to blame.237 It is the job, the career, the demands of general
management, the market, trade unions, the government, economic cir-
cumstances, and the weather that is responsible for an action but never
HRM. HRM has only done its job in a rational, objective, neutral, and
even fair way and according to neutral cost-benefit rationalities to
which HRM remains more loyal than to employees.
While excusing itself from ethics and loyalty to employees, HRM
demands loyalty from employees. Loyalty means performing one’s
duty as defined by the code of discipline.238 It is HRM that demands
loyalty and relies on the duty to be carried out by others. And it is
HRM that defines solely the code of discipline in HR policies. It
remains psychologically easy to ignore responsibility when one is only
an intermediate link in a chain of evil action and is positioned far from
the final consequences of an action. This is why chain-of-command is
so important to HRM. The responsibility for unethical actions is dis-
solved inside a hierarchy that is sustained by HRM.
This also indicates that it is best for HRM to be as far removed as
possible from the place of immoral action. The further HRM is positioned
from the action, the less likely it is that any responsibility will fall onto
it. Hence, layers inside HRM are being established that represent a clear
command-and-control structure acting as a protective undercoat for
HRM against ethical intrusions. It allows HRM to allocate work tasks
towards those lower down the ranks while simultaneously deflecting
moral responsibility. Just like any operational task, responsibilities for
immoral action can also be allocated downwards to departmental HRM
and functional divisions inside such departments until nobody is
responsible. In short, rather than being an institution of morality,
HRM is an institution in which morality is dissolved. The more layers
of protective coating are applied, the more diversified a company is,
the more locations it has, and the greater the distance between all that
and the HR department, the more likely it is that ethics vanishes into
thin air.
The readiness to act against one’s own better judgement, and
against the voice of one’s conscious, is not just the function of
authoritative command, but the result of exposure to a single-
minded, unequivocal and monopolistic source of authority. Hence,
the philosophical concept of ‘pluralism’ might just be one of the best
preventative medicines against morally normal people engaging in
morally abnormal actions. But lines of authorities and monolithic
organisational structures do not support ethical conduct. They tend
to prevent it. Unethical behaviour is born out of an exposure to
single-minded, hierarchical, unequivocal, and monopolistic sources
of authority. HRM represents such an institution – it is not based on
checks-and-balances. There are next to no dissenting voices inside
non-democratic HRM. HRM’s power, HRM’s leadership, and its ideo-
logy do not leave any room for that (Holbeche 2012). HRM represents
TINA: there is no alternative. Hence, HR departments are not places
for self-determination (Kant), self-actualisation (Hegel), and
Mündigkeit (Adorno) but rather the extreme opposite. HRM has con-
structed a one-dimensional institution with ‘one’ monopolistic
source of authority: HRM itself.
Finally, if pluralism is the best preventative medicine against morally
normal people engaging in morally abnormal actions, then HRM’s
managerial and ‘One-Dimensional’ thinking (Marcuse 1966) represents
the total opposite of plurality. The best way to prevent unethical
behaviour is negated by HRM which is not based on ethical pluralism.
It has deliberately excluded anyone from acting in a pluralist way
inside a monolithic and one-dimensional workplace. HRM’s buzzword
for a non-existent plurality and diversity is organisational culture.239
But its engineered workplace culture comes with clear command-and-
control structures, mentoring, stewardship, and leadership.240 HRM has
rendered itself incapable of ethical actions. Its own setup and ideology
acts against ethical behaviour. In conclusion, HRM’s authority sees
‘work as disciplined compliance’ (Noon et al. 2013:66) demanding obedi-
ence – framed as loyalty and commitment – while HR managers still
use punishment like the infamous simplistic but often applied ‘three-
strike-rule’. In HRM’s Orwellian Newspeak, it is framed as a ‘progressive
disciplinary process’ to disciplinary action – to enforce organisational
conformity and compliance if HR fails to create submissive and obedi-
ent employees.241
Soliciting the cooperation of victims
Obedience and punishment regimes carry one more element.

Bauman’s seminal masterpiece ‘Modernity and the Holocaust’ (1989)
calls this element ‘soliciting the co-operation of the victims’.242 For
Bauman, the Holocaust was not a failure but a product of modernity. It
was not created by diluted barbarians but through the administration
of rational means.243 It was the rationality of irrationality that pre-
vailed.244 The means applied to achieve the mass extermination of
entire groups defined as non-Aryans were modern means based on
instrumental rationality. This served the world’s most irrational goal:
the insane illusion of a pure Germanic race. The Holocaust was not a
direct opposite of modern civilisation but the application of modern
managerial and organisational principles (Bauman 1989:7). Auschwitz
remains part of our West as much as Detroit’s River Rouge, Ford’s car
plant.245
In carrying out genocide, the Nazis were able to count on Jewish
cooperation by setting up the so-called ‘Judenrat’ (Bauman 1989:118).
Elderly Jewish people of small villages and entire hamlets were assem-
bled by the Nazis and given the ‘rational choice’ between delivering a
certain number of Jewish people for ‘resettlement’ (extermination in
gas chambers) or, if they failed to do so, the SS would take twice as
many randomly, including the Judenrat (Snyder 2010). Diligently, the
Judenrat delivered time and time again until no one was left and the
Judenrat itself was put into cattle-trains destined for Auschwitz.246 It
was ‘Sophie’s Choice’ executed thousands of times over (Styron 1979).
It turned ‘choice’ into a weapon against those who were already con-
structed as ‘objects of power’ by the German death-machine. In that
way, the Jews were made to be part of an arrangement which was to
destroy them.247
The relentless and unforgiving logic of mass extermination was
based on: we do not decide who is to die; we only decide who is to live.
On that premise, many Judenrat leaders wished to be remembered as
benevolent protectors. They were able to save a few while oiling the
Nazi death machine (Bauman 1989:140). And so the death machinery
of the calculation of loss avoidance, cost of survival, lesser evil, was set
in motion.248 The rationality of the victims had become the weapon of
their killers. But then the rationality of the ruled is always the weapon
of the rulers. The cooperation of the victims with the designers of their
persecutors was made easier by the moral corruption of the victims.249
Bauman (1989:149) concludes, almost everything was done to achieve

maximum results with minimum costs and efforts. Almost everything
(within the realm of the possible) was done to deploy the skills and
resources of everybody involved, including those who were to become
the victims of the operation. In Bauman’s (1989:150) final words:
The Holocaust could be made into a

textbook of scientific management
According to Bauman’s discussion of the Holocaust, the greatest mass

murder in human history has only been possible through the applica-
tion of modern techniques.250 It made the most hideous crimes poss-
ible using just three rather banal core elements against those to be
killed:
1. they were turned into objects of power;

2. the Nazis relied on the cooperation of the victims; and
3. they were made to be part of the logic of death when rationality and
choice were used as a weapon against them.
These reflected six key principles can be found in any corporation:
1. Firstly, human beings are made part of the HR process through their
conversion into human resources representing Menschenmaterial (i.e.
human resource/material). With that, they are confined to an exist-
ence as objects of power. HRM’s right to manage represents a core
element in this assigning an unethical status to human beings.
2. HRM never works without the cooperation of employees (victims)
who are totally excluded from HRM’s decision-making processes
while being exposed to HRM’s power.
3. HRM’s key contradiction remains to be ‘cooperation-vs.-control’.
HRM uses ‘choice’ as a method of rationality to achieve coopera-
tion. For example, in HRM’s ‘costs-cutting’ scenarios, it administers
a ‘Sophie’s Choice’-like prisoner dilemma (cf. www.prisonexp.org).
HRM gives lower managers and non-HR staff a choice inside a tidily
controlled setup. For example, HRM demands a 20 per cent cut in
operating costs – e.g. wage reductions, dismissals, etc. This has to be
achieved otherwise an entire department will be dissolved. To
achieve that, HRM often sets up its own version of the Judenrat, a
project team or committees comprised of victims who cooperate
with HRM to achieve cost-cutting. This represents the standard
mode of operation exercised daily in thousands of companies. It

also represents the height of inhumanity (cf. McGovern 2013).
4. Employees are made part of an HRM arrangement which results in
their dismissal. The relentless logic of cost-cutting is based on the
maxim: HRM does not decide who is to be dismissed; the committee
only decides who is to remain in the department. Hence, many
committee members wish to be remembered as benevolent. They
saved the department from being dissolved by sacrificing a few. And
so the cost-cutting machinery of calculated loss avoidance and lesser
evil is set in operation.
5. In such a situation, the rationality of employees has become the
weapon set against them. But then rationality is always the weapon
of the ruler (HRM). The cooperation of employees is made easier by
the moral corruption of employees. This scenario highlights some
striking similarities. A departmental cost-cutting exercise like this
has already made it into HRM textbooks.251
6. HRM makes employee participation part of its inhuman logic.
Participation is used for different issues such as quality control, out-
sourcing, downsizing, relocation, etc. Instrumental rationality and
so-called free choice is used as a weapon by HRM. It is, after all, a
department manager’s free choice to take up HRM’s offer of closing
the department or cutting costs by ‘just’ 20%. It was the Judenrat’s
free choice to deliver a certain number of Jewish people to the SS or
be taken away. The issues at hand may change but the destructive
and unethical logic of choice stays the same.
Beyond that, the application of the above mentioned core concepts of

HRM also expose the immorality of HRM when it operates in its most
extreme forms. In the above case, it is dismissal due to cost-cutting that
serves as HRM’s version of punishment. It is administered to those who
fail to live up to HRM’s standards.252 Similarly, failure to comply with
HRM’s directives often does not mean dismissal but the assignment to
a different, often demeaning, task, the move to a different department,
or demotion. But Milgram (1974) has shown that most people obey
authority without any need of threats by superior officers (Badhwar
2009:259). Perhaps, HRM’s recruitment process already selects suitable
people for that.
On recruitment, Bauman (1989:19) noted that ‘our judgement is that
the overwhelming majority of SS men, leaders as well as rank and file,
would have easily passed all the psychological tests ordinarily given to
American army recruits or Kansas City policemen’. In the words of
Milgram (1979:7f.), ‘if a system of death camps were set up in the

United States of the sort we had seen in Nazi Germany, one would be
able to find sufficient personnel for those camps in any medium-sized
American town’. Pinochet’s Villa Grimaldi and more recently Abu
Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay torture and prisoner abuse scenes have
proven this.253
Neither the SS, nor the US-Army, nor any city police department,
and certainly not HRM in general need to look for psychopathic mon-
sters when recruiting their ‘Willing Executors’ (Goldhagen 1996). They
need ordinary people who show a readiness to obey orders and author-
ity, a willingness to submit themselves to the legitimacy of people in
authority, and to carry out rational and objective measures. This is part
of a process that operates objectively and with objectivity. Bauman
(1989:20) noted, ‘by its objectivity [Sachlichkeit], the SS disassociated
itself from such “emotional” types as Streicher, that “unrealistic fool”,
also from certain “Teutonic-Germanic Party” bigwigs who behaved as
though they were clad in horns and pelts. The SS leaders counted
(rightly, it would appear) on organisational routine, not on individual
zeal; on discipline, not ideological dedication’. In other words, what
HRM needs are not zealous idiots but those who rely on organisational
routine. It needs discipline – not ideological fanatics. HRM needs those
who can coldly and rationally carry out depersonalised, dehumanised,
and immoral cost-benefit analyses furnishing a sort of corporate
mega-machine.
Historian and philosopher Mumford (1895–1990) emphasised that
necessary to the construction of ‘mega-machines’ is an enormous
bureaucracy of humans which acts as ‘servo-units’, working without
ethical involvement. According to Mumford (1933, 1943, 1967), tech-
nological improvements such as remote control dampens psycholo-
gical barriers against the end result of their actions.254 The structure of
corporations with the assistance of HRM has set up such gigantic
mega-machines that shape the everyday life of almost everyone, reach-
ing even into the bedrooms through TV-advertisements. Not everyone
may be a manager or worker but nearly everyone is a consumer. Inside
the regime that sets up consumption – companies run by managers –
HRM has set up an enormous bureaucracy of humans.
Today Mumford’s humans are called human resources and they are
indeed confined to act as ‘servo-units’ as they are made to serve an
impersonal entity called HRM. They are performance managed
through an equally impersonal entity that operates through imper-
sonal techniques called key performance indicators and balanced
scorecards (Kaplan & Norton 1992). HRM’s structural setup and ideology
make them work without ethical involvement. This dampens the psy-
chological barriers of employees against the end result of HRM’s actions
because such consequences occur at a relative distance from HRM. While
Mumford called the people creating all this the ‘Eichmanns’, HR man-
agers are no Eichmanns because their business is not the mass exterm-
ination of human beings but the creation of value for shareholders.
Milton Friedman has argued that the shareholder must always come
first.255 The difference between Mumford’s ‘Eichmanns’ and HRM is the
end result; their objective methods and measurements are largely similar.
They measure their success in numbers.
HRM’s objectivity is expressed in numbers. Dealing with numbers in
an objective world all too often translates into dehumanisation
(Cheliotis 2006:397). HRM’s command-and-control structures are only
good as long as they support the bottom-line expressed in numbers
that matter. Hence it has developed its own specialised vocabulary:
HRM calls this numerical flexibility.256 Bauman (1989:208) noted, ‘the
cruellest thing about cruelty is that it dehumanises its victims before it
destroys them’. Perhaps, the hardest of struggles is to remain human in
inhuman conditions (Levi 1950; Clegg et al. 2006:182). The dehuman-
isation of humans also takes place internally: HRM dehumanises
human beings by converting them into human resources with ID-
numbers, bar- and access codes. HRM allocates them a set of numbers
ranging from employee numbers to office numbers that indicate rank,
power, and authority. Numbers also indicate performance measures
through key performance indicators, monetary remuneration, and the
number assigned through the infamous balanced scorecard (Kaplan &
Norton 1992 & 1993). In other words, the source of immoral behaviour
carried out by HRM is not the individual HR officer or HR manager but
structural determinants.257 As employees are exposed to HRM, they
might be puppets – puppets controlled by the strings of HRM (Klikauer
2010:82). But at least they are puppets with perceptions, with aware-
ness. And perhaps awareness is the first step to our liberation. HRM
has, at least, five answers to that:
1. HRM is designed to create false perceptions of reality.

2. A wrong or false perception might prevent awareness hence HRM’s
reliance on ideology has to be kept up at all times.
3. HRM is keen to avoid any awareness of the hidden mechanisms it
applies to create obedience to its authority. It does so through in-
ternal communication cleansed of all critical content (Klikauer 2008).
4. The concept that awareness is the first step to liberation is painfully

avoided by HRM. This negates nearly everything moral philosophy
stands for. It is not part of the structure of HRM, HRM education,
and its ideology.
5. Milgram (1974:121) emphasised that the mutual support provided
by men for each other is the strongest bulwark we have against the
excesses of authority.
HRM has established a substantial portfolio that seeks to prevent the

awakening of awareness. Mutual support, mutualism, altruism, and
human solidarity are systematically diminished under HRM while the
ideology of individualisation of relationships at work prevails (Callero
2012). This ranges from the myth of individual employment contracts,
individual bargaining, and performance related pay systems to indi-
vidualised performance measures.258 At the ideological level, it is pre-
sented through hyper-individualisation. It starts with phrases like
‘achieve your own success’ and ends with virtually no Hollywood
movie ever showing collective success against a corporation with
perhaps ‘Avatar’ and ‘Erin Brockovich’ as shining an exception.259
Instead, individualised heroes ranging from John Wayne to Arnold
Schwarzenegger are turned into highly individualised role models. The
morality of individualism, individual success, moral egoism, egocen-
tricity, and selfishness is what establishes the second stage of morality.
To highlight this version of morality is the task of the next chapter.
2
Morality 2: Performance
Management and Rewards
Stage 2 of Kohlberg’s seven stage model reflects moral philosophies

dedicated towards improving personal life and gaining personal advan-
tage. For HRM this relates to performance management, performance
related pay, and reward management dedicated to gaining a personal
advantage. This level is concerned with ethical theories such as ‘moral
egoism’ with selfishness as its basic principle and placing subjectivity at
the centre.260 Moral egoism is related to the moral philosophy of sub-
jectivism as outlined by David Hume (1711–1776). Subjectivism is
linked to ‘intuitionism’ (Brouwer 1951) establishing principles on how
to achieve personal advantages and benefits.261 Hume’s ethics is also
linked to two other philosophers, Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) and
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844–1900).262 While Hobbes locates the
self at the centre, Nietzsche was more interested in how the use of
others gains advantage over the self.263 Hence, Nietzsche’s writings
drew attention to slave morality, superhuman ideas, the herd mental-
ity, and his work on the moral right of the strong to use the weak for
their advantage.264 To outline HRM’s relationship to moral egoism,
selfishness, Hume’s subjectivism and intuitionism, as well as Hobbes’
and Nietzsche’s moral philosophies, this chapter will start with the
foremost fundamental ethical idea of selfishness.265
At level 2, HRM acts essentially in its own interest. For moral egoists,
the key problem of life is not how to be good, how to be happy, and
what shall I do. It is: ‘what should be our personal aim in life?’ The
answer for moral egoists is an individual ambition to be materially
wealthy. But moral egoism also goes a step further arguing that this
should be achieved disregarding other people.266 The maxim is: what-
ever other people may think and feel is largely irrelevant. Even though
I may have reason to accept their advice, this should in no way
69
challenge my personal quest for seeking material things. It is also no

impairment to perform certain actions in so far as I want to.
Moral selfishness has been part of virtue ethics ever since the begin-
ning of Greek philosophy. Being part of moral egoism, being self-
centred, fancying self-love (Adam Smith), pathological narcissism, and
selfishness is conducted independently of others.267 The ‘other’ pro-
vides no guiding signpost for moral selfishness. Instead, its core is con-
structed by and around the individual. It is perceived to be strongly
independent of all others promoting the satisfaction of one’s own
interest. All this makes selfishness and ethical egoism highly attractive
to HRM because it relates to rewards, compensation, remuneration,
and benefits – the key elements of HRM.268 Since moral egoists are
primarily driven by their own benefits, to get rewarded for an action
services their moral intention of ‘getting a good deal for oneself’. It is
not the action that is at the centre but the goal (benefit) it serves.
Moral egoists are supposed to do whatever they like as long as it serves
the purpose of getting a benefit.269 Whatever furthers their aim at work
is good. If this can be achieved through rewards and benefits, then this
goal supersedes the concept of doing whatever one likes. It is not ‘do
whatever you like’ but ‘do whatever achieves a personal benefit’. An
action is carried out because of the expectation of a reward that serves
the goal of getting rich.270
HRM engineers the handing out of rewards – often through middle-
and line-management – to ‘those who make things’ (Aristotle) –
employees and workers – because it is the sole decision-maker and
reward-giver confining others into a position of reward-receivers. This
represents the fundamental structural asymmetry of performance man-
agement.271 In some rare cases, the hand out of rewards to subordinates
can diminish an HR manager’s own rewards as prescribed by the ‘zero-
sum’ game. In this case, there are strong incentives for HRM to move
from monetary rewards (salaries, bonus payments, performance related
pay, individual performance-related reward plans, merit pay, pay for
performance, base salary, allowances, etc.) toward non-monetary, so-
called intrinsic rewards and motivators such as praise, acknowledg-
ment, employee of the month, responsibility, stimulating work, more
variety, etc.272 This is what HRM calls Herzberg’s two-factor theory, i.e.
intrinsic vs. extrinsic rewards (Muse & Wadsworth 2012).
The asymmetry of such HRM structures is represented in relatively
large rewards for HRM with smaller rewards for non-HRM. This is ethi-
cally justified under moral egoism. The hierarchical structure of organ-
isations puts HRM in a favourable position when it comes to rewards.
Morality 2: Performance Management and Rewards 71
Moral egoism services HRM more than it services non-HRM

(Diefenbach 2013a). It favours those who are in a position to issue or
withdraw rewards (McGregor 1960 & 2006). In short, rewards serve
HRM more than employees. They give HRM an argumentative upper
hand (Klikauer 2008). With moral egoism, HRM is able to argue that it
follows the very core of human life, the self-serving interests of
humans.273 HRM can safely abstain from the ethical task of having to
care for others because moral egoism determines:
1. subordinates do not care about a good working life and organisa-

tional happiness – they are only interested in financial rewards
(Sayers 2005), and
2. the self-interest of subordinates makes them seek such reward in
place of everything else. This is enshrined in HRM’s only ideology –
employees only want money and nothing else out of work.274
Framed in HRM terminology, ‘appropriate rewards for motivational
purposes’ (Schwind et al. 2013:337) e.g. ‘appropriate’ food-pills,
create a ‘motivational purpose’ for a worker to press a button, just as
Skinner had said.
But these are not the only issues HRM can divest itself of. Moral egoism
also demands from HRM that it only takes advice when it wants it and
when it favours an HR manager’s interest. This suits HRM because it is
the task of HRM to follow its own interest and use others for it.
Anything else cannot be morally justified on the basis of moral egoism.
Moral egoism supports HRM’s need to satisfy its own existence and
places this always above the satisfaction of others.275 This is to be
achieved in disregard of others. Furthermore, HRM cannot be dis-
tressed by the distress of others. This would violate the ethical
demands of moral egoism. In short, moral egoism is a philosophical
idea that creates a positive and highly valuable morality for HRM. It is
the philosophical underpinning of one of the lowest moral stages as
developed by Kohlberg.
But even under moral egoism, HRM has to acknowledge that making
deals with others may be necessary in certain situations. However such
deals are purely governed by HRM’s self-interest as outlined by the
virtue of selfishness.276 Selfish dealings take place when they serve
HRM and/or HR managers. If at all necessary, dealing with others is
reduced to instrumental rationality in the version of cost-benefit, win-
lose, ‘ends justify the means’, and zero-sum strategies (Nankervis et al.
2014:555). These are often ideologically framed as so-called rational
calculations under the ‘what’s in it for me?’ maxim.277 This approach

shapes all dealings with subordinates. In communication, for example,
HRM views any information provided to others as a loss to HRM
(cf. Klikauer 2007 & 2008) whose morality does not rest on openness
and access to information. Instead, openness and information is only
provided when it favours HRM. Although this violates communicative
ethics, it is the ethical demand of moral egoism. Acting differently
would violate this moral doctrine and HRM’s self-interest. Its ‘pay
secrecy’ (Stone 2013:447) surrounding every single allocation of remu-
neration is presented as confidential and the higher up in the ranking
the more secretive it becomes (Schwind et al. 2013:248). The strategic
use of information is a bargaining tool for HRM because it arranges
tradeoffs in order to achieve results.278 Information is not seen inside
the ethics of sharing but as an instrument that can be used to further
HRM’s advantages (Schumann 2006).
Consequently, moral egoism demands from HRM that it ignores
others and refuses to communicate whenever communication is
deemed non-beneficial, unnecessary, or unproductive to HRM. This
reflects the hierarchical layers of HRM in a typical organisational chart
that depicts the ordering found in any corporation. Anyone at the
lower levels is treated and made to feel as a cog in a machine unless
they are useful for the benefit of HRM. Once human beings have been
turned into cogs, the Kantian concept of self-determination, just as
Hegel’s self-actualisation, is destroyed by HRM. This course of action
also negates the single most important unifying idea between various
forms of ethics:279 the ethics of freedom. It is negated by constructing
‘unfree’ employees as cogs, tools, and resources kept at bay by rewards
and benefits.280 But HRM goes even further by framing the lower cogs
as ‘objects of power’ (Bauman 1989). These objects of power are
rewarded or punished which forces them into structures inside which
they are reduced to aspiring to be a bigger cog in expectation of bigger
rewards. The human being of moral philosophy is turned into an
organisational function and eventually – when reaching the top – an
‘Organisation Superman’ in the sense of Nietzsche’s philosophy has
been created. In thousands of articles and textbooks on the very
Machiavellian notion of leadership, HRM calls this career, performance
HRM, talent, and leadership.281
Not surprisingly, the second level of morality relates to
Machiavellianism where the key to success is the desire to manipulate
others for one’s own benefit.282 It is the selfish ethics of ‘me, myself,
and I’ that is often skilfully linked to Hobbes’ ethics of all against all.
The maxim is: I need to defend myself against others (workers, trade
unions, the state, consumers, suppliers, NGOs, etc.) who are viewed as
enemies. Strategic HRM is used to deceive a perceived enemy – e.g.
‘paper tiger unionism’ (Macky 2008:129) – and to place HRM in a
winning position.283 Deviousness and deception may be applied when-
ever these are required to get HRM into a favourable position vis-à-vis
from other management departments (marketing, accounting, opera-
tions) and employees (Macklin 2007). Machiavellian personalities can
be found working successfully in many areas of HRM, particularly
those who deal directly with people. They excel in bargaining and even
more so in bargaining a better deal for themselves.284 If, however the
immorality of benefits and rewards fails to suffocate non-managerial
staff inside HRM’s paradigm of ‘serving’ a corporate purpose rather
than ‘having’ a purpose, then HRM applies other methods to make
employees conform to its expectations.285 But HRM’s present day
methods are only the end result of an historical development that
started long ago.
The origins of moral egoism commenced in Greek antiquity in
Sophism. The Sophist philosophers were a group of thinkers who
divided facts from values and perceived the world as split into physics
(facts) and nomos (thinking). HRM follows this division by separating
facts and figures from value-creation. The latter is exclusively estab-
lished for shareholder values, ‘financial performance’, and profit-max-
imisation while HRM simultaneously claims that it is itself value-free,
unbiased, technical, and even neutral.286 For the Sophists human
values and ethics were of prime importance. For HRM values are corpo-
rate values related to ROI (return of investment), bonuses, and the like
(Stone 2013:365). In short, for HRM value means something com-
pletely different as it does for moral philosophy. For the former it is
shareholder, organisational, and corporate value, for the latter it is
human value. The ethics of human values is a peripheral issue for HRM
despite the ‘H’ in today’s HRM.
For HRM, ethics is seen as a question of human or moral values that
only interfere with the daily task at hand. What counts is the creation
of so-called value-free administrative rules, HR policies, and the hard
facts of business.287 HRM’s physiology is not found in the ‘nomos’
(thinking). Its essence rests on the creation of the physicality of func-
tional employees.288 But sophist philosophy supports HRM because it is
a philosophy that offers an artificial separation between facts and
thinking where in reality none exists. An even stronger support for
HRM can be found in contemporary philosophy. Modern moral
egoism, for example, denotes that seeking things and performing

certain actions are only deemed necessary insofar as they fall under the
deceptive maxim ‘I want to’ that is guided by rewards. This is
enshrined in the virtue of selfishness that has a healthy self-interest at
its core and exists independent from others,289 much like the mythical-
racist ideology of the independent Robinson Crusoe and homo econom-
icus.290 It is the ‘me-first’ and ‘me, myself, and I’ of moral philosophy.
Dalton (1959:251) summed it up as: everyone is interested in the well-
being of the organisation, but only after he gets what he wants. Most
obviously, this seeks to promote the satisfaction of the own interest
which takes primacy over the satisfaction of the interests of others, e.g.
employees, other managers, the company, etc.
Under moral egoism, HRM is able to argue that it follows the very
core of human life, the self-serving interest of humans. Moral egoism
denotes that it is morally wrong for HRM to care for others. It demands
that HRM only takes advice when it wants to and when it favours
HRM’s most important task – its own interest. Nothing else can be
morally justified on the basis of moral egoism. HRM needs to satisfy its
own existence by placing itself above the satisfaction of all others.
Moral egoism is a philosophical idea that creates a selfish morality
ready to be used by HRM. It also extends to the sanctioning of negative
and unwarranted behaviour – called disciplinary action in HRM ter-
minology.291 Punishment regimes ranging from three strike rules and
warnings to demotion, reprimanding, pay-cuts, dismissals, etc. are
extremely useful to HRM because they suppress or eliminate unwanted
behaviours292 which are those behaviours that make us human: spon-
taneity, emotional, non-predictive, non-useable, uncontrollable, non-
confinable and artistic activities, and non-conforming to authority.
After all it is the task of HRM to eliminate all traces of human behav-
iour that are of no use to a company (Barnes & Taksa 2012). Beyond
that HRM relies on benefits and rewards in an attempt to destroy non-
organisational but human behaviours which HRM constructs as organ-
isational misbehaviour.293
Whatever HRM views as organisational wrongdoing – not following
HR policies – is seen as a clear violation of HRM’s right to manage. For
ethically egoistic HRM, the asymmetrical power enshrined in the right
to manage and the use of disciplinary action is not perceived as an evil.
Instead, it corrects non-organisational behaviour thereby reaffirming
HRM. Maintaining the managerial order and securing HRM’s existence
is one of the prime motives behind disciplinary action when viewed
from the standpoint of ethical egoism. The same applies to HRM’s use
of rewards and benefits or their withdrawal. Both – rewards and Theory

Y or punishment and Theory X – operate with a zero-sum approach.294
The ideological construct behind zero-sum is the prisoner
dilemma.295 It remains one of the most useful methods allowing the
exclusion of nearly all unwarranted social realities displayed at work
(Vallas 2011). The prisoner dilemma is based on an artificial unreal lab-
oratory setting inside which human subjects are requested to select
between pre-designed options. These experiments are often con-
structed with animals in accordance to behaviourism believing rat
behaviour equals human behaviour. The underlying assumption is that
an atomised, lonely, and irritated rat in a strange black box represents
human behaviour. Rewarding a semi-starved rat with a food capsule is
seen as the equivalent to monetary rewards for workers. Rafts of
artificial prisoner dilemma settings and laboratory experiments have
continuously and empirically ‘proven’ that HRM is right and ethical
when issuing food capsules and wages to rats and workers.296 These
experiments are asphyxiated inside the empiricist-positivist paradigm
telling everyone that such experimentations are logical and their
results are ‘scientifically sound’ while they simultaneously make people
forget that once the animal-human divide is crossed, the results of
these tests enter the space of pure ideology. Philosophically, the false
‘animal-equals-human’ assumption is supported by moral egoism. The
immorality of a lever-pressing-food-capsule-receiving benefit and
reward system constructed under prisoner dilemma-like conditions is
highly supportive of HRM.297
Ethical egoism’s belief that personal gains can be achieved at the
expense of others means that HRM is ethically right when it favours its
own good over others and when this comes at the latter’s’ expense.
Therefore, it is morally justified that an adherence to HR policies comes
at the expense of others, i.e. employees and human resources/mater-
ials.298 Under ethical egoism, HRM can plan to achieve its goals at the
expense of employees and still act ethically. Ethical egoism is one of
the most suitable versions of ethics to which HRM can subscribe to. It
is just as important to HRM as intuitionism and subjectivism.
HRM, intuitionism, and subjectivism
Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711–1776) has been associated

with the ethical theory of intuitionism arguing that reason is subor-
dinate to feelings. Intuitionists believe that there is no principle that
can be used to justify our actions. What defines moral behaviour is not
rationality but intuitive actions, thereby claiming that ethics cannot be

reduced to a single set of ethical principles. In fact, there is simply no
such thing as a single ethical principle. Hence, according to intuition-
ism, HRM would be ill advised to take up a single ethical viewpoint.
Most importantly, HRM only needs to act in accordance with desires
and feelings and should never follow a single rational ethical principle.
Instead, it should pursue its intuitions as only then are its actions
ethical. This strongly relates to the doctrine of ‘double effect’ according
to which there is a distinction between what HRM can foresee and
what its intent is. This suggests that when HRM acts it cannot always
foresee the outcomes but can always claim it had good intentions.
For ethical intuitionists, morality is a fact of life that exists outside of
rational arguments and is closely associated with our feelings. Hence,
there is no need for HRM to develop a rational set of moral policies nor
does it need to justify its actions rationally. Morality operates above
rational justification and outside of rationality. HRM does not need to
adhere to the idea that reason holds the answer to every moral ques-
tion. In such an understanding of morality, HRM is excused from the
demand to rationally justify its actions morally. It can free itself from
ethical constraints that non-intuitionist morality (e.g. Kant) enforces
on them. This version of ethics simply turns a negative – demand for
justification – into a positive: there is no need for justification. It is
HRM’s freedom to do as it likes and still be able to claim that the out-
comes are ethically based on intuitionism.
Quite similar to intuitionism is the idea of ethical subjectivism. It
argues that it is simply impossible to find the right answer when HRM
is challenged on moral grounds. Moral answers are only to be found by
individual subjects. Hence, it is up to individual HR managers to deter-
mine what is moral and what is not. It is impossible to reach a correct
conclusion through objective reasoning. Many, if not all, questions of
morality do not even have right answers. For HRM, for example, it
means there are no right or wrong levels of rewards and benefits. What
is important is that subordinates accept them on individual grounds. If
the level of rewards feels right – it is right. Correct levels of benefits
and rewards can definitely not be found through rationality. The idea
that every moral question has a right answer is nonsensical to subjec-
tivism. Inside the framework of ethical subjectivism, HRM can negate
the demand to have answers to ethical questions and does not need to
justify its actions because all moral problems are purely subjective and
not based on objective truths.
Under subjectivism and intuitionism, HRM would be ill advised to

use objective language that removes subjectivity and nuance from the
actions that people initiate. As the moral philosophy of intuitionism
and subjectivism indicates, it would be perfectly legitimate for HRM to
excuse itself from much of morality altogether because ethics, as
understood by subjectivism and intuitionism, can never be rationally
founded but remains inside the individual domain of the subject. HRM
prefers to deal with hard objective facts of business and not the subjec-
tive moral feelings of individuals.299 Under subjectivism and intuition-
ism, HRM is free to concentrate its attentions to this prime activity:
managing human resources. Hence, the aspiration to successfully con-
tribute to The Real Bottom Line is what makes HRM and shows HRM
its purpose.300 This is a quality reflective of the ethics of Thomas
Hobbes.
Hobbes’s ethics and HRM
Employment contracts as issued by HRM and claimed to be moral

under contract theory is reflective of the ethics of contractualism.301
One of its main proponents was a pessimistic Thomas Hobbes
(1588–1679) coining the phrase that life is solitary, poor, nasty,
brutish, and short. Inside HRM’s hierarchical setup the poor, nasty,
and brutish existence becomes even more evident the lower in the
hierarchy someone is positioned. Those at the top of an organisational
hierarchy enjoy privileges while the lives of those at the bottom are
exposed to less fortunate settings. Hobbes’ description however is more
likely to be seen in a sweatshop than inside the CEO’s Manhattan
office that runs the sweatshop through outsourcing, sub-contracting,
joint-ventures, and franchising.302 Hobbes’ idea creates what is called
structural violence – an asymmetrical power structure directed against
those at the bottom of an organisational pyramid. According to Kohn
(1993:122), this suggests a logo for the American workplace:
a large dog holding out a biscuit to a smaller dog that holds one out
to a still smaller dog, and so on until the dogs and the biscuits
vanish into insignificance.
The pyramid-like top-down hierarchy represents nothing but a form of

structural violence that is, in the mind of HRM, required to create and
sustain order (McGregor’s Theory X). It is the price we have to pay,
according to Hobbes’ moral philosophy. Hobbes also tells us that

humans in their natural stages are confined to live in a chaotic state of
affairs that is brutish and short and can only be overcome through
contracts.303 This is highly positive for HRM which genuinely believes
that without HRM’s recognised legal employment contracts there
would only be chaos inside organisations.
HRM creates order through contractual arrangements in the form of
employment contracts that establish and enforce order. Such contracts
are especially useful to HRM when the other side is in a weaker posi-
tion – zero-sum – such as in the case of employer and employee and
preferably when HRM is in a monopolistic and powerful position.
Without a legal contractual framework that underpins HRM chaos
would reign. Such contractual agreements are imperative to HRM but
they also require a ruler to enforce it. In the world of HRM, the ruler
that enforces contractual rules and HR policies can only be HRM itself.
Consequently, every employment contract underpins HRM’s power,
thereby establishing HRM as the ruler to guarantee order and to
enforce it.
The ethics of contractualism sets out obligations that humans make
towards one another. Once HRM has made a contract and employees
have been made to accept it – often in a take-it-or-leave-it fashion –
employees are obliged to abide by it. The illusory foundation of the
employment contract is the free will of two parties. In HRM ideology,
the asymmetrical power relationship of the labour market reality is
simply denied by the expectation that ‘employees are expected to
market themselves as items to be consumed on a corporate menu’.304
The ideology denotes that the ethics of employment contracts is
created through a voluntary act into which we enter.305 It establishes
and enforces obligation onto us without which chaos would reign, as
we are made to believe.
To avoid chaos and enforce order, HRM must have some coercive
power to compel human resources to ‘the performance of the
covenants and contracts’ (Hobbes). HRM should do so by the terror of
some punishment that is greater than the benefit they expect by ‘the
breach of their covenant’ (Hobbes). HRM’s terror spans from discip-
linary action to dismissal. Apart from that, there is a raft of instruments
that can range from real terror to bullying, harassment, demotion,
demeaning work tasks, social exclusion, etc. that are used to compel
human resources into performing at work.
Philosopher Hobbes’ noted that the punishment must be greater
than the benefit of the breach. This is called cost-benefit analysis or
zero-sum game. It can be observed in almost any negotiation between

HRM and employees and their trade unions. In fact, almost the entire
ideology of HRM is geared to convince people that ‘their’ benefit lies in
doing what HRM wants while those who recant will be punished. It is
the clearest expression of Epictetus’ writings on ‘A Stoic View of Life’
written in 110AD and stating ‘if I do not punish my slave-boy, he will
turn out bad’. One only needs to exchange Epictetus’ slave-boy with
today’s subordinate and add a modest amount of modern HRM ter-
minology to show how Epictetus’ dictum would read today in HRM’s
terms:
110AD: if I do not punish my slave-boy, he will turn out bad

2014: if HRM has no policy on disciplinary action in place, its
subordinates will not act in accordance with organisa-
tional behaviour.
Employees are made to believe that HR policies are needed because the
natural stage of companies is organisational chaos. Only HRM makes
human resources adhere to an established organisational order. The
idea of a natural state of chaos dates back to Hobbes’ assumption that
the natural state of human affairs was not a tribe. Instead, raw human
nature would exist in its uncontrolled state, like a war of every man
against every man – bellum omnium contra omnes. This is highly applic-
able to HRM because, according to its ideology, without contracts and
HR policies companies would descend into a war of all against all. Only
HRM can prevent this from occurring. HRM’s ideological quest for
deregulation, the elimination of red tape, winding back the state, and
the end of the bureaucratic burden, are essentially measures to make
HRM even more important as the only organisational guarantor for
organisational order.
But Hobbes’ philosophy also outlines what would happen if HRM
failed to establish a contractual order. His bellum omnium contra omnes
would become a way of life: in this war of every man against every
man – nothing can be unjust. The notion of right and wrong, justice
and injustice have no place. On the battlefield of individual compet-
ition as enforced by HRM, actions are beyond moral issues such as
justice and injustice, right and wrong (DeCenzo et al. 2013:286). After
all, HRM’s goal is performance outcomes and all measures are justified
as long as they result in benefits and success.306 The pursuit of ethical
issues such as justice and injustice are of no value – e.g. ‘aggregate per-
formance measures’.307
But there is also a second reason for being offensive rather than
defensive. Some HR managers are taking pleasure in contemplating
their own power in the acts of conquests (Hobbes). We must be aware
of the fact that some human beings are not moderate persons (like our-
selves!). They are dominators who take pleasure in imposing their wills
on others and they enjoy their power as an end in-itself. Hence,
Hobbes’ ethics tells HRM that it needs to be prepared for an attack and
be offensive in a ’shoot before they shoot you!’ version of ethics.
According to Hobbes, ethics gives HRM a right to command and to be
obeyed. Without HRM organisational life would be poor, nasty,
brutish, and short.
In order to win, HRM must compete with other management depart-
ments. Sometimes, it can enjoy the glory that comes with winning.
Hobbes tells HRM that there are no common standards for what is
good and evil. What are considered good rewards in one company, are
perceived as immoral in another. Ultimately, only winning counts for
HRM. Hobbes makes it clear that in order to win a war no actual
fighting needs to occur. There are many methods in HRM’s arsenal that
lead to winning (=rewards and benefits for HRM). Any one of them can
be used to secure a corporation’s existence.
One of the responsibilities of HRM is to safeguard companies from
takeovers, bankruptcies, and annihilation. Since the move from per-
sonnel management under theory X (punishment) to HRM under
theory Y (rewards), and a move from viewing ‘labour as a commodity’
to seeing labour as cost, the safeguarding of a company can still be
ideologically engineered as a labour cost-cutting exercise (Selekman
1959:ix). Hobbes outlined, ‘when going to sleep, he locks his door;
even when in his house he locks his chests’. In modern HRM, we may
not need to lock our chests but there are safes, access codes, barcodes,
passwords, securities, insurances, protective measures, internet-
firewalls, software protection, and CCTV. HRM needs to be on guard
against industrial espionage, the protection of brand names, and
patents. HRM’s world is a world of protection and mistrust rather than
openness and trust. Hobbes states there can be no security for any
person. Hence, ‘trust nobody’ is a maxim not too uncommon in HRM.
Indeed, HRM’s all-defining treadmill of individual competition ensures
that no employee or manager can be safe inside its world.
Hobbes correctly predicted what has become the essence of HRM:
individual competition as HRM’s zero-sum game means reward for me
and punishment for you – benefit for me and loss for you. For Hobbes
this is established when ‘two men compete for one thing’. Individual
competition is perhaps one of the foremost defining acts in which

HRM engages and it remains a key component of its ideology. HRM’s
world is constructed of competing interests ranging from competing
with other management departments, enhancing competition among
employees, and corporate competition with other companies. Hence,
for HRM – and Hobbes – competition is a defining issue of company
existence. Not surprisingly, losing the competitive game is feared by
HRM just as it is feared by general management (Stone 2013:8). This
fear may also be the reason for general management’s push towards so-
called ‘high performance work systems’.308
For Hobbes the strongest notion is the fear of death seen as a fear
that compels us to fight. While modern HR managers hardly fear
death, they fear the death of HRM and of their company just as much
as they personally fear dismissal, demotion, no bonus payments, no
rewards, and no benefits. When failing to secure the company’s sur-
vival, HRM itself is at risk. Just as Hobbes predicted, HRM becomes very
active when faced with being eliminated during another round of
restructuring and cost-cutting. Hobbes also denotes that the passions
that incline ‘men’(!) to peace are fear of death. In the world of HRM,
the fear of death comes with the fear of departmental mergers,
company insolvencies, corporate bankruptcies and the like. They create
fear and a willingness to fight the competitive battle.309 When HRM is
unable to win the war against other management departments or is
not strong enough to destroy others, then the fear of being destroyed
by those strong others (management departments, for example) has a
capacity to create a passion for a temporary peace between HRM and
other management departments, as Hobbes would see it.
Not surprisingly, HRM feels that it has every right to manage when
there are no external impediments to HRM doing what it perceives it
should do. For Hobbes, this is the ‘Right of Nature’. For HRM, it is the
‘Right to Manage’ employees. Hobbes declares that there is a liberty
each man has. But man (!) also has the ability to use his own power
according to his own free will. HRM uses its power for its own advan-
tage, for rewards, and benefits. Inside Hobbes’ framework, HRM’s use of
power means to seek and use whatever helps and advantages it. On the
competitive battlefield, HRM needs to win and it can do so by using all
means needed to defend itself. To do so is not only ethical but the
moral duty of HRM under Hobbes’ philosophy.
According to Hobbes’ ethics, HRM also has a right to acquire what-
ever it can and to secure it so that it can serve the interest of HRM. But
he also advocates that the self-interest overrides what Hobbes calls ‘the
bonds of words’, i.e. written documents, HR-policies, and contracts.

These should never create restrictions and the ability to bridle HRM’s
ambition, avarice, anger, and other passions. Hence, HRM should act
without fear of some coercive powers directed against it. Hobbes’
advice to HRM is not to trust written words, documentation, and poli-
cies but to have enough coercive power in place to ensure that others
are coerced into working for the benefit of HRM. Coercive power is not
unethical. It serves the acquisition and security of whatever HRM
wants. HRM should never trust words. Instead it should rely on fear
and coercive powers. In short, words do not secure ‘competitive advan-
tages’ but coercion does.310
In Hobbes’ ethics, the use of coercive power against others is not
wrong because human beings are not equal by nature. Hence there is
no need for HRM to treat employees as equal. Hierarchical structures
are a ‘natural’ structure for HRM. As a consequence, some have power
while others do not and those with power need to use it for their
benefit. When HRM is accused of using coercive power wrongfully, it
has the right not to incriminate itself and exercise its right to self-
defence. This is important as it relieves HRM from externally created
demands such as corporate social responsibility (CSR) which might be
forced onto it.311 HRM’s legitimate right is not to incriminate itself by
instead blaming others, blaming the victim, the market, the economy,
trade unions, the weather, and so on.312
In order to create a defensive shield, HRM needs to establish unity
within its own ranks. In unity resides the singleness of power (Hobbes).
HRM depends on this power and therefore needs to have a one-
dimensional structure, one internal culture, one hierarchy, one leader,
and one HR mission. Once this is achieved and HRM has constituted
itself as sovereign, it cannot be deposed. With the successful marginal-
isation and annihilation of trade unions in many workplaces, there is
hardly any challenge left to the sovereign power of HRM. Cases where
HRM has been deposed are virtually impossible. HRM has literally
managed to install a general acceptance of itself in the wider com-
munity and in those working for it (Gare 2006). Similarly, it has
adopted the self-interests of egoism and determinism that are widely
accepted inside the community. On this basis, according to Hobbes’
rational egoism, HRM always needs to act in its own self-interest. This
is portrayed as the guiding principle of humans, HRM, and society. We
are all self-interested, work for our own benefit, and are only interested
in monetary rewards.
In conclusion, the ethics of rational egoism forms a major part of

HRM. Its ideological expression in the form of HRM has managed to
portray HRM as rational and anchored this belief in the mind of the
general public. For Hobbes, acting against one’s self-interest is like
acting against human nature which in this case would mean acting
against the nature of HRM. However, there is nothing ‘natural’ in HRM
– it remains a socially constructed human invention.313 Many have
been made to believe that self-interest is an expression of modernity
and indeed ethical. This allows HRM to use self-interest while simul-
taneously claiming that it is ethical to do so. For Hobbes as for HRM,
ethics starts with the self, an individual, a person, and with an immedi-
ate need of HRM to secure corporate order, benefits, and rewards which
is the ethical task of HRM. Just like any other issue in the orbit of
HRM, ethics is one aspect that has to be managed. This carries strong
connotations to Nietzsche’s idea of morality.
Friedrich Nietzsche and the morality of HRM
For Nietzsche the idea of morality came with Christianity which he

called mankind’s greatest misfortune. It grew out of Christian pity.
Nietzsche considered Christianity to be rather unhealthy for conduct-
ing life in modern societies. Instead, he thought it is important that
humans free themselves from the mental and ethical shackles of
Christianity. In order to do so, people would need to develop a
Nietzschian ‘Will to Power’ (Glover 2012:13). The classical question of
moral philosophy – what is good?- finds its answer in all that height-
ens the feeling of power, the will to power, and power itself. To the
question ‘what is bad?’ his response is everything that proceeds from
weakness. For HRM, this means it should never proceed from a posi-
tion of weakness and it is perfectly legitimate to heighten the feeling of
the power of HRM, the will to have power, and power itself. In
Nietzsche’s understanding HRM would find itself in the allocation of
power rather than in the allocation of resources.314 The ‘Will to Power’
even exceeds rewards and benefits.
The fight between good and bad is an essential part of life for
Nietzsche. The fight between weak and bad as well as strong and good
in HRM is also a part of corporate life. HRM must be strong, must win,
strive for power, reap the benefits of its actions, and cash in rewards.
Nietzsche advocates that one needs to live life – not out of weakness –
but out of strength. Therefore, it is HRM’s task to gain a position of
strength. It should never operate from a position of weakness and

always fight anyone who seeks to weaken it. HRM constantly needs to
show the weak (employees) that the strong (HRM) is in charge. This is
supported by HRM textbooks, journal articles, conferences, textbooks,
etc. that, for example, all emphasise the importance of leadership.315
For Nietzsche, nothing exemplifies the strong more than leadership. In
this view, HRM’s strong leadership and strength create ‘organisational
men’ for whom nothing is forbidden. Thus, organisational life means
the exercise of strength and will to power. The best corporate outcome
is achieved when HRM gets what it wants. Consequently, the clearest
expression of HRM’s morality – in Nietzsche’s understanding – would
be: a life of self-denial is less good than a life of self-assertion.
This could be the overall motto of almost everything that HRM rep-
resents. Nietzsche’s ethics provides a wide range of positive elements
for HRM. It favours the ‘Will to Power’ almost unconditionally. Today,
HRM is one of prime signifiers of power over people in workplaces.
HRM has invented sophisticated methods to exercise power over
people and make them do things they otherwise would not.316 The two
primary instruments are performance management and performance
appraisals.317 They make people – as human resources – do things they
otherwise would not do: work (DeCenzo et al. 2013:250–257). In many
cases HRM’s power over people starts with the structural imperative of
capitalism resulting in ‘the economic necessity to work’ (Noon et al.
2013:52f.) followed by recruitment and selection including ‘assessment
centres’.318 HRM’s will to power is manifested in its relentless and often
unquestioned ability to assess others, sometimes framed as ‘subor-
dinate evaluations’ (Stone 2013:318). Replace the word ‘assess’ with
‘power’ and HRM’s ‘will to power’ and its power of assessing others
emerges.
Almost all HR managers need to have the ‘Will to Power’ over others,
over workers, over other HR-managers and so on in order to become
HR managers. In HR language, this is called ‘leadership qualities’.319
HRM in general is not a place where ‘the weak’ meet. It is the location
of the strong. According to Nietzsche it is only natural that a living
thing seeks, above all, to discharge its strength. HRM does this on a
daily basis. Hence, it is only natural and All-Too Human (Nietzsche).
After all, strength was given to them for a purpose and HR managers
are humans, just as Nietzsche outlined. If HRM fails to act in this way,
it fails to act naturally. Nietzsche’s answer to failing to discharge its
strength would be: you alone are to blame for it! To avoid this, HRM
has taken charge. HRM’s leadership alone is able to control the herd
(Nietzsche).
HRM’s leadership and Nietzsche’s self-assertion are also in line with
the concept that following moral precepts is foolish. From Nietzsche’s
historical viewpoint, morality is not just foolish but a sickness that has
been ingrained by the traditions of Christianity. Our ideas of good and
evil originate from sin, guilt, and weakness. In short, the religious and
Christian origins of pity, sympathy, and kindness have led to what is
today called morality. If HRM follows this, it commits a foolish act and
even prevents HRM from making ‘the right decisions’. HRM needs to
be free of any pre-modern Christian baggage, religious affiliations, and
moral sympathy as it asphyxiates HRM inside an ethics that has been
created by the weak to trick the strong (HRM) into following the will of
the weak (employees and trade unions). HRM, however operates from
the non-religious and non-Christian position of the strong. It needs to
negate all Christian-based forms of weak ethics. Instead, it needs the
will to power. This is the essence of the world. For Nietzsche, HR man-
agers are the members of a higher ruling order according to the
formula:
good = noble = strong = powerful = beautiful = happy.

↓
For HRM, the above outlined Nietzsche-formula reads:
↓
successful = self-righteous = HRM-power = organisational position =
rewards
While the Greek philosopher ‘Socrates said that the happiness of those
who do immoral things is destroyed’ (Glover 2012:345), in Nietzsche’s
understanding, HRM’s task is to reverse the Greek and Christian under-
standing of good and evil that sees the weak and wretched as good and
the powerful and rich as evil, cruel, and lustful. Nietzsche’s ethics tells
HRM: it is the other way around. HRM is good and powerful and the
weak (employees) are evil and cruel. HRM’s ethics seen from the view-
point of Nietzsche’s ‘Beyond Good and Evil’ declares HRM as the super-
ior actor who represents the good. Under the circular reinforcing
belief-system of Managerialism, there is no doubt that many HR
managers actually see themselves as a force of good.
Nietzsche also favoured to see people who are below as bad and con-
temptible. This is perhaps one of the clearest expressions of HRM.
Many HR managers see themselves as belonging to a higher ruling

order who rules over people who are acted upon. Very much in line
with Nietzsche, HRM frames the weak in demeaning terms as subor-
dinates, human resources, human capital, materials, commodities,
assets, and underlings.320 It is not uncommon that HRM treats those
who are below them with contempt.
To manage downsizing, rightsizing, restructuring, and outsourcing,
Nietzsche’s herd mentality becomes highly valuable for HRM. Once
these underlings and subordinates are constructed as a herd
(Nietzsche), employees can be made to follow the instinct of fear
because ‘fear is the mother of all morals’ (Nietzsche). Aided by organ-
isational psychology, HRM skilfully exploits the fear of ‘downsizing-
rightsizing-suicising’, relocation, closure, cuts in bonuses and wages,
demotions, dismissals, etc.321 Fear has always been a powerful tool in
HRM’s arsenal that has been used throughout HRM’s history. Standard
HRM textbooks are at pains to deny its brutal and cruel history pre-
senting HRM as a non-historical and neutral technique.322 Historically,
it may have started in many western countries with overseeing the
‘Satanic Mills’, ‘the poorhouse’ (Selekman 1959:10) and corporal pun-
ishment during the 18th and 19th century. All this occurred before HRM
started to use sophisticated psychological HRM techniques.323 The HR
tools of fear and rewards are required to manage the herd that is seen
as unable to act on its own (McGregor 1960 & 2006). And if the herd of
employees does act, it acts aimlessly, unstructured, without direction,
and often chaotic. HRM provides order, leadership, stability, and direc-
tion for the herd of employees.
The herd’s task is to react to pro-active HRM.324 In this, the herd pro-
tects itself (e.g. trade unions), though it comes to resent their masters
and all they stand for. As a consequence, the herd seeks revenge. HRM
sees those who resent HRM – e.g. trade unions and whistleblowers – as
troublemakers, agitators, and recalcitrant people (Sievers & Mersky
2006). They are – like NGOs and even states – rebellious elements
inside the herd. The reason for their protest, resistance, recalcitrant
behaviour, fights, strikes, boycotts, etc. from HRM perspective is not
because they seek the greater good and work for general betterment but
because they seek revenge against HRM. And no reward or benefit
given to them can ever change that. As a matter of fact, it makes it
even worse because those who seek revenge can do so with the rewards
provided by HRM. Therefore, ethics is nothing more than a tool of
revenge (Nietzsche).
For Nietzsche, morality is just another invention of the weak to

torment the strong. His ‘strong-vs.-weak’ is nothing new in ethics. The
Greek sophist Thrasymachus argued that ethics is something imposed
on the weaker by the stronger (Singer 1994:17). Nietzsche however sees
it exactly the other way around. For him morality and ethics stink. In
the world of HRM, for example, ethics comes down to a tool used by
employees to attack HRM’s authority. With ethics, employees seek to
equalise themselves with HRM as they want to become strong and reap
the benefits and rewards reserved for HRM. In the eyes of HRM ethics is
nothing more than pure hypocrisy depicted by the weak. Because
workers resent strong HRM, their invented morality represents small-
mindedness (Jonas 2013).
Meanwhile HRM also relies on moral hypocrisy when it ‘reaps ma-
terial rewards of acting selfishly and also garners the social and self-
rewards of being seen (and seeing oneself) as upstanding and moral’
(Batson et al. 1999:526). This involves a certain level of self-deception
which occurs once HRM has developed self-deceptive strategies that
allow itself to avoid perceiving discrepancies between its self-serving
action and its moral standards. The goal of moral hypocrisy can be
reached when HRM can manipulate situations so as to avoid con-
fronting the discrepancy between its self-serving behaviour and its
moral standard. In sum, HRM’s moral hypocrisy is found in its motiva-
tion to appear moral while at the same time, if possible, avoiding the
cost of actually being moral (Batson et al. 1999:527, 535).
According to Nietzsche, one does not need reason to be strong
because reason is the cause of our falsification of the evidence of the
sense. Reason clouds HRM’s actions and therefore it is prudent not to
rely on it. HRM is better advised to operate with ideological devices
and belief-systems such as subjectivism, intuitionism, individualism,
charismatic leadership, and simple ideological convictions such as ‘we
are all in one boat’, ‘cost-cutting is always good’, ‘competitive advan-
tage’, and ‘you are not as efficient as you think you are’. In order to
cement its power, HRM needs ideologies instead of reason. Reason only
serves HRM to a certain extent but can never be enough to secure its
existence. Instead, it is morally valued to even falsify evidence
(Nietzsche) when it protects HRM against revenge-seeking weaklings.
For HRM, ideologies are by far more important than reason, logic, HR
policies, and rationality.
An ideology such as Managerialism serves HRM because Nietzsche’s
ethics denotes that we have no categories at all that permit us to
distinguish between a ‘world in-itself’ versus a ‘world of appearance’

(Locke & Spender 2011). We simply cannot know the difference
between what HRM factually is, how it appears to others, and its ideo-
logy. Hence, HRM needs to create an ideological impression of what it
actually is.325 It has invented a number of instruments to enhance its
appearance ranging from myths, mission statements, HR policies, cor-
porate PR, company videos, leaflets, image consultants, and brand-
ing.326 Because HRM itself cannot be separated from its appearance, it
constantly moves the border between impression and reality. The
crucial difference between both, however, is that ideologies such as
Managerialism are more powerful than HRM’s facts and figures.327 In
Nietzsche’s terms, HRM needs to project its ‘Will to Power’ (1880)
rather than the will to facts.
HRM’s Will to Power can even overcome the rather deterministic
technological and mechanical necessities of the HR process.328 They are
not facts: it is we who first interpreted them into events (Nietzsche).
Hence, necessity is not a fact but an interpretation, writes Nietzsche.
The meaning of this for HRM is twofold:
1. HRM is open to interpret necessities at will and free from con-

straints. HR managers understand that the so-called facts of necess-
ities are in reality nothing more than their own interpretations.
HRM has the freedom to select between not-interpreting – so-called
‘facts-that-speak-for-themselves’ – and interpreting. It can decide on
the way to present HR policies, for example, as necessities or as an
interpretation.
2. Once HRM has selected the interpretive option, the second path
opens. This gives HRM the ability to interpret necessities inside the
ideological framework of Managerialism (Enteman 1993). This is a
purely ideological process because HRM uses necessities to support
its power.
As a consequence, HRM remains in a dominant position of informa-

tion, interpretation, and communicative control (Klikauer 2007 &
2008). For one, it has the exclusive option to sell necessities to non-
managerial staff as a ‘fact of life’ and as a ‘cost-benefit trade-off’ under
the motto: accept our imperatives and be rewarded! In addition, it can
also interpret these necessities in ways so that they become acceptable
to employees.
In an ideal HRM scenario, employees are made to support necessities.
Best of all, this can be achieved without resorting to a Styron-like
‘Sophie’s Choice’ prisoner dilemma (Styron 1979; Mark 2013). HRM

only has to interpret the necessities properly and present them inside
an ideological framework that allows only one understanding follow-
ing the TINA model: there is no alternative. Done properly, it can
achieve the seemingly unachievable: workers – and trade unions –
support HRM even when it means cost-cutting, wage-cuts, and dis-
missal of employees.329 On the basis of its sole control over interpreta-
tion and communication, HRM is positioned in a winning situation. In
sum, Nietzsche’s philosophy hands over a valuable option to HRM that
can be used at will to sustain and boost its organisational position. The
Will to Power is deeply ingrained in HRM and remains more important
than truth.
Truth, for Nietzsche, is not something that might be found or dis-
covered but must be created. It gives a name to a process and a will to
overcome that has no end in-itself. Truth is a ‘processus in infinitum’, an
active determining conscious of something that is in itself and deter-
mined. For HRM, the philosophical idea of ‘there is no truth’ is most
welcoming. Its essence has never been linked to truth, only to mana-
ging people, performances, and ultimately shareholder values. For HRM,
the idea of truth concerns illusive academics rather than real-life HRM.
But truth can still be relevant to HRM when it assists in annihilating a
competitive enemy in other management departments, win over trade
unions, or when it can be used in strategic HRM. Truth can also be
called upon when it supports HRM in general. In those cases, the
Servants of Power (Baritz 1960) remain important because they can
adjust truth to HRM and use it ideologically to legitimise and support
HRM.
On the whole, HRM is free to use truth as something that must be
created and that gives a name to a process. When HRM creates HR poli-
cies or processes, it also creates its own truth. Therefore truth is not
something that might be found or discovered – but something that
must be created by HRM. HRM possesses means and power to create its
own truth. In line with all ideologies there is always some sort of truth
in whatever HRM does. The core of any ideology is that it relates to
truth in some way. There is also always some truth inside HRM,
waiting to be wheeled out when it is in HRM’s interest. In general,
Nietzsche’s idea of creating truth correctly highlights the essence of
HRM.
In conclusion, there are a small number of highly useful ideas inside
Hobbes’ and Nietzsche’s ethics that are very valuable to HRM.
However, they more often than not denote the exact opposite of the
three most prominent forms of ethics – virtue ethics, utilitarianism,

and Kantian ethics (Shafer-Landau 2012). Intuitionism, for example,
believes that there is no rational explanation for ethics as it is intuitive.
Similarly, subjectivism denotes that ethics is related to the individual
subject and not an objective world. Both assist HRM in deflecting
ethical demands directed towards them. A non-defensive positive view
for HRM comes from moral egoism. It supports HRM’s ideology of indi-
vidualism that sees personal advantage as moral and never excludes
‘cheating’ that can be seen as receiving ‘a benefit from others without
reciprocation’.330
This is in line with Hobbes who saw the perpetual fight of all against
all as the only base for ethics. In such a struggle, strong HRM should
use everything at its disposal to win over the weak and reap their
deserved benefits. Nietzsche advocated to seeing ethics as no more
than a tool of the weak – workers – directed against the strong – HRM.
In sum, most versions of ethics presented in this chapter assist HRM.
This is of great importance as HRM is not primarily concerned about
ethics but about making things work. The outcome of making things
work is not only the asymmetrical distribution of benefits and rewards
but also the creation of organisational values, virtues, and social con-
formity commonly known as corporate culture.331 How moral philo-
sophy relates to this is part of the next chapter.
3
Morality 3: Organisational Culture
and Workplace Training
The morality of stage 3 carries strong connotations to virtue ethics

(MacKinnon (2013:63ff.). In contrast to stage 2 where HRM seeks
selfishness and personal advantages, HRM’s behaviour at stage 3 is
based on conforming to organisationally determined virtues. The
moral philosophy of virtue ethics – which forms much of the concep-
tual basis of stage 3 – can be divided into two broad categories in his-
torical sequence. The first category begins in ancient Greece where
philosophers such as Plato and Socrates but primarily Aristotle
(382–322 BC) developed moral codes for good personal character based
on the belief that a good person acts morally and is therefore a moral
person. The second category relates to modern virtue ethics associated
with David Hume (1711–1776). Between Greek and modern virtue
ethics tower the Dark Ages of feudalism with Thomas Aquinas
(1225–1274) as the prime writer on virtue ethics albeit from a religious-
catholic standpoint. Once feudalist-catholic rule was overcome,
modern virtue ethics developed free from irrationality and supersti-
tion.332 Before outlining their writings, this chapter will start with the
very beginning of virtue ethics in ancient Greece.
The ethics of virtues is one of the oldest forms of morality. It is still
in use and discussed, thereby aiding the impression that virtue ethics
has not much developed beyond what it was more than 2,500 years
ago (Shafer-Landau 2012). Virtue ethics started with a man who lived
in ways that expressed the very opposite of the expensively dressed,
highly paid, and fully employed HR manager (Cederström & Freming
2012:9). This man was a poor, unemployed, modest to shabbily
dressed, and barefooted man with the name Socrates (469–399BC). He
lived an ethical life and coined the phrase that ‘an unexamined life is
not worth living’. Today’s HR managers all too often represent such an
91
unexamined life. They engage in day-to-day affairs without even taking

the time to reflect, to examine, to self-reflect, and to self-examine.333
They often live a double life between what they do at work (discip-
linary action, rewarding, dismissing, outsourcing, and downsizing) and
how they behave at home (family-oriented, caring, and compassion-
ate).334 Their performance-driven time-squeezed day-to-day routine
leaves scarcely any time for examination, even less so in a philosoph-
ical sense. They are the very reverse of what perhaps the world’s main
philosopher, Socrates stood for.
Socrates believed that nothing can harm a good and just person,
while a wrongdoer courts unhappiness and misery. According to him,
wrongdoing harms the soul and acting immorally harms the soul of
the person who engages in the wrongdoing. Most HR managers do not
even think about the ethical rights and wrongs of their daily decisions.
In general, HR managers are not happy people but people who
perform, who make things work. Because of the relentless demands of
a self-created and daily reinforced system of performance management,
the world of HRM often produces misery and outright unhappiness.335
HR managers are confined in the tough demands of their own system
restricted to a never ending treadmill of eternal competition and per-
formance management and also facing other managers competing for
power, influence, and status. Internal competition forces them into a
soul-destroying rat-race in which even the winning rat is still a rat!
Inside this competitive world, HR managers hardly notice their wrong-
doing sacrificing what is good to a dehumanised, often immoral, and
obsessive performance maxim.
Table 3.1 shows that HRM appears almost to be pathologically
addicted to good performance. Meanwhile Socrates was convinced that
to know the good is to seek it. This might be one of the reasons why
HRM suffers a somewhat marginalised existence in the standard cur-
ricula of today’s business schools. It is often assumed that some in HRM
know what is good – for employees. Despite this assumption, the core
of HRM is not found in seeking what is good (Socrates) but in seeking
organisational performance (Singh et al. 2012). If mentioned at all,
Socratic ethics of what is good has been confined to a marginal chapter
in the occasional HRM textbook and taught in non-core business sub-
jects. It suffers a fig-leaf existence used to claim one has covered the
issue while simultaneously making sure that HR managers are not to be
bothered by knowing what is ethically good which might prevent
them from doing their task. After all, the real essence of HRM is to
transform human and material resources into profit-making opera-
Morality 3: Organisational Culture and Workplace Training 93
Table 3.1 HRM fixation on performance
Textbook examples of HRM statements on performance
• ‘performance after training’ (Jackson et al. 2012:301),

• ‘detect performance problems’ (Jackson et al. 2012:316),
• ‘performance-based pay’ (Jackson et al. 2012:98–100),
• ‘performance measurement’ (Kramar et al. 2011:352–357 & Kramar et al.
2014:334–348),
• ‘performance engagement’ (Kramar et al. 2011:39 & 523),
• ‘HRM and organisational performance’ (Beardwell & Claydon 2011:12),
• ‘managing performance in a volunteer workforce’ (Beardwell & Claydon
2011:482),
• ‘impact of high performance management’ (Beardwell & Claydon 2011:558),
• ‘adaptive performance’ (Macky 2008:227),
• ‘ability, factor in performance’ (Macky 2008:283),
• ‘performance metrics’ (Macky 2008:421f.),
• ‘economic performance and HRM’ (Gunnigle et al. 2011:32–34),
• ‘high performance work systems (HPWS)’,336
• ‘people and performance models’ (Gunnigle et al. 2011:70–72),
• ‘performance perceptions’ (Nel et al. 2012:255f.),
• ‘best practice pay-for-performance system’ (Nel et al. 2012:255),
• ‘performance appraisals’ (Nel et al. 2012:396 & 459),
• ‘performance evaluation’ (Nel et al. 2012:411),
• ‘performance appraisal dilemma’ (Grobler et al. 2011:294),
• ‘performance problems’ (Grobler et al. 2011:523),
• ‘their performance is measured’ (Schwind et al. 2013:234),
• ‘aims to improve organisational, functional, unit, and individual perfor-
mance’ (Stone (2013:306).
• ‘performance tests’ (Schwind et al. 2013:237).
tions, not applying Socrates’ and Aristotle’s philosophy of virtue

ethics.337
Aristotle and virtue ethics
Not surprisingly, HRM presents no more than a negation of what

Socrates’ philosophical successor – Aristotle – demanded when thinking
that a moral life involves developing virtue dispositions of character.338
For HRM, virtue ethics simply boils down to having the right attitude
seen as a predisposition to ‘respond positive’ to HRM.339 For virtue
ethics, character is the foremost essential concept. A virtuous character is
the sheer embodiment of humanity. For HRM meanwhile virtue ethics
can be extracted to the ‘Big Five’ character traits useful to HRM: extro-
version, emotional stability, agreeableness, consciousness, and openness’
(Stone 2013:265). In opposition to that, the prime emphasis of virtue

ethics rests on building a virtuous character rather than teaching
standard HRM subjects such as performance management, reward-
management, appraisals, etc. (see list above). However, the development
of a virtuous character is almost totally absent from HRM curricula.
Aristotle’s ethics demands that moral education is absolutely central
to a moral life (Nussbaum 2012). But the teaching of HRM totally
negates this by staying inside the confinement of HRM’s assumed func-
tionalities. Virtue ethics is often not taught at all and almost never
central to HRM teachings. Nevertheless, it is always added to the cur-
ricula and assigned a niche position in the teaching time-table. Its sole
purpose is that of an alibi, a little side-issue to avoid being accused of
not teaching ethics. In that way HRM teaching circumvents Socrates’,
Plato’s, and Aristotle’s issue of ‘akrasia’ – know what is good for us.
Socrates saw personal honour as one of the highest values. One
might suspect that given the choice between honour and a 20 per cent
increase in shareholder value (plus a 20 per cent rise in one’s indi-
vidual bonus) many HR managers would gladly take the latter (Mark
2013). Greek virtue ethics also thought that being loved is a human
value to strive for.340 Again, many HR managers are feared, treated
indifferently, and respected at best (Wood 2010). Not surprisingly, the
virtue of being loved is generally not associated with HRM – no stan-
dard HRM textbook even mentions ‘love’ (Gare 2006). Socrates’ virtue
ethics identifies five virtues [arête]: temperance, piety, courage, justice,
and wisdom. Apart from ‘courage’ – e.g. ‘people with energy, enthusi-
asm and the courage to lead’ (Kacmar 2007:83), none of the other four
are found in HRM.
But Socrates also advocated the prudential paradox denoting we
never willingly pursue something that is bad and we are often mis-
taken about our own true interests. HRM’s relationship to Socrates’
prudential paradox is problematic. Surely, HR managers do not will-
ingly pursue the creation of social pathologies at work but they calcu-
late the side-effects of their cost-cutting efforts. They are aware of the
prime essence of their action in relation to cost: there are costs going
into a product before it can be sold – under the ideological equation of
labour equals raw materials – and costs, plus the all important surplus-
value, which can be recovered.341 HR managers need to recover costs
and contribute to making profits (Schwind et al. 2013:13; Jackson et al.
2012:519). Finally, they are often mistaken about their ‘true’ interests
because they too are trapped in the money and power code which
supersedes virtue ethics (Habermas 1997). Similar to Socrates, Aristotle

(384–322 BC) noted that the life of money-making is in a way forced
on a person and not a life chosen for itself. Aristotle also thought that
making money does not count as a proper activity because there is no
point at which we know that it is over. According to his thinking it is
all right to sell goods if they are excess from one’s household consump-
tion. But to actually deliberately produce goods with the intention of
making money on them, is to corrupt the activity itself, thereby
strongly advocating his opposition to producing things for money.342
Aristotle’s thinking denotes that it is not part of the free will to
engage in money making. However, making money is an activity to
which HRM is designed to contribute. Aristotle might however support
the fact that capitalism and competition are forced onto a person
negating the ‘free will’ which he thought was needed for virtue ethics.
He also contemplated that virtuous activities should have a natural
ending. But money making and HRM’s contribution to it has no end.
HRM is engaged in the never-ending treadmill of the quest for money.
Rather than avoiding and negating money making, HRM does the
exact opposite of what ethical philosophy determines as virtuous
behaviour.
Furthermore, one should only engage in money making when
selling household leftovers (Aristotle) and never in the purposeful pro-
duction of goods and services with the sole intention for making
money (Aristotle). This however marks the essence of HRM’s contribu-
tion to companies and capitalism. As a consequence, HRM exists in
stark contradiction to Aristotle’s virtues and is therefore fundamentally
unethical. For Aristotle, money making is not only a corrupt activity
in-itself but also corrupts the character of those engaged in it. HRM
enhances this through what it calls reward management. Even today –
more than 2,300 years after Aristotle, not too many would deny that.
HRM’s unethical behaviour may be explained by its self-imposed ‘veil
of ignorance’ (Rawls 1980:522). In Aristotelian and Socratic ethics,
ignorance constitutes what is morally bad and the opposite of virtue
ethics.
One should never willingly pursue something that is bad (Socrates).
On that, Aristotle noted, an act is involuntary if it is done out of igno-
rance of particulars. Under these conditions it is involuntary only if
HRM – on learning of what it has done – comes to regret the act or is
pained at having committed it.343 The inability of HRM to regret an act
has been demonstrated by HRM itself with its claim that it only uses
painless, technical, rational, objective, impersonal, and administrative

reasons in decision-making.344 With this, HRM seeks to shield itself
from all ethical implications. It pretends that by basing decisions
purely on instrumental rationality and technical models etc., it can
relieve itself from ethics – e.g. ‘behavioural cause-and-effect models’,
‘competency modelling’, ‘organisational model of performance’.345
This is not so. Nevertheless, HRM advocates that administrative and
technical resource allocation eliminates politics and numbs the pain. It
sacrifices virtue ethics, thinking, judgement, and humanity on the altar
of matching resources to opportunities.346 In other cases, HRM tries to
create HR policies out of reflection and judgement by using ethics-
denying methods. But for virtue ethics, any judgement – decision-making
– is linked to morality because it involves human beings – human
resources in HRM terms.347 Nobody can escape from this and not even
HRM’s reliance on administrative techniques can achieve it.348 In sum,
HRM negates the core principles of virtue ethics when using such tech-
niques and diverting attention away from morality.
In morality, Aristotle remains the quintessential philosopher of
virtues.349 He developed two forms of virtues: (i) intellectual and
(ii) moral virtues linking intellectual existence to morality for which
he saw theoretical and practical wisdom as essential. HRM negates
both by not having its prime telos directed towards either intellectual
or moral existence. Rather than being intellectual and living ‘a life of
morality’ (Aristotle), HRM contributes to shareholder values (profits).
HR managers are hardly ever intellectuals and intellectuals are hardly
ever HR managers. The same applies to HRM in terms of moral exist-
ence. HRM’s essence is not a moral existence in the sense of moral
philosophy and virtue ethics nor is it directed towards theoretical
wisdom. Most HRM textbooks, for example, provide hands-on
practical and, above all, non-theoretical and even anti-theoretical
instruments.350
In contrast to Aristotle’s concept of practical wisdom, HRM relates
more to the term ‘practical’ rather than to ‘wisdom’. It does not seek
wisdom but practical solutions to rather trivial problems.351 Not sur-
prisingly, for example, no HRM book has ever dealt with essential
issues of human life and humanity (Johnsen & Gudmand-Høyer 2010).
The predominant use of the Harvard Business School Case Study
Method in HRM does not teach wisdom but simplistic practicalities.352
The foremost task of HRM is to set up structures so that an enterprise
works. In short, HRM represents the opposite of Aristotle’s intellectual
and moral virtue and of theoretical and practical wisdom.
Aristotle’s expression of theoretical wisdom sees action and contem-

plation for ethical judgements as the prime idea.353 HRM ranks con-
templation secondary to action because HR managers go about their
business of making things work. In addition, the key ethical question
‘what shall I do?’ is not a moral one for HRM but one that is driven by
administrative methods, decision-science, and negotiation because
they provide a systematic way to deal with the unknown whilst none
of them are ethical concepts. Instead, they have been invented to
divert attention away from ethics. HRM bypasses the core ethical ques-
tion ‘what shall I do?’ by deliberately excluding ethics from decision-
making. For that, it quickly shifts decision-making into crypto-
scientific methods that carry strong connotations to engineering
ideologies, thereby reducing humans to a function inside a cybernetic
system-model of input and output.354 HRM has developed an apparatus
that seeks to avoid ethical decision-making, thereby negating deeper
contemplation. But ethical decision-making and contemplation remain
key concepts to Aristotle’s ethics just as well as it is a good virtue to
have friends. In virtue ethics, friendship is considered important
because having friends is related to having a good character.355
Aristotle developed three forms of friendship:
1. a shared friendship,
2. the choice to live together, and
3. friendship leading to a happy and honourable life.
He rejected the idea of solitude. Instead, his virtue ethics favours social
relationships with others as being essential for a moral life.356 In sharp
contrast, friendship is not a virtue fostered by HRM which is based on
individualism and competition.357 According to HRM’s own ideology,
the latter brings the best people to the top (Hiltrop 1999). HRM’s
favourite fashion-term is ‘talent’.358 For that, it suggests ‘using metrics
to manage the talent supply chain’ and a ‘global talent flow’ but even-
tually one always needs a ‘talent inventory’.359 Rather than being
created out of virtues, HRM’s friendships – reframed social networking
– function professionally and in terms of career opportunities, rarely
out of friendship.360 Reduced to networking, they are established out of
a perceived necessity and strategic usefulness.361 They are only formed
as a temporary alliance when competition is of no direct advantage to
HRM. On the whole, however, the virtue of friendship has no value in-
itself (Kant) for HRM. It only features as a momentary truce to achieve
a competitive advantage.
The relentless and eternal demand of competition hardly allows

HRM to share anything, least of all friendship. Its ideology divides the
world into friend and foe. Competitiveness favours the viewing of
others as foes rather than friends (Klikauer 2007). Instead of living
together freely as friends (Aristotle), today’s human resources are put
together and even made to compete with one another by HRM.362 The
conversion of human beings into human resources is not based on
friendship but on what is useful under HRM’s idea of human resources
allocation. It is usefulness and power-play – not Aristotelian friendship
– that allocates human resources. Finally, Aristotle’s ethical concept of
friendship is related to a happy and honourable life. Neither one con-
stitutes anything useful for HRM. HRM textbooks do not contain any
traces of happiness or honourable life other than ‘employees are hon-
oured for their contribution’ (Schwind et al. 2013:166). For HRM,
living a happy and honourable life can never mark an ‘end in-itself’
(Kant). Organisational happiness is not only a tautology but utterly
useless to HRM and features only when reduced to ‘job satisfaction’.363
In that way happiness is no longer happiness but simply satisfaction
and secondly, it is linked to a job as assigned by HRM, not to an overall
outlook as enshrined in virtue ethics.
For Aristotle, friendship could be based on (i) utility, (ii) pleasure,
and (iii) virtue.364 On friendship out of utility, he emphasised utility as
related to helpfulness and convenience rather than efficacy and advan-
tage. The latter two are related to HRM but they are not ethical motives
for friendship. For HRM the idea of friendship is related to an ima-
ginary business community consisting of HR managers established
through professional HR associations. But these are more often than
not based on temporary and strategic alliances, agreements, and
networking opportunities rather than true friendships in the sense of
Aristotle. Aristotle’s first two reasons for friendship – pleasure and
virtue – are hardly ever found among networking HR managers. They
are forged out of necessity, usefulness, and career prospects rather than
pleasure and virtue. Pleasure and virtue are contradictory to HRM’s
interest of contributing to competitive advantage. Aristotelian friend-
ship only appeals to HRM when it is of assistance to competitive
advantage. Other than as a tool to get ahead of others, friendship has
no value for HRM.365 In sum, HRM represents a total annihilation of
friendship.
Even Aristotle’s concept of ‘so-phrosune-’ – nothing in excess and
nothing in deficiency – does not offer much for HRM. HRM-supported
remunerations for CEOs and top-management are often excessive
when ‘executive greed’ is framed as ‘executive compensation pro-

grammes’.366 On the other side workers are suffering from a range of
corporate social pathologies spanning from low wages, bad working
conditions, work intensification, threats of outsourcing, and sweat-
shops to the much claimed but rather non-existent HRM-imaginary
work-life balance.367 These excesses paralleled by workers’ deficiencies
are not only a contradiction in-themselves but also contradict
Aristotelian virtues. HR mangers and employees often operate in accor-
dance with two different sets of organisational logic that reflect two
different sets of interests (Offe & Wiesenthal 1980). This results in
excesses on the one hand and deficiencies on the other. But manager-
ially created excesses and deficiencies are only a reflection of a general
pattern of unethical behaviour. This is shown through two different
sets of virtues that compare Aristotle’s virtue ethics with the non-
textbook reality of HRM.368
Table 3.2 shows some of the differences in virtues between the two
groups that Aristotle saw as those who do (HRM) and those who make
things (labour).369 It relates Aristotle’s two groups to three core interests
that separate HRM from employees.370 The differences in these three
interests – income, working time, and working conditions – have led to
stark contradictions between both sides. Wages are a cost factor for
HRM that is to be reduced. On the other side of the coin, for employ-
ees wage is the sole means of sustaining their livelihood. Similarly,
HRM often seeks to extend working time, cuts annual leave, and denies
or reduces maternity leave while employees seek the exact opposite
Table 3.2 HRM, employees, and Aristotle’s virtue ethics
Human Resource Management Employees
(i) Wages/Income cost factor – livelihood, family,

to be reduced (↓) existence, life (↑)
Resulting Virtues parsimonious, caring, justice,
penny-pinching compassion, happiness
(ii) Working Time long – to be extended (↑) short – to be reduced (↓)
Resulting Virtues exploitative, unfair, equality, fairness,
unequal egalitarian, sharing
(iii) Working impediment on the right autonomy, involvement,
Conditions to manage (↓) democracy (↑)
Resulting Virtues authoritarian, open, liberal,
controlling, dictatorial participative, democratic
(Negrey 2012). Finally, the betterment of general working conditions

often incurs a cost while for employees improved working conditions
are an element of organisational happiness.371 For Aristotle, as for
many ethical philosophers, happiness is an essential category. This is
not so for HRM.
Tellingly HRM and ‘The Servants of Power’ (Baritz 1960) who write
for HRM never mention organisational happiness.372 The literature on
HRM has less to say ‘of’ and more so ‘for’ those who are managed by
HRM.373 If not made to disappear altogether, they are denigrated to
resources, subordinates, and underlings representing merely a cost
factor. For those rendered ‘persona non grata’, ‘unwelcomed person’
(Latin), and reduced to a mere cost-factor, wages have a different
meaning. They represent income needed to sustain more than just
existence and reproduction. It represents the ability to develop the
Aristotelian virtues of caring, justice, compassion, and happiness.374
Wages allow those reduced to being resources – human resources – to
care for their families in a compassionate way so that happiness is
created. For HRM, the opposite of Aristotle’s virtues is relevant due to
the self-created need for cost-cutting – something that Aristotle called
‘penny-pinching’.375 While Aristotle had a critical relationship with
money, the latter is a driving force behind much of what HRM does
from:
• ‘rewarding human resources’ (Schwind et al. 2013:345) to

• ‘money talks to HR professionals’ (Kramar et al. 2011:465), to
• ‘value for money’ (Beardwell & Claydon 2011:368–369), and to
• ‘money as a motivator’ (Nel et al. 2012:301).
The issue of working time shows two structural interest contradictions

(Table 3.1) expressed in two sets of virtues. For one side, working time
needs to be long. For the other side it should be short. For one side this
leads to the non-virtues of exploitation, unfairness, and inequality. For
the other it is represented in the virtues of equality, fairness, equalitar-
ianism, and sharing which are all qualities associated with altruism.376
Altruism can be seen as ethical behaviour benefiting others by sharing
and helping one another. Often we find the greatest altruism within
our immediate family and less among those to whom we are not so
closely related. Distant altruism is the humanity we feel towards
strangers. Altruism has been with us since we became humans, ori-
ginating in food sharing as an important step in human evolution
(Hodgson 2013:103ff.). It was not competition but altruism and acts of
sharing that made us human. Distinguished anthropologist and author

of ‘The !Kung of Nyae Nyae’, Marshall (1976:311) noted, ‘we give to
one another always. We give what we have. This is the way we live
together’.377 In human societies, a person who owns a thing is natu-
rally expected to share it, to distribute it, to be its trustee and dis-
penser. HRM represents the total negation of this. It is non-altruistic
and does not believe in communal sharing. HRM does not give to
others and is not naturally expected to share. Instead, anti-collectivist,
enforced individualism, and individual competition is what counts for
HRM in a ‘Me-Myself-&-I’ understanding. The ethical virtue of altruism
– the origin of what it means to be human – is of no use for HRM’s
longstanding idea of its right to perform top-down management.378
General working conditions (Table 3.1) are an area in which one
side’s right to manage rules over the other side leading to authoritar-
ianism, controlling, and non-democratic semi-dictatorial relation-
ships.379 Meanwhile, the other side demands autonomy and
self-determination (Kant), involvement, and democracy, leading to
virtues such as openness, liberalism, participation, and democracy. For
employees these virtues apply to both work and society. It is the virtue
of democracy that makes us essentially who we are as Aristotle
believed. For HRM meanwhile, democratic virtues represent a threat to
its rule over others. But the commonly accepted separation between
HRM’s world and the societal world has secured HRM against the
threat of democracy. For HRM, democracy is externalised and seen as
moral whilst industrial democracy is seen as immoral. While ‘demo-
cracy makes us what we are’ (Aristotle) – a democratic society – for
HRM it challenges their dictatorial right to manage. Hence, where
Aristotle sees a democratic life as synonymous to moral life, HRM sees
this as an intrusion.
Moral life for Aristotle aims to bring to realisation those things that
make us essentially who we are. HRM negates this through individual
competition, performance management, HR policies, and the like. Not
a moral life but KPIs make HRM what it is representing its virtues.380
Similar to Aristotelian virtue ethics, Protagoras’ (490–420BC) writing
‘On Truth’ demands that ‘man is the measure of all things’. HRM is not
about truth but about key performance indicators and performance
management and therefore ‘HRM simply pays lip service to moral and
social niceties’ (Hart 1993:29). There is no philosophical truth in per-
formance management and KPIs. Secondly, for HRM man is ‘not’ the
measure of all things. Man is degraded to a resource – a human
resource representing the exact opposite of Protagoras’ ethics. For
HRM, it is ‘performance outcomes’ that is ‘the measure of all things’.381

Even Protagoras’ man is reduced to a ‘thing’ that is constantly
measured against KPIs, scorecards, output, and productivity.382
Protagoras’ man is only of use to HRM as a quantifiable measure-
ment, not as man in-itself (Kant). HRM is about performance and
about human resources serving as functions inside a profit-making
process. Inside HRM, Protagoras’ man is no more than a ‘cost factor’
that needs to be reduced as part of an endless need for cost-cutting and
efficiency improvements to show HRM’s contribution to a business.383
The idea that man is the measure of all things has been further dis-
cussed by Epictetus (100AD) who wrote that signs of one who is
making progress are:
• he censures no one,
• praises no one,
• blames no one,
• finds fault with no one,
• says nothing about himself as though he were somebody or knew
something.
HRM negates Epictetus’ virtue ethics for several reasons: firstly, it cen-
sures people, employees, and trade unions through restrictions on
access to workplaces, e-mails, web-access, and authoritarian forms of
meetings (Klikauer 2008) but there are also restrictions on union mate-
rial, and so on.384 As numerous cases have shown, this even reaches
deep into the public domain as liability, defamation, denied compen-
sation, etc. (Parker 2002). Secondly, HRM’s negation of ‘praising no
one’ is manifested in the very existence of the acknowledged negativity
of the managerial performance appraisal.385 It is also to be found in
organisational praise for some and not for others – i.e. employee of the
month (Johnson & Dickinson 2010). It is used in HRM meetings so
that employees are made to appear promotable.386 Thirdly, HRM
negates ‘blame no one’ through its tendency to blame others. This
ranges from blaming other HR managers to blaming the market, gov-
ernments, and trade unions. Anything bad is usually not HRM’s fault
unless it can be proven otherwise. The famous buck only stops with
HRM when it is forced upon it. HRM’s right-to-manage includes the
right-to-blame others. The same goes for Epictetus’ virtue of ‘finding
fault with no one’. In the blame game it is often HRM’s ‘blame-the-
victim’ approach that carries the day, e.g. Occupational Health and
Safety.387 Finally, the virtue of ‘saying nothing about itself’ is negated
through the impression HRM seeks to make on others. It is also mani-

fested in the millions of articles, journals, magazines, textbooks, con-
ferences, business schools, etc. that praise HRM. Like general
management of which HRM is a part, HRM itself can also be, as
Schwartz (1990) said, a ‘Narcissistic Process’ and may even shows signs
of narcissistic pathologies.388 In sum, HRM negates every single virtue
outlined by Epictetus. But its struggle with virtue ethics not only
relates to Greek virtue ethics but to modern virtue ethics as well.
HRM and modern virtue ethics
The foremost moral philosopher of modernity who discussed virtue

ethics was David Hume (1711–1776). He thought adults should not be
slaves to their passions but live a virtuous life. He also believed that
reason has only a limited role in ethics because the determination of
good and evil cannot be achieved through reasoning. According to
Hume, reason exerts itself without producing any sensible emotion.
Instead, we arrive at good and evil through our inner feelings, our
character, and our virtues. For Hume, vice and virtue are not discover-
able merely by reason. Morality therefore is more properly felt than
judged. Hume saw ethics as a question of virtues when we combat
passion and reason.
Like many others he favoured a universal approach when saying that
ethics consists of principles of humanity in which every person, to
some degree, concurs. He claimed that only an ethics that is common
to all – universalism – can be the foundation of morals alone. His
concept that ‘the humanity of one person is the humanity of every
one’ is a quintessential representation of universalism. But Hume’s
virtue ethics remains highly problematic for HRM because it seeks
exactly the opposite of what HRM does. It does not treat people
according to the moral dictum: ‘the humanity of one person is the
humanity of every one’. Despite HRM’s claim to be equitable, there are
different employment contracts for different people, different pay
structures, bonuses, rewards, etc. for different people, different perfor-
mance measures, etc. For HRM, everyone is different and every differ-
ence is used to separate one from the other. Commonly, this starts
with so-called individual employment contracts and extends to KPIs,
performance related pay, performance management, and individual
job descriptions.389 HRM treats every one differently, with different
privileges, different statutes, different job titles, different positions
inside the managerial hierarchy, different payments, different bonuses,
different rewards, different benefits, right down to different IT access

codes.390 In short, HRM appears to contradict Hume’s ethics of human-
ity represented in his idea of ‘the humanity of one person is the
humanity of everyone’.
To achieve such a level of ethical humanity the utilitarian philo-
sopher John Stuart Mill (1806–1873), for example, believed that ethics
could only attain its end by the general cultivation of nobleness of
character. HRM however does not cultivate a ‘noble character’ but the
opposite as virtually every HRM textbook depicts. In HRM textbooks
and in HRM’s training regimes – also framed as Human Resource
Development (HRD)391 – the ‘cultivation of nobleness of character’
plays no part because ‘training and development provide a timely per-
formance feedback’ for ‘training and developing a competitive work-
force’ with ‘hands-on training methods’ for ‘vocational…training’ and
‘on-the job training’.392 HRM programmes taught at universities do not
cultivate Hume’s virtues of nobleness, dignity, decency, and courtesy
but rather the opposite as HRM thrives on rivalry, schism, factions,
competition, hyper-individualism, back-stabbing, dirty politics, manip-
ulation, facades and charades, collusions between various actors,
bribery, benefiting from rule-bending, corruption, and so on.393 In
sum, HRM exists on virtues that represent the reverse of every single
virtue thought important to Hume’s ethics. For virtue ethics, the
‘nobleness of character’ constitutes an inalienable right of life where
the term ‘life’ signifies every aspect of vitality. The idea of vita-equals-
life is essential for the self-determination of human beings. HRM chal-
lenges the ethical argument of
life = all aspects of vita = self-determination.
Generally, it does not grant other HR managers, general managers, and

least of all workers the right to self-determination and self-organisation.
Self-organisation – which sounds seductive – is instead seen as no more
than wishful thinking and a threat to HRM’s power and organisational
position. HRM views self-organisation as fundamentally flawed. As a
consequence, it represents a negation of self-organisation and self-
determination. Therefore, it negates the very essence of the ethics of
‘life-equals-vita’.
The same applies to a life that sees knowledge as desirable for its own
sake, being part of a virtuous human being and not merely an instru-
ment. For HRM the human virtue of knowledge in-itself (Kant) has no
use-value. Rather the exact opposite is the case. Knowledge only
becomes a value for HRM if it is deprived of its virtues and of

being something in-itself and turned into merely an organisational
instrument. In short, the relationship between ethics, knowledge, and
virtues on the one side and HRM on the other represents the reverse of
what virtue ethics intended it to be. HRM does not value knowledge
for its own sake as it is the opposite of what it wants and needs.
Education and knowledge are simply reduced to ‘organisational learn-
ing’.394 HRM does not even try to avoid education becoming an instru-
ment – it actively reduces education to an organisational instrument.
For HRM, knowledge is only useful as an instrument that can be used.
Very much like education for its own sake, HRM also differs on what
moral philosophy considers ethical in regard to the virtue of friend-
ship. Originating in Aristotelian philosophy, Hume’s ethics saw friend-
ship as ‘acting for the sake of one’s friend’s purpose and one’s friend’s
well-being’. In the real – non-textbook reality – of HRM, paraphrased,
adjusted, and placed in the world described by Schrijvers (2004) this
reads:
an HR manager will pose as friend yet operate as spy to gather

human intelligence. He/she can spy on other HR managers, general
managers, colleagues, and employees, dig up the dirt about them,
and write a ‘dirt-file’. Don’t forget that any organisation is full of
people who, because of jealousy or revenge, are eager to leak in-
formation to HRM. The secret is to pose as a friend.
In the organisational world described by Schrijvers (2004) and gov-

erned by jealousy, hate, competition, revenge, and struggle that runs
on the money and power code, Hume’s virtue ethics of friendship is
annihilated (Goldstein 2012). Organisational relationships rather than
friendships are temporary alliances and purpose driven under the
maxim: how can I use this for my advantage. Such relationships represent
the opposite of Hume’s virtue of ‘having friends for the well-being of
these friends’.395 Organisational networks are targeted, network-based,
functional, and operate in hierarchical top-down relations.396 These
may take on the appearance of simulated friendships carrying connota-
tions of Baudrillard’s ‘Simulacra and Simulation’ (1994). They represent
instrumentalism, not morality. According to Hume’s virtue ethics,
friendships are important when they benefit a friend’s wellbeing. In
the individualised and competitive world of HRM, the benefit and
wellbeing of other others is hardly enshrined in the essence of HRM.
On the contrary, grief and misery are more likely to be determining
factors inside the Moral Maze of HRM (Jackall 2006). But virtue ethics
also emphasises the importance of bringing one’s emotions and dispo-
sitions into the harmony of an inner peace of mind. Inner harmony
and peace are seen as inherent virtues. However, the non-textbook
world of HRM is radically different from what moral philosophy
demands.
Inside organisations, HR managers do what the organisation asks
them to with the self-pacifying and invented excuse of ‘it’s my job’.397
If HRM would bring their emotions and dispositions into harmony
with its inner peace of mind, it would most likely cease to exist in its
current form. Harmony and inner peace of mind totally contradict
HRM’s drive for individualism, performance, and competition. HR
managers, if they want to be successful inside HRM as well as inside
general management, cannot afford to bring their emotions and dispo-
sitions into the harmony of an inner peace of mind. They need to
display the opposite. The virtues of harmony and inner peace of mind
can never become part of the essence of HRM without ending HRM
itself.
To find an inner peace of mind, Catholic philosopher Thomas
Aquinas (1225–1274) wrote in his ‘Summa Theologica’ (1266) that ‘in
men there is first of all an inclination to be good in accordance with
the nature’. This creates two problems for HRM: firstly, for Aquinas the
essence of humans is to ‘be’ good and this is a natural inclination. For
HRM, Aquinas’ truth of a natural inclination to be good has to be
reconstructed through organisational behaviour modification, model-
ling, and most importantly ‘manipulation’.398 Before entering work,
this is done through conditioning institutions such as business
schools.399 At work, it is achieved principally through the conversion
of human beings into human resources during the labour process that
converts humans into labour integrating people into companies – the
‘con pane’ (Klikauer 2008:233) – to become ‘Organisation Men’
through HRM’s orientation and induction programmes and secondary
socialisation.400 As a result of such conditioning, processing, and con-
version, the sole inclination of HR managers becomes organisational
success and the money and power code. Aquinas’ virtue of ‘having an
inclination to be good’ is of no use to HRM.
The second problem for HRM is Aquinas’ demand to be good in
accordance with nature which is hardly possible if one views Aquinas’
term ‘nature’ as human nature or as natural environment. HRM has
never seen itself as representing environmental ethics (Keller 2010). It
exists in opposition to nature, not in accordance with it as Aquinas’

virtue ethics demands. HRM only values whatever can be used and
measured in performance management.401
The violation of these principles is strongly related to the issue of
trust and sincerity.402 Both are important aspects of all virtue ethics.
Almost by definition, strategic HRM is based on strategic management
and this in turn is based on war and general-ship with the key idea of
deceiving the enemy. As such, strategic HRM can never be geared
towards trust which represents the complete opposite to strategy’s
deceiving the enemy (Klikauer 2007:129–134). The militarist thinking
of strategy demands not to trust your enemies.403 Therefore the essence
of strategic HRM demands that it violates the virtue ethics of trust.
Strategic HRM only trusts itself and even this self-trust is limited. Trust
is distorted, deformed, and converted from something ethical into
something that can be used, usually in one’s own favour and against
others. The virtue of trustworthiness is negated by an artificial and
instrumental use that exterminates the meaning of trust as well as its
ethics.
Being truthful and trustworthy is also a virtue that relates strongly to
‘The Self’. Ethical philosopher Emmanuel Levinas (1906–1995) noted
that ethics is not a question of ‘being’ someone, but a question of
understanding differences and calling one’s self into question.404 The
virtue of calling one’s self into question or living a self-examined life is
a virtue not conducted and practised by HRM whose primary task is to
examine, assess, analyse, and to question ‘others’ – predominantly in
interviews during recruitment and selection exercises and performance
appraisals – but hardly itself.405 HRM questions other managers,
employees, trade unions, government regulations, etc. but not itself.
Rather than applying Levinas’ ethics of calling one’s self into question,
HRM operates the exact opposite. It only calls ‘others’ into question. In
that way, it can shift blame onto others and excuse itself. It negates
Levinas’ ethics and thereby fulfils Socrates’ and Adorno’s (1944) time-
honoured dictum that failing to live a self-examined life means living a
false life.
Avoiding self-examination easily leads to a false and selfish life.406 In
his work on utilitarianism (1861) ethics philosopher John Stuart Mill
(1806–1873) noted that a selfish person is someone who is a selfish
egoist, devoid of any feelings of care but those which centre in his own
miserable individuality. HRM is well advised to eliminate thinking,
self-examination, and moral judgement by presenting its decisions in
numbers – numerical flexibility, headcounts, balanced scorecards, etc. –

as this makes HRM appear depersonalised, rational, technical, organisa-
tional, operational, neutral, and natural.407
This also eclipses HRM’s immorality and non-virtue of being a selfish
egoist devoid of feelings for others (Mill). When an HR manager, for
example, cuts 10 per cent of the workforce in ‘his’ (!) HRM department
to receive a bonus, Mill’s selfishness has been achieved as the HR
manager can rest in his own miserable individuality and moral indif-
ference. Inside the morally indifferent world of HRM, HR managers
also have to eliminate virtues such as feelings and care for others (Mill
1861), willingness to trust others, and a feeling of good will. None of
these three virtues is of any use to HRM which cannot afford to care
for others as it would violate its organisational commitment and its
position of being part of general management (Paauwe 2013). HRM
cares for itself. Above all, HRM specifically does not need to care for
others as the other is merely a human resource with an emphasis on
resource rather than on human.408
Mills’ virtue of trust can even be dangerous to HRM. HR managers
can never become too trusting of others, especially towards non-HR
managers, employees, and trade unions.409 Trust is only good when it
operates inside the confinements of HRM’s own monopolistic position
inside a company. Lastly, the virtue of a feeling of good will has no
value for HRM unless it can be reduced to the simplicity of a wellness
programme with token gimmicks like subsidised gym membership,
healthy nutritional advice, and so on or when converted into ‘The Will
to Organisational Power’ (Nietzsche 1886).410 The virtue of a feeling of
good will can never be expressed towards others who are seen as organ-
isational competitors by HRM whose support for individualism, perfor-
mance related pay, and competition – almost by definition – excludes
the ethical concept of a feeling of good will towards others. In HRM’s
individualised and competitive world, doing a good job of creating
useful human resources is only the necessary first step toward superior
organisational performance. HRM also needs to supply human
resources and talent – another HR buzzword – to ‘gain an advantage
over their competitors’ (Schwind et al. 2013:30) which can hardly be
achieved through a feeling of good will. HRM has to cancel out the
morality of a feeling of good will if it is to achieve superior organisa-
tional performance.
In sum, Mill’s three virtues have to be invalidated by HRM. If HRM
cannot openly annihilate them, at least it needs to pretend to itself,
general management, and most importantly to employees to live up to
them. Meanwhile HRM itself needs to be able to simulate these virtues

(Baudrillard 1994). Levinas has summed up the (mis)use of ethics by
HRM and HRM’s ethical policies – codes of conduct – in a near perfect
way:411
in the modern world, we do not display anything like the openness

to Others that he [Aristotle] understands as ethics. Instead, we
mostly live a pale narrow vision of ethics, and ethics as codes and
rules, an ethics that is useful for our business.
Such a narrow view on ethics disallows the virtue of a feeling of good

will and empathy. Empathy is generally considered to be the ability
and willingness to sense a situation from someone else’s point of view.
HRM in general, however, sees the organisational world from its own
point of view. It does not even acknowledge or recognise the view of,
for example, workers (Islam 2012). The very few pages on workers,
employees, trade unions, and labour in every HRM textbook testify to
HRM’s deliberate avoidance to see the world from someone else’s point
of view. For example, when ‘workers’ are predominantly mentioned as:
• ‘older workers’ (Jackson et al. 2012:83),

• ‘contingent workers, rehires, and recalls’ (Jackson et al. 2012:203),
• ‘agency workers’ (Kramar et al. 2011:135; Beardwell & Claydon
2011: 419f.),
• ‘migrant workers’ (Beardwell & Claydon 2011:616f. & 621–622),
• ‘best fit contingent workers’412
• ‘part-time workers’ (Gunnigle et al. 2011: 19, 89, 361), and even
• ‘against gay and lesbian workers’ (Nel et al. 2012:177),
an overall image of workers starts to emerge that might be defined as

‘workers’ as some sort of a marginalised group with some very odd
adjectives attached. It appears as if HRM textbooks deliberately avoid
recognising that the majority in any workplace is composed of
workers. Through the avoidance to recognise ‘others’ (Hegel & Levinas)
as workers, HRM eradicates the ethics of empathy (Honneth 1995). To
secure its own organisational position and power, HRM needs to
refrain from seeing the organisational world from someone else’s point
of view, least of all from the workers’ position. In addition, many nega-
tive consequences of HRM decisions can be offloaded onto others who
are not directly connected to HRM. These range from decisions on
workers (downsizing, retrenchment, cost-cutting) to those made for
society in general (social and health costs). HRM’s organisational

ability to offload many negative consequences of its actions does not
encourage empathy because in the vision of HRM these are exter-
nalised costs that HRM does not have to cover. Hence, there is no need
for the ethics of empathy.
Such offloading and cost-externalisation (Orwell’s Newspeak) also
relieves HRM from Aristotle’s importance of unity and cohesion in an
ethical community of friends which creates a number of problems for
HRM. As aforementioned, HRM is not based on friendship but on indi-
vidualism, performance management, and competition. Secondly,
HRM and HR managers are not an ethical community nor are they an
organic one that has grown naturally. Instead, the system is an
artificially composed mixture hierarchically assembled by HRM. The
communal, state, legal, and democratic concept of ‘citizen-equals-
citizen’ does not exist inside the divided organisational world HRM
enshrined in the division between non-managerial staff (human
resources) and management. There is nothing natural and organic in
the way human beings are assembled in a for-profit business
company.413 Finally, where virtue ethics emphasises unity and cohe-
sion, HRM emphasises individualism, competition, and performance
management.414 Despite the wishful thinking and pretences in the
textbooks’ version of HRM, the reality is not a place of harmony, unity,
social cohesion, and community of friends. All of these are brushed
aside by the profit motive and HRM’s support for this motivation.
Despite all this HRM still needs Hegel’s ‘Other’ in the form of non-
managerial staff. Ever since Taylor (1911) and Fayol (1916), the world
of work has been divided into those ‘who manage’ and those ‘who are
managed’. HRM has labelled them as managerial and non-managerial
staff. The idea of unity between both is no longer even a textbook illu-
sion. In many cases, the relationship between both groups is defined
by an inherent conflict with HRM on the one side and employees and
trade unions on the other. If their relationship were to be based on
unity and cohesion as demanded by virtue ethics, HRM might not
have to give such high currency to ‘managing conflict’.415
These conflicting interests severely impair any hope to artificially
create unity and cohesion between HRM and non-managerial staff. They
render virtue ethics unachievable for HRM just as the idea of organisa-
tional culture is nonsensical – there is neither high-culture (arts, music,
theatre, etc.) in for-profit companies nor is there any hint of a truly
shared culture in such organisations.416 Together with management,
HRM fosters a ‘them-vs.-us’ and ‘corporate-vs.-outsider’ culture of ‘fitting
in’ often framed as company spirit and ‘corps de esprit’.417 The organisa-
tional setting of, for example, the ‘HRM-vs.-union’ relationship disallows
HRM’s ideologically driven pretence of a one-dimensional unity and
cohesion.418 If HRM’s reality would be based on a worker created sense of
unity, rafts of HRM instruments such as organisational psychology and
behavioural manipulation might not exist.419 Instead these – and more –
are well established and vital to HRM. They indicate that HRM is not
a place of Kantian self-determining cohesion, mutual respect, or
friendship.
While traditional virtue ethics is based on friendship, unity, and
cohesion among others, German philosopher Adorno’s (1903–1969)
virtue ethics relies on basic human characteristics that enable ethics to
flourish. Adorno sees Mündigkeit, humility, and affection as core ele-
ments of virtue ethics. The ethical concept of Mündigkeit originates in
Kantian and Hegelian ethics. Kant used Mündigkeit as a capacity to use
one’s own understanding while for Adorno it carries connotations of
taking a stand, refusing to capitulate, adjusting to or otherwise playing
along with institutional forms of domination.420 If one identifies an
ethical life (Hegel’s Sittlichkeit) with Mündigkeit as Kant, Hegel, and
Adorno do, then HRM demands the exact opposite. Rather than
seeking and fostering employees who take a stand, refuse to capitulate
or play along with organisational forms of domination, HRM seeks
conformist human resources.421
Throughout its existence, HRM has always fostered the creation of
conforming, passive, submissive, and compliant human resources,
underlings, and subordinates. In addition, almost everything ever
written in the field of HRM indicates nothing but the complete oppo-
site of Mündigkeit in the understanding of Kant, Hegel and Adorno. The
task of converting, and thereby deforming, human behaviour into
organisational behaviour creates the very opposite of Mündigkeit.
Instead of supporting people who take a stand (Adorno), HRM needs
people who fall in line and surrender themselves to organisational
power.422 Instead of people who refuse to play along (Adorno), HRM
needs good team players under HRM’s official ‘best-fit-approach’ and
its real FIFO maxim – fit in or f**k off!423
In the interest of creating conformist human resources, HRM as the
epitome of an organisational form of domination can never support
people who refuse to comply. Without HRM as an institutional form of
domination general management as well as middle- and even more so
line-management cannot exercise executive prerogatives at will with sub-
ordinates.424 In sum, HRM has no use for people who have developed
Mündigkeit as a capacity to take a critical stand and to continuously show

vigilance and self-criticism. Therefore it has to work against the ethics of
Mündigkeit. But Mündigkeit remains inextricably linked to humility. For
Adorno, humility [Bescheidenheit] is the cardinal virtue of today. By this,
he means to do justice gained from reflecting on one’s own limitations.
Not too many HRM textbook writers appear to have gained an under-
standing of HRM from the perspective of critical reflection. Most of
HRM’s actions are the day-to-day activities of running companies and
corporations which excludes time for reflection on self-created pressures
under the ‘I am busy’ notion. In this process time for reflection and
examination is exchanged for being busy. This violates Socrates’, Plato’s
and Adorno’s concept that an unexamined life is a wasted life. The ‘I am
busy’ maxim is deeply ingrained into HRM – just as it is in all of manage-
ment. HRM’s essence is manifested in getting the job done rather than
taking time for reflection – least of all critical self-reflection.
Not being self-reflective makes it hard for HRM to display the virtue
of humility. Instead, organisational excesses, HRM’s misbehaviours, its
power, and organisational position render it nearly impossible to show
humility. Linked to humility, Adorno also alerted us to the human
virtue of affection which is not exactly a classical HRM virtue either. By
affection, Adorno means the human capacity to be moved by, not to
be indifferent or cold towards the fate of others, and the outpouring of
warmth and affection. It is the very opposite of coldness and indiffer-
ence and testifies to a sensitivity to the vulnerability of others and the
feeling of solidarity with them. HRM negates all of this. Methods such
as HRM’s ideological use of numbers, the allocation of human
resources, and achieving organisational goals through human resources
hardly lead to affections between HRM and employees. It obliterates
Adorno’s ethical goal of sensitivity, the outpouring of warmth, and the
feeling of solidarity. Occasionally, HR managers may show some of
these feelings but they are never autonomous emotions. Instead, they
occur – pretended or real – inside a hierarchical structure of a subor-
dinate-superior relationship based on asymmetric dependency
(Diefenbach 2013a:155).
Inside HRM, the exact opposite to sensitivity, warmth, and solidarity
is fostered as any sign of weakness, vulnerability, warmth, and affec-
tion is quite often ruthlessly exploited by the competitor under HRM’s
prevailing twin ideologies of competitive advantage and individualism.
It is not unusual to see excitement about dirty tricks at corporate level
when organisational battlefield methods such as dirty tricks, sedition,
coups, blackmail, and emotional cruelty come into use all of which
constitute the very opposite of affection.425 In stark contrast, Adorno’s

modern ethical virtues denote that there are personal qualities that
individuals must possess if they are to be in a position to perform
ethical acts. Compared to that, HRM appears to represent the very
opposite of these constitutive characteristics of a virtuous ethos, ren-
dering ethical acts unachievable. This also means that HRM has a con-
siderable and somewhat uphill battle ahead of itself when seeking to
move towards modern virtue ethics as expressed by moral philosopher
Adorno.
The overall conclusion of virtue ethics when related to HRM is that
HRM contradicts almost everything that virtue ethics from ancient
Greece to today has to offer. The brief overview of virtue ethics from
Greek antiquity to one of the most modern concepts (Adorno), cover-
ing feudalism (Aquinas) and the beginning of modernity (Hume and
Kant) seems to indicate the following: rather than representing virtue
ethics and working towards it, HRM is confined to working in the
opposite direction. Consequently, HRM and virtue ethics seem to be in
contradiction to one another. Virtue ethics represent nothing but a
seemingly unsolvable dilemma for HRM. If HRM were to live up to the
moral demands of virtue ethics, it would have to alter its essence so
dramatically that it would most likely cease to be HRM. Perhaps the
same may apply if HRM seeks to live up to law and order as the next
chapter will discuss.
4
Morality 4: The Legal Context,
Fairness, and Equality
The fourth stage of HRM morality is defined by the moral philosophy

related to what is commonly termed as ‘law and order’. According to
Hartman et al. (2014:7) the question-and-answer for HRM boils down
to ‘Why be ethical? Because it is the law’. The actual expression of law
is underpinned by legal theory. General legal theory carries connota-
tions to rules, protocols, commandments, regulations, statutes, bureau-
cracy, procedures, formalities, decrees, administration, ruling,
directives, instrumentalism, policies, and formal legal principles.
Organisational order is reflective of edicts, commands, instructions,
organisation, classifications, contractualism, formalism, stability, and
so on.426 The prime institutions underpinning organisational ‘law and
order’427 are HR policies, rules, procedures, and regulations.428 These
underpin an organisational order that, according to Rawls,429 depicts
four key features:
i) order does not primarily rely on written rules – but there are rules;
ii) order relies on customs and practices, routines, and rituals;
iii) participants are responsible to one another; and
iv) a mutually sustainable order needs constant attending in order to
maintain order.
At an organisational level, these four elements of law and order focus

on HR policies that in turn can be a reflection of legal moral philo-
sophy.430 In most well-organised companies, one finds HR policies and
regulations (Paauwe et al. 2013a:68–77). They protect HRM’s estab-
lished and maintained hierarchy.431 For those who suffer from and
struggle against this hierarchy, it would be nonsensical to appeal to
114
Morality 4: The Legal Context, Fairness, and Equality 115
HRM’s law and order. Instead, they would need to reach beyond
HRM’s power and institution. A challenge to HRM can best occur from
a higher standpoint requesting humanity and moral standards that
range above HRM’s regulations. These can relieve people from HRM’s
policies and its order.432 Marcuse (1969) advocate not to use HR poli-
cies and directives when seeking to reach morality. Instead one has to
transcend both. Any alteration of HRM’s policies not directed towards
organisational goals but towards ethical standards can only come from
the outside, not from within. Once relieved of the confinements of
HRM’s system integrative forces, agents can use ethics to challenge HR
policies. In sum, Marcuse advocates critiquing HR policies but not from
within HRM’s rules. One of the first steps to achieve this is not to bla-
tantly accept HR policies and hierarchical and asymmetrical order
because they are part of a system of corporate governance in which
almost no-one at work has any input.433 Even though corporate gover-
nance carries some superficial connotations to democracy, the
‘Servants of Power’ (Baritz 1960) have excluded democracy, voting,
politics, equality, parliaments, balance of power, separation of power,
etc. from organisational life.434 None of these exist inside HRM and in
for-profit organisations.
For moral philosophy, however, it is crucial that those people who
are governed by such a set of policies and live by the law also need to
be involved in their creation.435 This is one of the core philosophies in
relation to law. In modern civil society this is achieved through parlia-
mentarian democracy. Since HRM is not a democratic institution, it
violates this fundamental philosophical concept. HRM deliberately
excludes employees from the process of creating HR policies, pro-
cedures, and the organisational order. At a societal level, HRM is in-
capable of creating law. However, it creates non-democratic rules and
procedures that govern workplaces in the form of establishing power
over others (Baillargeon 2013). To illuminate this, the proceeding
chapter is divided into two parts: firstly, HR policies and procedures,
and secondly, HRM’s organisational order.
HRM’s policies and regulations
HRM’s regulations and HR policies establish a body of policies and con-

ventions that are forced onto employees. The degree to which employ-
ees are made to accept such rules not only measures the extent to
which they recognise the rules of the organisational game but also the
authority of HRM enshrined in its prerogative as a right to manage.436

HRM relies on Hobbes’ dictum that ‘auctoritas, non veritas facit legem –
authority, not truth, makes the law’ (Schecter 2013:25). Hence, HRM’s
authority is mirrored in HR policies that are mostly formulated as non-
democratic but authoritarian directives, policy-commands, direction
giving ‘mission statements’, and stern procedures.437 They assist HRM
in the establishment of organisational order. In sharp contrast to
common law, HRM’s rules and policies establish a semi-legal but
codified order. HR policies have a substantive and a procedural
content. Typically, they are followed by an enforcement body – rules
of violation, disciplinary action, and punishment in which HRM uni-
laterally occupies the position of rule-creator, rule interpreter, and rule-
enforcer annihilating the standard division of power into legislature,
judiciary, and administration.438
Despite sharing several characteristics with common law, it is imposs-
ible to talk of ‘HRM-law’ because HRM only creates organisational poli-
cies and procedures. These encompass a total absence of democracy,
democratic legitimacy, and legal subjects who – through democracy –
shape society’s laws.439 Meanwhile, inside the company it is HRM
alone that defines ‘formal discipline policies [and the] punishment of
violation of rules’.440 Different from civic law, HR policies can only be
conceptualised as a formally codified and informally constructed body
of policies to establish organisational order. When HR policies institute
organisational order, they establish five elements that are vital to
organisational rule:
1. HR policies reproduce organisational order

HRM produces rules by creating them unilaterally. As a consequence,
there is a reproduction of HR policies.441 HRM achieves this by convert-
ing legal subjects (people) into crypto-legal objects (human resources).
These become objects of power (Bauman 1989) deemed to carry out HR
policies and live under them. For HRM, rule-creation is a unilateral
process but it depends on a binary structure. Those who are con-
structed as objects of power need to supply recognition.442 HR policies
depend on those who issue them and equally on those who are made
to recognise them as such. It is the process of recognition that makes
them real. In British philosopher Bauman’s terminology, HR policies
depend on ‘the solicitation of the victims’ (Bauman 1989) in order to
function. HRM creates routinely occurring forms of behaviour by
manipulating human behaviour into organisational behaviour, e.g.
behaviour that is useful to HRM.443
2. HR policies are created in a singular fashion

In organisational reality, the trigger of rule and policy creation is often
a single incident. The idea is to create a new policy or rule that can be
transferred from a singular incident at work to all employees. These
rules and policies are often detailed and, unlike more general mission
statements, regulate single and specific issues at work. This aids their
appearance of being practical and real-life oriented, ideologically free,
technical, necessary, unbiased, neutral, and even natural.
3. HR policies and organisational resources

HRM is often regarded by general management as a cost-factor that does
not contribute directly to profits. HR policies create organisational order
that demand organisational resources to contribute to profits (Drucker
1951). HRM frames this as ‘the credibility of the HR function’ (Guest &
Bos-Nehles 2013:94). It announces new policies in the form of codified
dossiers, rule-books, memorandums, company newsletters, corporate
magazines, training videos, websites, etc.444 But HR policies always
depend on an enforcement body, i.e. an organisational structure and
surveillance methods called ‘monitoring’ that oversee rule-application
and interpretation, modification, and, perhaps most importantly, rule-
violations so that measures can be taken to ‘re-adjust offenders’.445
4. HR policies involve systematic procedures to analyse human

relations
In order to create HR policies, HRM needs to conceptualise human rela-
tionships inside the company, analyse them and, subsequently, formu-
late and structure them. In that way, HR policies can be formulated to
appear in a de-scriptive fashion whilst they are used primarily pre-
scriptively. HR policies are of no use to HRM when they just describe
organisational behaviour. They need to be able to pre-scribe, engineer,
order, and create organisational behaviour to structure it, modify it,
and to convert it into behaviour that is useful to the company. As
such, these regulations need to stabilise, coordinate, and maintain
those practices that are useful to organisational outcomes – the code-
word for profit. Simultaneously, they need to eliminate unwarranted,
non-productive, subversive, disobedient, and rebellious forms of
human behaviour.
5. HR policies: Meaning and sanctioning

Like civil law, HR policies establish two key principles: firstly, they
create meaning that is exclusively set up by HRM, either established as
the pure organisational meaning of a rule or as the conversion of a

common and civic understanding into an organisational understand-
ing. In the first case, HR policies simply establish a form of employee
behaviour that only occurs inside a company. In the second case, it
converts a civic rule such as do not steal into organisational practice:
do not steal from the company.446 Simultaneously, it cuts off the key
part of the legal norm: a company can still steal from you (cf. Marx’
surplus value, unpaid overtime, extensive workloads, working on the
way to work in trains, buses, and trams, having lunch ‘al desko’, i.e. at
a desk in front of a computer, etc.; Croker 2012). Secondly, the estab-
lishment of organisational meaning has to be followed up by the
formulation of sanction (Klikauer 2012). In order to do this, HRM relies
on a regulative body of sanctions called disciplinary action.447 At its
most simple level, this involves HRM’s infamous ‘three-strike-rule’ but
also verbal and written warnings, demotions, wage cuts, dismissals,
etc.448 Similar to civic law, some HR policies are formulated in hypo-
thetical ‘if-then’ constructions: civic: ‘if’ you steal, ‘then’ you go to
prison; organisational: ‘if’ you come late, ‘then’ one hour of your wage
will be taken off.449
HR policies do not directly contribute to the bottom Line. Being seen
as a cost factor which has to be kept low, they need to prove to general
management their worthiness and produce and reproduce organisa-
tional order capable of delivering organisational outcomes (Singh et al.
2012). HR policies have to be linked to human resources to oversee,
enforce, and adjust them. As such, they are a reflection of HRM’s sys-
tematic analyses and the structuring of asymmetrical relationships at
work. To achieve this, most HR policies construct organisational
meaning and provide sanctions for rule violations.450 The issue of rule
violation, crime, and punishment and their function has engaged
philosophy, and more specifically moral philosophy for a long time.
While some philosophers remained convinced that human beings
find their unity in communal, social, and political life (Aristotle) and
in the organisation of the state (Hegel), the same cannot be said about
the existence of subordinates and underlings in organisational
regimes.451 In HRM regimes, there is no social, communal, and espe-
cially no political life comparable to what Aristotle, Hegel and many
others have outlined. In sharp contrast to Greek philosophy’s polis and
Hegel’s ethical life, organisational existence – rather than ‘life’ – is
rather different.452 It reflects serious pathologies, excludes democracy,
and is far removed from moral philosophy (Klikauer 2012). To eclipse
this and to excuse HRM from the moral philosophy of law, standard
texts and textbooks on HRM tend to focus on procedural rather than

on substantive justice and fairness.453
This is achieved in several ways: firstly, these writings reduce moral
philosophy to organisational justice while simultaneously excluding
social justice theory and egalitarianism;454 secondly, by focusing on
procedural justice, moral philosophy is confined into a rather
insignificant area.455 Such divisions distance HRM from moral philo-
sophy. Simultaneously, HRM is still able to claim it includes ethics.
Thirdly, HRM can portray itself as moral when following its own asym-
metrical regulations applying them to underlings fairly and correctly
(Lee & McCann 2011). Substance and content of moral rules become
secondary until they vanish altogether. This is an attempt to exclude
HRM from moral philosophy while simultaneously claiming that HRM
is ethical. To turn HRM into an ethical institution would need the
application of Rawls’ ‘Justice As Fairness’ most efficiently (2001;
cf. Maffettone 2010). However, ‘justice is a societal concept and
requires its application from a set of values. Efficiency is an economic
concept derived from an economic model devoid of any sense of
morality or justice [hence] there is an absence of any intrinsic concern
for people in the HRM model. Where social and moral issues such as
equality of opportunity, fairness and justice are pursued, it is only with
the objective to add value to the organisation’ (Hart 1993:30).
In substantive terms, HR policies on opportunity, justice, and fair-
ness for example often support organisational bonding conventions
framed as corporate culture. HRM seeks to create a willingness to
comply with HR policies among subordinates, thereby circumventing
what moral philosophy calls ‘the free will’.456 This secures norm-
conforming behaviour of subordinates. Hence, HR policies have almost,
but never totally, replaced HRM’s disciplinary action. Nevertheless,
there is virtually no company without a policy on sanctions codified as
disciplinary action (Stone 2013:34). Unlike organisational routines,
conventions, customs, and habits, HR policies do not rely on an
organic facility of inherent forms of workplace relationships which
would mean horizontal or social integration based on relationships at
work. Instead, they rely on artificially produced vertical power struc-
tures often founded on the threat of sanctions. HRM-subordinate links
exist inside system integrative hierarchies with top-down command
structures. These entail codified HR policies that are applied by HRM
exclusively.
In sharp contrast to the universally accepted separation of powers
found in ‘all’ modern societies – trias politica as constitutional division
into executive, legislature, and judiciary – HRM covers all three unilat-
erally.457 In constitutional terms, HRM sets up a dictatorial regime of
authoritarianism.458 Nevertheless, it pretends to have some sort of sep-
aration of power by assigning the creation, application, and enforce-
ment of HR policies to different people inside HRM.459 Such a
pretended separation of power inside HRM violates what philosophy
calls constitutionalism as outlined by British philosopher John Locke
(1632–1704).460 The pretended separation of power is deficient and
unable to hide HRM’s authoritarian character.
Like commercial laws in general, HR policies also reflect an unequal
distribution of power (Bernhardt 2009). HRM can be understood as an
intentional apparatus of non-free association of originally autonomous
and equal members. With the conversion of human beings into
human resources and human behaviour into organisational behaviour,
the absence of freedom is created.461 This violates Kant’s moral philo-
sophy. For Kant, there is only one innate right, the freedom of being
non-constrained.462 Russian-British philosopher Isaiah Berlin
(1909–1997) has called it ‘negative’ and ‘positive’ freedom (1969):463
• negative freedom denotes the absence of impediments, blockades,

and constraints;
• positive liberty is the possibility of acting in such a way as to take
control of one’s life and realise one’s fundamental purposes (e.g.
Kant’s self-determination and Hegel’s self-actualisation).
In the case of negative freedom, HRM can never remove impediments,

blockades, and constraints from employees. If it did, it would mean the
end of HRM in its present format. HRM lives and exists through the
creation of constraints to individual freedom. HR policies are prime
examples of that. In the case of HRM’s lex permissiva (permissive poli-
cies), i.e. ‘positive’ freedom, HRM can never allow subordinates to take
control of their working lives.464 Equally, it can never permit subor-
dinates to realise their ‘essential’ (Hegel) life purposes. The fundamental
purpose of having employees is their ability to create profits – HRM’s
codeword for this is performance. In short, HRM has to violate Berlin’s
philosophy of negative and positive freedom.
HR policies supply a structure that cements unfreedom. As such they
are not part of freedom but of Adam Smith’s (1723–1790) and David
Ricardo’s (1772–1823) understanding of political economy. Both, the
professor of moral philosophy – Smith – and the economist Ricardo,
conceived a civic society based on capitalism, civic and legal equality,
economic inequality, the rule of law, and forms of workplace regula-

tions.465 These govern human resources and social capital – human
beings in philosophical terms – through anonymous economic laws,
equally anonymous business and industrial relations laws, and HR poli-
cies (Bernhardt 2009). In contrast to Smith and Ricardo, Karl Marx
(1818–1883) saw that the pretended autonomy of the legal system was
nothing more than a reflection of capitalism (Pashukanis 2002). Hence,
HR policies are nothing more than a reflection of HRM’s power over
subordinates inside a master-slave relationship.466 In both cases (legal
and economical), there is no autonomy because a legal body and HR
policies have been established over the heads of alienated subjects
(Hegel) and objects of power (Bauman 1989).
When viewed from this standpoint, HR policies become a social sub-
system to economic and organisational imperatives that combine
market forces with HRM’s ‘will to power’ (Nietzsche). In sum, they are
a merger of three elements: business law, economic market forces, and
HRM’s ‘will to power’. They exist within legal requirements that mutu-
ally stabilise one another and support HRM and the prevailing eco-
nomic-organisational structure (Png 2012). Therefore they are
non-contradictory to HRM and reflective of HRM’s organisational order
and a legal structure that supports and underpins HRM. HR policies
cannot be reflective of moral philosophy as their function is to support
a specific HRM order – not moral philosophy. They are in contradic-
tion to Hegel’s philosophy of individual morality that finds its ethical
expression in Hegel’s Sittlichkeit (ethical life) inside moral institutions
of a just society. There are four reasons for this:
1. individuals are converted into mere human resources. This contra-

dicts Fromm’s (1949:141) concept that there can be no prouder
statement a person can make than to say: ‘I shall act according to
my conscious’. This is simply obliterated through compliance to
HRM’s policies, procedures, power, and authority;
2. it eliminates Kant’s individual morality through organisational
behaviour and obedience to HRM’s authority (Milgram 1974;
Bauman 1989);
3. HRM is not a moral institution but exists for profit-maximisation –
it remains part of the managerial orbit; and
4. HRM and liberal, social-welfare, managerial, organised, disorganised,
late, neo-liberal, managerial, etc. capitalism have so far failed to
establish a just society.
When measured against Kant, Hegel, Milgram, and Bauman, HR poli-

cies do not aid the process of moral existence. They fail to establish a
moral foundation in the sense of these moral philosophies. HR policies
are not created on the basis of a separation of power (Locke).467 They
contradict Ronald Dworkin’s utilitarian philosophical concept of
liberal ethics in a pluralist society.468 Instead of finding organisational
regulations’ moral base in liberal ethics in a pluralist society, the key
organisational writer Max Weber (1864–1920) locates the legitimacy of
HR policies elsewhere. For Weber, HR policies do not draw their legit-
imacy from a democratic form of political will-formation of citizens.469
Not even the much trumpeted but always eclipsed tautology of corpo-
rate citizenship – when understood in its real meaning, e.g. an
Enlightened, mature, and democratic citoyen – is able to conceal the
fact that there is no democracy in corporate citizenship. Citizenship
equals democracy but it does not equal shareholder-value and profit-
maximisation. In corporations there simply are no citizens – only
human resources. The legitimacy of HR policies can never depend on
democratic will-formation of corporate citizens, not even on a highly
distorted will-formation of alienated human resources (Locke &
Weber). As a consequence, corporate legitimacy is only possible
through linking HR policies closely to an organisational body of unilat-
eral regulations, HRM’s power and authority.470 The legitimacy of HR
policies is not underpinned by pluralism, liberty, democracy, freedom,
and ethics in will-formation. It is organisational power and authority
exercised through the regulative aspect of HRM’s body of rules, admin-
istration, crypto-neutral language, and the fact that these regulations
are made to appear as rational as HRM itself.471
Kant’s philosophical rationality has been linked to critical rationality
outlined in his trilogy of modernity enshrined in his three Critiques
(1781, 1788, 1790). HRM, however, has exchanged the key term of
Enlightenment – critique – with the term instrumental, thereby con-
verting Enlightenment’s critical rationality into instrumental rational-
ity. At a second level and as a ‘hidden transcript’, HRM’s power is
supported through the ‘wages-vs.-freedom’ exchange flanked by HRM’s
quasi-welfare offerings.472 These are linked to a second exchange of
‘obedience-for-status’ as expressed in performance management, per-
formance related pay, appraisal systems, etc.473 These exchanges are
operated as a system of knowledge and a system of action where HRM
reserves the moral right to both because it is HRM that creates, inter-
prets, applies, and sanctions corporate policies and actualises them for
or against subordinates. In order to operate a binary system of know-
ledge and action, HR policies must be created by a body that

commands sovereignty.474
In philosophical terms, sovereignty is the quality of having supreme
and independent authority. HRM has such powers. It can rule and
make rules set up as a separated managerial department within man-
agement. HRM’s sovereign rule rests on organisational power and legal-
ities in which general management does not get involved unless
needed. Historically, no democratic explanations have to be provided
for this. HRM’s supreme authority within a company can be under-
stood as a threefold affair: Within the functional division of manage-
ment, HRM is the sole holder of sovereignty. It has absolute authority
over underlings representing ‘absoluteness of sovereignty’. It offers an
internal and external dimension of sovereignty: internally as ruler and
externally as defender against competition – e.g. threat from poaching
(Sheldon & Li 2010). Underpinnings of organisational sovereignty can
be found in the writings of the Italian writer Machiavelli (1469–1527),
the German reformer Luther (1483–1546), British philosopher Hobbes
(1588–1679), and French philosopher Jean Bodin (1530–1596).475
The most prominent of them – Thomas Hobbes – remains one of the
prime moral philosophers favourable to HRM’s sovereignty, regula-
tions, policies, and its rules that exist without democracy but represent
a semi-unlimited form of authority. While Hobbes – like Machiavelli –
favoured strong authority, HRM combined with its prime ideology of
individualism has an additional advantage. Since Fordism created
mass-consumption, the shift from feudal authority as outlined by the
two prime philosophers and political writers – Hobbes and Machiavelli
– towards a weakening of authoritarianism was made possible. In other
words, a modern ‘will to consume’ induced through marketing and
advertising has significantly supported employees’ willingness to play
along. Modern HR policies, HRM’s organisational order, and civic busi-
ness law have been made acceptable to those HRM frames as subor-
dinates.476 This is driven by a trade-off between ‘workplace unfreedom’
in exchange for petty-bourgeois middle-class affluence (Hamilton &
Dennis 2005). The trade-off means giving up one’s social freedom over
will-formation in favour of aiding HRM’s sovereignty and its policies.
In the moral philosophy of ‘contractualism’ this is enshrined in both a
legal and organisational employment contract between HRM and its
subordinates.477 The private contract entails an employment contract
between company and employee while the social contract involves a
legal and economic relationship that runs, often unnoticed by subor-
dinates, in the background of each employment contract.478
Under such contracts, human resources are constructed as non-

equals. However, under the moral viewpoint of equality, equal consid-
eration of subordinates by HRM and the equality of their interests face
a raft of unsolvable problems (MacIntyre 1983). HRM’s structural need
for inequality – framed as individuality – and moral standards collide
because HRM can never treat all subordinates in an equal way. HRM’s
treatment might be better reflected as a reminder of the Orwellian
dictum (1945): ‘all [human resources] are equal but some are more
equal than others’. This is because the power asymmetry of ‘HRM-vs.-
employees’ renders HRM’s moral claim of equality illusionary.
Secondly, within each hierarchical sub-section, there are numerous
economic, social, and power rankings rendering everyone even more
unequal.479 The task of HR policies is to eclipse these inequalities by
pretending to provide a crypto-legal body under which all are treated
equal inside a structure that has inequality as its foundation.
Finally, HRM also violates Kant’s moral philosophy of sovereignty
and Hegel’s ‘Philosophy of Right’ (1821; cf. Hoy 2009). Kant and Hegel
did not see sovereignty as a constraint on human rights. Instead, both
viewed human beings as ‘the’ sovereign that issues human rights. Both
argued that citizens could exercise autonomy as self-determining and
self-actualising human beings (Kant and Hegel). Inside a civil society
with the telos of Kant’s ‘Kingdom of Ends’ (Korsgaard 1996) and Hegel’s
moral society of Sittlichkeit, individuals are the ultimate sovereign.
Inside HRM, however, this is not the case. Instead, its sovereignty is
not dedicated to issuing a body of human rights. There are no civil cit-
izens in HRM. As such, people have an infringed autonomy. In the
absence of civil citizens, it is HRM that infringes on the autonomy of
individuals. In sharp contrast to Kant’s and Hegel’s philosophical con-
cepts of a moral society, HRM creates a body of crypto-legalities in the
form of HR policies that are neither reflective of Kant’s ‘Kingdom of
Ends’ nor Hegel’s moral society of Sittlichkeit.480
The exclusion of the moral agent and moral laws under HRM
through HR policies fundamentally alters the relationship between
morality and HR policies.481 The issuing of HR policies becomes neces-
sary precisely because of the absence of a moral agent and a moral
structure. HR policies have to offset the moral deficits of absent agents
and morality. The absence of a moral agent who creates moral work-
place regulations is paralleled by an absence of general ethics. This has
occurred because HRM has sought to insulate companies – through the
invention of its own ethics codes482 – against society’s morality and
ethical standards (e.g. Hegel’s Sittlichkeit). Simultaneously HRM’s ideo-
logy of individualism has weakened ethics inside organisations. In

sum, the deliberately created absence of morality creating agents and
institutions has made it possible for HRM to legitimately claim that
organisations are in dire need for HR policies. It has created a spiralling
vicious circle of self-reinforcing mechanisms that increases HRM’s
power while morality simultaneously decreases.
With the absence of moral agents who create and govern organisa-
tional policies, HRM moves away from Kant’s moral philosophy. Kant’s
categorical imperative of universalism, for example, demands that
freedom, the right to self-determination, and the position of each indi-
vidual must be comparable with an equal freedom of ‘all’. In other
words, HR policies can only ever be moral if they can be applied to
society as a whole and to the universality of human beings. Kantian
ethics sets a high bar for them. A brief illustration of an HR policy on
company cars, for example, renders such policies immoral when
measured against Kant’s ethics of universalism. Most large companies
have a policy on the use of company cars.483 However, it never permits
all employees to use company cars. Such a regulation creates inequality
rather than equality.
The above example shows that Kant’s categorical imperative of uni-
versalism creates two problems for HRM: firstly, it demands that every-
one inside a company would have to have a company car. As such the
organisational privilege would cease to be a privilege and there would
be no need for a HR policy; secondly, Kantian universalism demands
that a rule has to be applicable to the universe of humanity. On this
German philosopher Habermas (1996:153) noted that ‘to be valid, such
norms must survive Kant’s universalisation test that examines what is
equally good for all’. Hence, everyone in the wider society and
throughout the global society would have to have a company car.
Instead, HRM needs the exact opposite – a privilege for some.
Therefore, HRM has to violate Kant’s categorical imperative of univer-
salism.
Once deprived of its morality and democratic legitimacy, the remain-
ing legitimacy of HR policies rests with HRM’s authority and power.
On this Machiavelli noted that power is the potential of a power
holder to calculate from its strategic point of superiority the deploy-
ment of power in a purposive-rational way (Selekman 1959:50).
Hobbes has extended this by advocating that rules need a contractual
relationship and a de facto power of command enjoyed by whose will
can defeat every other will on earth. HR policies live through their
ability to structure the relationship between HRM and subordinates.
They also exist because HRM’s power – a commanding position – can

defeat every other will inside a company. In sum, HR policies are
power relations stabilising HRM-subordinate relationships through the
creation of consistency, dependability, and predictability in the organ-
isational behaviour of the subordinates who are part of a confined
setting that brings them under the sphere of HRM and HR policies.484
But HRM’s power only reaches as far as the borders of a company. In
this, two distinguishing features are relevant: moral norms are directed
to every person whilst legal norms address only those members who
are part of a certain legal system. In other words, morality ranks high
above organisational norms and HR policies that are nothing more
than a set of specialised rules. As such they do not excuse HRM from
acting morally and enacting moral HR policies because HRM is part of
a larger legal and moral system and its HR policies operate inside a
larger structure of morality.
It has become apparent that HR policies lack several highly relevant
conditions in order to be moral ranging from the denial of a separation
of power to the exclusion from rule-creating of those governed by its
policies. HRM reflects ideology rather than morality. HR policies are
created as a body of rules that serves power. The practice and activity
of HR policies is geared towards shaping subordinates’ beliefs. Hence,
they are closer to an ideology that directs organisational ‘objects of
power’ (Bauman 1989) in ways that are not transparent to the subjects
it governs. The exclusion from rule-creating activities forces employees
into a position of being ‘objects of power’ (Bauman 1989). Therefore,
HR policies are thoroughly ideological in character. But in order to be
effective as an ideology, it remains imperative that HRM cloaks its
power.
This involves a process of justification requiring the obfuscation of a
reality that forms the relationship between HRM and subordinates. To
achieve this, HRM’s ideologies arise wherever there are social condi-
tions such as those produced and reinforced by HRM (Laufer &
Robertson 1997). As such, they remain exposed to criticism and protest
from below. But HR policies are designed to divert attention away from
criticism by focusing on supposedly independent, law-like and neutral
rules. Hence, HRM concentrates on, for example, ‘illegal discrimina-
tion’ because it needs to keep its own semi-legal and daily administered
discrimination inside an externally imposed legal framework.485
HRM’s ideology seeks to insulate its asymmetrical conditions from
attacks by those who are disadvantaged by HRM regulations. It
confines protest, if exercised at all, to conflict ‘within’ HRM’s system of
‘complaint procedures’ often framed as ‘procedural justice’.486

Simultaneously and most importantly, it seeks to eliminate protest
against HRM’s organisational regime. Such grievance procedures are
the most common form of conflict within rather than about HRM.487
This process is vital when HRM seeks to eradicate resistance. In short,
HRM’s ideologies camouflage flawed social conditions sustaining an
illusory account of their rationale and function in order to justify and
win acceptance.
A critical point of view would argue that HR policies are the blunt,
unmitigated, unadulterated expression of domination by one organisa-
tional class over another (Sayer 2010). To hide this, HRM is aided by a
set of particular legalistic doctrines that can be used to eclipse the
inconsistent, immoral, and arbitrary features of HR policies. An
example for such doctrines is that HR policies are only determined by
institutional facts internal to the organisational system and they may
or may not meet moral standards. Positivist philosophers such as
Thomas Hobbes and the legal philosopher John Austin (1790–1859)
have developed two arguments for this:
1. the legitimacy of law does not depend on moral criteria; and

2. law must be obeyed however short it falls of moral ideals.
In other words, the power of HR policies does not come from ethics but
from the fact that subordinates and underlings obey it.488 Hence, the
legitimacy of HR policies can never be determined by moral criteria
outside their legal body. The ideology of legal positivism (knowledge in
the service of power) rather than the philosophical quest for truth seeks
to disassociate morality from HR policies. But as long as HR policies
involve human beings – even in the derogative HRM-terminology of sub-
ordinates – it involves morality. An exclusion from this is not possible.
For those who seek to divorce HR policies from morality it is power –
not the principles of legality and morality – that determines HRM.
However, when organisational norms are defined in terms of the inter-
ests they serve rather than the justice they embody, such organisa-
tional normative rules are not moral but ideological. Hence, HR
policies are to be interpreted as a device that serves the interests of the
powerful. As such they are pure ideology because they are formulations
that serve power rather than knowledge, philosophy, morality, and
truth. Therefore, the codified version of organisational ideology in the
form of HR policies gives an inverted image of reality, but a recognis-
able image nonetheless:
if in all ideology men and their circumstances appear upside-down

as in a camera obscura, this phenomenon arises just as much from
their historical life-process as the inversion of objects on the retina
does from their physical life-process.489
When one seeks to understand HR policies, it remains imperative to

see through their reality eclipsing ideology. Despite the ideological
character of HR policies, they still provide a recognisable image of
organisational reality because they are able to shape normative practice
inside companies. The purpose of HR policies is not a representation of
a moral practice but to guide human behaviour – through codified
reasons – towards organisational actions in order to deliver tangible
outcomes in the form of profits. Together with ‘informal’ policies,
workplace conventions, habits, traditions, customs and practices, and
so on, HR policies guide human conduct at work even though they are
an inverted perspective of reality and as such thoroughly ideological
rather than moral.
In conclusion, HR policies raise serious concerns when viewed from
the standpoint of moral philosophy. Firstly, they are in complete
denial of a key moral principle: those who live by a rule should also be
those who create such a rule (Locke, Kant, & Hegel). Rather than a will-
formation of organisational citizens, HR policies represent an author-
itarian will-formation under the exclusion of so-called corporate
citizens (Orwell’s Newspeak) or workers (Orwell’s Oldspeak). Secondly,
HR policies fail the test of Kantian moral philosophy because they are
not formulated with moral intent and do not measure up to Kant’s cat-
egorical imperative of universalism. Thirdly, HR policies do not estab-
lish Kant’s ‘Kingdom of Ends’ or Hegel’s moral society of Sittlichkeit and
they do not represent Dworkin’s philosophical concept of liberal ethics
in a pluralist society. Lacking democratic legitimacy and morality, HR
policies are solely based on HRM’s power and the ability to issue sanc-
tions (Locke). Lacking legitimacy and morality, HR policies become
ideologies serving power when supporting and maintaining HRM’s
organisational order.
HRM and organisational order
Traditionally, theories on order explain how and why regimes cohere

and operate. Not only Hobbes’ bellum omnium contra omnes (fight-of-
all-against-all) can be related to HRM; also his problem of order relates
to it. Thomas Hobbes has been recognised as the first philosopher to
clearly formulate the ‘problem of order’. He conceived the answer to be

the notion of the contract. HRM’s contract with employees – employ-
ment contract – is the formal underpinning that establishes and
secures HRM’s organisational order.490 When discussing Hobbes’
‘problem of order’ and specifically the problem of HRM’s organisa-
tional order, two types of explanations have emerged. In the first
version, HRM’s organisational order can be linked to works on
‘conflict’ such as that by Karl Marx but also from theories of Émile
Durkheim (1858–1917). The second explanation has been associated
with Talcott Parsons’ (1902–1979) functionalism focusing on the role
of shared norms and values as a function in maintaining cohesion in
organisationally constructed regimes. Such a focus on functionality
however often diverts attention away from morality.
For Durkheim, the emphasis on functionality arose out of his
critique of utilitarian philosophy that was popular especially among
political thinkers. Durkheim’s theory focuses on mutual self-interest
and contractual agreements for HRM’s organisational order in increas-
ingly complex corporate settings. Drawing on Durkheim, a morality
based on his ‘mechanical’ organisational order includes HR policies
under which employees are made to share organisational beliefs and
values. An ‘organic’ HRM’s organisational order, on the other hand,
would be based on interdependence between HRM and employees.
This creates moral restraints on egoism and thereby forms the basis of
organisational cohesion and order. The second model, however, seeks
to deny the existence of conflict and the use of force by HRM framed
as ‘disciplinary dismissal’ or as ‘firing an employee’.491 It fails to take
into account the asymmetrical power relationship between HRM and
employees and also denies the missing involvement of those who have
to live under HR policies.
Instead, this model focuses on the importance of a prior moral con-
sensus as a necessary pre-condition for HRM’s organisational order.
Such a consensus, however, cannot be established by excluding those
to whom the rules apply. Hence, HRM’s organic order can only exist as
a manipulated form of organisationally induced values. The acceptance
of HRM’s values occurs through internalisation on the basis of a
sophisticated organisational apparatus that must be able to create
system integrative forces directed towards employees. Only this can
integrate subordinates fitting into HRM’s organisational order. In sum,
Durkheim’s model of social order neglects the fact that a shared body
of norms and values can never exist in a system that excludes employ-
ees from the process of creating these norms and values. By neglecting
the asymmetries of HRM regimes and by over-emphasising consensus,

power relationships and conflict are made to disappear.
The second explanation of HRM’s organisational order derives from a
different tradition, offering a realist-materialist rather than Durkheim’s
shared-cultural account of HRM’s organisational order. It outlines the
asymmetries, inequalities, power relationships, and hierarchical posi-
tions that exist inside organisational regimes. But in asymmetrically
distributed allocations of power and resources – HRM calls this resource
allocation and HRM’s RBV or resource-based-view – HRM remains a
source of conflict between different collectives: employees and HRM.492
Inside the zero-sum game, employees and HRM are in conflict over a
greater share of power and resources in three distinct areas: wages,
working conditions, and job security. The factual existence of conflict
means there can never be shared norms and moral consensus. Hence,
HRM’s organisational order is always precarious and has to be main-
tained ideologically. To achieve this, HRM creates the myth of a
balance of power while simultaneously confining employees to a
weaker and disadvantaged position. For HRM, this balance of power
can only ever be established inside ‘its’ organisational order. For
employees, it means the end of the regime itself.
Since a balance of power can never be achieved inside HRM’s organ-
isational order, cohesion is sustained through organisational compul-
sion, force, top-down structures, hierarchies, ideologies, organisational
and legal coercion, and bureaucratic routines. This secures the incorpo-
ration of employees into HRM’s dominant organisational ideology. In
addition, organisational coercion has proven a remarkably effective
source of stability, especially where HRM’s power has been made to
appear legitimate (Schuler & Jackson 2014). Nevertheless, an inherent
conflict of interests implies tension rather than enduring stability.
Therefore, a significant ideological apparatus in the form of HRM has
been established. This apparatus has to be kept up for as long as HRM’s
organisational order has to be maintained.
Under the hegemonic power of HRM, HRM’s organisational order is
kept relatively stable by setting up institutional structures, patterns of
workplace interactions, and organisational customs capable of continu-
ally reproducing the conditions essential for HRM’s existence. HRM’s
organisational order entails all those facets of organisationally con-
structed regimes stabilised by ideological scaffoldings. But it also sepa-
rates ‘essential’ from ‘accidental’ elements (Hegel). The former include
the legal right to own property, exchange and power relations, but also
organisational asymmetries, communicative relations, and ideological
systems of HRM enforced values.
Under such organisational regimes, the key for HRM’s organisational

order lies in the principle of ‘dependence’ that has been part of the
moral philosophy of legal positivism (Austin 1832) as expressed by
legal philosopher John Austin (1790–1859). This means that the more
dependent employees can be made on HRM, the more likely they are
to conform to HRM’s order. It also denotes that if HRM’s order can be
made important for employees, they will be more likely to do what
HRM wants them to do. The immorality of this version of HRM’s
organisational order lies in its attempt to make employees dependent
on HRM denying self-determination (Kant), autonomy and self-
actualisation (Hegel). A second way of maintaining HRM’s organisa-
tional order rests on HRM systems that secure visibility. These relate to
the extent that behaviour of employees can be observed and manipu-
lated by HRM.493 The key component can be formulated as: the higher
HRM’s ability for observation and manipulation, the more likely
employees will follow HRM norms. These systems represent the
immorality of neighbourhood-watch systems and panoptical control
mechanisms as outlined by French philosopher Paul-Michel Foucault
(1926–1984).494 They are strong authoritarian in character, produce
and reinforce hierarchical power relationships and divide human
beings into those who watch and those who are watched (Fox 1989).
Thereby, they carry connotations to the immorality of an Orwellian
regime representing a comprehensive system of enclosure.
The enclosure of subordinates inside HRM’s organisational order is
also established through the scope and comprehensiveness of HR poli-
cies. Comprehensiveness views the totality of a fully developed body of
HR policies as essential for HRM’s organisational order. It asserts three
key issues, namely that HRM’s codified body of norms contains:
1. a complete set of important norms governing HRM’s overall regime,

2. a set of policies formulated for an effective transmission to subor-
dinates, and
3. internal linkages because the better these norms link up internally
presenting a coherent and acceptable body of rule, the higher is
their capability to hold together employees.
Rather than relying on a self-established order and moral codes that

create a cohesive group of employees, HRM relies on an all encompass-
ing body of formal norms and rules that encircle employees and make
them adhere to HRM. This carries strong connotations to authoritar-
ianism, bureaucracy, a ‘Totally Administered Society’ according to
German philosopher Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) and Kafka’s ‘The
Trial’ (1925). It is the height of system integration (Lockwood 1964;

Wrong 1994:231ff.).
In every regime constructed by HRM, employees are made to belong
to a group that adheres to corporate missions, have a corporate iden-
tity, and exist inside an organisational setup and an organisational
culture as defined by HRM. The hierarchical power structure within
non-managerial staff is made to mirror the structure of the whole
organisation. There are hierarchical relationships within HRM,
between employees and HRM, and inside respective departments, sec-
tions, and work groups. Together these relationships create HRM’s
order. HRM is eager to avoid any scenario where people belong to HRM
as well as to non-managerial staff at the same time. It also seeks to
avoid conflicting role identities. Clear lines of demarcation established
by HRM secure this.495 Similarly, individuals are protected from
encountering any situation in which they would have to choose one
group over another. However, HRM’s influence is directed towards the
creation of non-solidarity and weak ties amongst non-managerial staff
to strengthen organisationally constructed regimes as a whole that can
be seen in HRM’s anti-union orientation.496 On the other hand, HRM
has strong internal ties within its group so that its norms and values
can easily be cascaded down to weakened groups of non-managerial
staff.497 Inside the asymmetrical power relationship, a strong and cohe-
sive group of HRM is better able to enforce its values and norms onto
employees who have inherently different interests, values, and norms
compared to HRM. The immorality of this approach lies in the fact
that it seeks to establish cohesion among HRM while creating disunity
among non-managerial staff.498
The division of HRM-vs.-subordinates does not only reflect unity-vs.
-disunity but also differences in social status (Tinel 2013; Diefenbach
2013a). The ranking and hierarchy of statuses creates and supports
HRM’s organisational order. During the entire history from factory
overseers in Satanic Mills to personnel management, to HRM, it has
used virtually every element of (the always incomplete) list of:
race, ethnicity, colour, language, political or other opinion, national

or social origin, social background, origin, sexual orientation, reli-
gion, region, occupation, physical attractiveness, gender, education,
age, etc.
to divide people into different status groups.499 At the most basic level
this violates utilitarianism’s ‘No Harm Principle’ because the division
of people into categories and the assignment of different statuses bring

harm to them (Mariappanadar 2012). This approach is also unable to
fulfil utilitarianism’s ‘Great Happiness Principle’. Organisational status
is a structure that assigns a specific rank and standing within HRM’s
stratification of people.500 It always includes a hierarchy of status inside
which HRM, as the sole assigning authority, enjoys high ranking while
non-managerial staff is asphyxiated inside a lower status.
The ranking of organisational status finds its clear expression in a
company’s internal affairs. There is a certain corporate existence and
lifestyle that distinguishes members of different organisational status
groups.501 But HRM’s hierarchical ordering of status does not stop
there. Inside organisational hierarchies there are even more status
groups. And even inside these groups there are usually smaller groups.
Good indicators for organisational status are wages, salaries, and
bonuses up to a complete system of financial ranking. This may cause
frictions for individuals. In other situations, frictions are deliberately
engineered by HRM when people are made to feel that they must
choose to side with a status group of employees versus being part of
HRM. HRM has used status groups to stabilise HRM’s organisational
order. Some employees can always be made to aspire to become a
member of a higher status group – called promotability.502 Meanwhile,
those inside higher status groups can be made to look down on those
who have been assigned places in lower status groups.503
Characteristically, HRM has assigned different values as internal
criteria for an evaluation of those who are permitted to move into
higher organisational status groups. For this, it has split values into two
categories. There are individual values which pertain to what HRM
thinks has worth for it and there are straight forward organisational
values (Perry 1926). These are human desires that can be manipulated
by HRM according to the principles to which a group or an individual
wants to be associated with. These values establish social norms that
stabilise HRM’s organisational order and advise what employees ought
to do in a given situation. Unlike personal or individual values, organ-
isational norms are simpler to enforce through HRM techniques such
as self-reporting and self-appraisal.504 But they remain instruments
‘outside of the self’ (Lemos 1994). HRM regimes can determine these
norms to generate diligent and compliant employees.
In sum, rather than fostering, for example, virtue ethics that expresses
honesty, rectitude, charity, faithfulness, non-violence, modesty, courage,
temperance, liberality, magnificence, high-mindedness, gentleness,
truthfulness, wittiness, shared friendship, and justice (Aristotle),
HRM creates status groups and fosters vices that contradict virtue
ethics. Expressed as an incomplete list, these are
falsehood, egoism, cruelty, adultery, theft, rank, luxury, glamour,

hedonism, individual greed, nepotism, favouritism, arbitrariness,
narrow-mindedness, avarice, selfishness, myopia, hypocrisy, incon-
sistencies, conformity, vengefulness, a desire for status ranks with
the desire for wealth and power, aggressiveness, domineering, nar-
cissism, and a lack of empathy.
The negation of virtue ethics under HRM’s use of status groups and its
subsequent fostering of vices is related to the power and authority that
HRM exercises inside companies. But HRM’s organisational order never
remains totally unchallenged. It demands constant submission to HRM
as ‘the’ order-keepers. But not everyone inside an organisationally con-
structed regime abides by HRM’s pre-formulated set of values and
norms at all times (Boselie et al. 2009). For this reason, it remains nec-
essary for HRM to maintain authority. Those who are placed in posi-
tions of power and authority are among HRM. Characteristically,
organisational norms differ for each layer below because members of
lower groupings are forced or enticed to hold different sets of values.
Therefore, tension can form between HRM and non-managerial staff.
Hence, HRM directives, regulations, and policies have to be put in
place for those who do not conform to HRM’s values. But HRM’s
organisational orders are not always put in place as a pre-meditated
organisational act. The very opposite is the case when its order estab-
lishes itself unstructured and unplanned by HRM.
There are cases where an HRM’s organisational order does not neces-
sarily need to be controlled by HRM. Quite often HRM entices indi-
vidual employees to pursue self-interest. This alone can create a
predictable and stable system cementing HRM’s authority. Such
crypto-voluntary and semi-spontaneous systems – even if not quite so
spontaneous but actually planned by HRM – may in fact be preferable
to the highly structured coercion of formalised HRM authority
(Fleming & Sturdy 2009). It denotes that predictability and stability of
HRM’s organisational order can be achieved without HRM appearing
authoritarian to subordinates. At its ‘surface’ rather than the deep
structure (Chomsky 1957, 1965, 1986) HRM can even appear to exer-
cise less control. But this does not necessarily lead to employees behav-
ing in ways that are considered beneficial to a company. Such
unregulated interaction of a pre-engineered form of rational selfishness
has the potential to produce unwanted outcomes for HRM. To counter-

balance these, HRM relies on charismatic elements and a perceived
culture of admiration, engineered reputation, and honour to enhance
its order (Nel et al. 2012:324).
Honour is somewhat linked to control by avoiding methods and
organisational status as outlined above. It is a form of distributing
organisational prestige. It can also show approval, respect, and admira-
tion that HRM is able to command by virtue of its input-qualities and
performance management capabilities. Once a charismatic HRM execu-
tive, for example, has established himself as an unchallenged ruler –
supported by perceived success in the corporate world – he can make
others work for him because the latter are made to feel that it is an
honour to do so (Bolchover 2005). Often lower-level HRM and subor-
dinates are made to adhere to organisational honour because of a
specific workplace, i.e. a large and powerful multi-national corporation
or a CEO who commands a substantial system of wealth and power.
Since most organisationally constructed regimes find wealth and power
desirable, it is relatively easy to make subordinates respect and envy
top-managers and CEOs.505
When organisational honour is referred to as organisational status, it
deals with the rank of subordinates within the stratification of an
organisational system. Those below are made to believe that achieving
a high status that deserves organisational honour can be achieved by
everyone. It eclipses the pyramidal structure made visible in ‘any’
organisational chart of ‘any’ corporation and company in which the
numbers are stacked up against a rise to the top. Nevertheless, HRM
makes underlings believe that a high status and honour can be
achieved. It is the belief that a certain position can be gained on the
basis of a pre-conceived, pre-constructed, and organisationally defined
merit. The accompanying ideology is: status and honour can be
achieved through hard work.506 But the appearance of hard work is not
the only way to achieve ideological superiority. In some instances not
even the appearance of hard work is needed. In those cases, organisa-
tional honour has been ascribed to top-management and CEOs
without regard for merit. This is the task of Rosenfeld’s (1995) ‘percep-
tion management’ and the popular business press that is almost exclu-
sively owned by global media corporations. They have a strong
self-interest in keeping the system of organisational honour, status,
and achievement through hard work alive (cf. Beder 2000 & 2006).
This was the case with ‘The Talent Myth’ and ‘Enron’ and can be
observed through the ascribed status of Paris Hilton.507 All of this
sustains order. With the aid of HRM’s relentless drive towards indi-
vidualism and a compliant corporate business press, today’s social and
economic order is stabilised.
In general, there are two sets of organisational theories that account
for the overall existing economic and, within it, HRM’s organisational
order. Both theories explain order but they do so in very different
ways. The first theory argues that adherence to HRM’s organisational
order is achieved through control.508 It results from a large number of
organisational decisions that convert individual rights and liberties
into a coercive structure in return for a perceived security of income
and status.509 This follows a double-conversion:
i) human beings → human resources

ii) human behaviour → organisational behaviour.
HRM’s organisational order not only provides the perception of job

security and organisational existence but also establishes mechanisms
to resolve disputes.510 In this way, individuals are made to partially
exclude themselves from society’s values and morality in exchange for
income that guarantees social status, comfort, and engagement into
mass-consumerism.
The second theory emphasises that HRM’s organisational order does
not reside in control but in a concordance of specific organisational
values and norms which employees are made to internalise.511 Unlike
the aforementioned ‘exchange’ models, this theory goes beyond simple
exchanges such as ‘income/consumerism–vs.-morality’. This model
includes the reproductive sphere (ex-work) as a vital component when
explaining HRM’s organisational order. It argues that HRM’s organisa-
tional order can only be attained when individuals have gone through
an internalisation process that makes them willing to follow at first
societal norms and values (families, schooling, etc.) and later organisa-
tional ones. In this model, human beings have been made to grow
accustomed to largely authoritarian rules, orders, and norms inter-
nalised through family, parents, peers, schooling, education, and cor-
porate mass-media.512
Once pre-conditioned, human beings are easily converted from
being human into being a resource at the disposal of HRM with their
behaviour being converted from human into organisational behaviour.
For this to be successful, it remains imperative to associate this sort of
conditioning to HRM’s formal organisational regime enshrined in HR
policies, rules, and regulations. HRM links policies and performance
management to the pre-established reward-, money-, and power-code

as transmitted by private schools and universities, banks, advertise-
ments, game-shows, tabloid-TV, Hollywood movies, etc. Once at work,
the pre-engineered importance of an all-dominating ‘money→reward→
morality’ linkage and its associated symbolic status systems (brands,
logos, etc.) simply carries on inside organisational life. The absence of
true ethics in society is mirrored by an absence of true ethics in
HRM.513
Neither society’s nor HRM’s organisational order depend on ethics.
Instead, HRM’s organisational law and order regimes depend on asym-
metries, inequalities, power relationships, and hierarchical positions, a
dominant organisational ideology, bureaucratic routines, a substantial
body of commercial norms and rules, hierarchies, clear lines of demar-
cation, social and organisational status, the acceptance of HRM as an
organisational order-keeper, and a system of organisational honour.
But HRM’s morality as organisational law and order keeper also faces
some serious problems when viewed under the ethical demands of
moral philosophy. Perhaps the key remaining ethical issue for HRM is
that moral philosophy links those who live under the law also to be
those who create the law.514 But the authoritarian and, above all, non-
or perhaps even anti-democratic character of HRM exists in stark con-
tradiction to the ethical demand of moral philosophy. In order to
cover up the contradiction between democracy, moral philosophy and
HRM, the latter can rely on ideologies prevalent in society.
Ideological instruments found in society and the early adaptation of
individuals to law and order regimes are highly useful to HRM when
processing labour from being human into being a human resource. The
organisational focus on law (HR policies) and order (managerial
regimes) is cemented through HRM establishing a link between exter-
nal pre-work and organisational socialisation. HRM initiates this with
simple induction programmes. These accustom new employees to the
established law and order body of HRM rules and policies as well as to
HRM’s organisational order.515 HRM’s induction programmes –
whether informal or formal – are designed as special bridging institu-
tions at the society-work interface. How the relationship between
society and HRM works in relation to ethics is explained in the next
chapter.
5
Morality 5: HRM and
Utilitarianism
Kohlberg’s fifth level is the classical home of a moral philosophy called

utilitarianism. The ethics of utilitarianism spans from Jeremy Bentham
(1748–1832), John Stuart Mill (1806–1873), Henry Sidgwick
(1838–1900), and G. E. Moore (1873–1958) to contemporary ethicist
Peter Singer (2013). Utilitarianism is a philosophy which holds that an
action, a law, or a rule is right only if it produces a good, preferable, or
the best outcome. This is evident in utilitarianism’s ‘Happiness
Principle’ stating that ethics must bring ‘the greatest good for the great-
est number of people’.516 This creates a number of problems for HRM.
First and foremost, HRM is not concerned with whether or not an
action, a law, its own HR policies, or an organisational rule is right but
with whether it delivers performance outcomes for the company.517
Secondly, HRM’s best outcome is not geared towards the greatest
good for the greatest number of people but towards the greatest organ-
isational performance. Its action inside companies tends to focus on
the very opposite of utilitarianism’s ‘Happiness Principle’ as HRM seeks
to give – or withhold – a limited number of goods (e.g. promotions,
wage increases, bonuses, etc.) to pre-designed groups or – if possible –
to the smallest number of people possible.518 For example, there is no
use in a 5 per cent pay increase across the board for everyone. It would
only increase costs while reducing profits inside HRM’s zero-sum game.
This may not deliver any tangible benefits and would violate HRM’s
ideology of individualism.519 Instead, it is far better for HRM to use the
5 per cent as incentives (receiving) for some and as punishment (not
receiving) for others (Paauwe et al. 2013; Stone 2014:465). In HRM
terms, ‘5%-for-all’ is a rather nonsensical proposition and that is
exactly why it almost never occurs without pressure from trade unions
(DeCenzo et al. 2013:372).520
138
Morality 5: HRM and Utilitarianism 139
Meanwhile, the moral philosophy of utilitarianism holds that the

only thing relevant to determine whether an action is right or wrong is
to be found in the outcome of such action. Consequences are impor-
tant, hence the name consequentialism that has been used for utilitar-
ianism.521 On this, Mill (1861) noted ‘he who saves a fellow creature
from drowning does what is morally right, whether his motives be
duty or the hope of being paid for his trouble’. Consequentialism
focuses exclusively on the outcome and consequences. If an action
produces a good outcome then it is morally right and ethical.522 The
best one can hope for is that HRM’s drive for organisational perfor-
mance has – as a mere by-product – a positive consequence that HRM
can frame as ethical. Nonetheless, ‘under HRM, employees are
expected to market themselves like the “dish of the day”, pointing out
their best parts, which they have worked on developing’ (Dale
2012:14). Hence, the creation of an HRM action that has good and
therefore moral consequences is accidental, not essential for HRM.
The philosophy of essentialism sees an act as essential if it is not
accidental but a determining part of an action. HRM’s ‘accidental’
action that produces a positive outcome in respect to the ‘Happiness
Principle’ is at best a by-product but it is not essential to HRM.523
When measured against consequentialism, HRM is not likely to be an
ethical actor as it does not engage in actions designed to produce good
and moral outcomes. Occasionally such ethical outcomes occur but
usually as a spin-off from HRM’s action. However, the fact that they
occur as spin-offs and side-effects renders them accidental. The essence
of consequentialism and essentialism therefore determines that HRM is
not an ethical actor in the sense of both ethical principles.
Utilitarianism’s strong links to consequentialism result in side-
tracking the motives of actions by focusing on outcome. In that sense
HRM is even more distant to utilitarianism. Just as consequentialism,
utilitarianism also measures outcomes, not intentions and moral
motives (Kant). But HRM’s organisational measurements such as per-
formance management, ROA,524 performance related pay, and the
balanced scorecard (Kaplan & Norton 1992, 1993, 2004) cannot be pos-
itively linked to utilitarianism’s ‘Happiness Principle’.525 Instead,
HRM’s acclaimed but largely illusive ‘work-life balance’ sees those
employees seeking a work-life balance as ‘down-shifters’.526 Therefore,
most of HRM’s activities do not fall within the parameters of conse-
quentialism and utilitarianism.
Utilitarianism is a version of ethics geared towards the wellbeing of
all persons.527 But HRM is not geared towards human wellbeing but
towards organisational performance and tangible outcomes for busi-

nesses.528 In some way, HRM might relate wellbeing to employees
when it seeks satisfied employees because of its dictum: job satisfaction
leads to productivity.529 In this context, wellbeing is a means to an
end, not a Kantian end in-itself. The essence of HRM is to create a pro-
ductive employee and if a satisfied employee is a cost-neutral side-
effect, HRM will have satisfied employees. However, this does not
mean HRM is generally interested in wellbeing as an outcome. It is
interested in productive employees.530
For utilitarianism, the ‘Happiness Principle’ also relates to its ‘No
Harm Principle’.531 This principle says the only purpose for which
power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised com-
munity – i.e. against his will – is to prevent harming others (Reed
1997).532 However, HRM exercises power over employees who are no
longer ‘members of a civilised community’ but made to be part of a
work regime that neither constitutes a civic structure nor an organic
community. ‘Work as a central life activity’ (Noon et al. 2013:61) has
been reduced to the non-civilised managerial functionality of human
resources. The essence of HRM is not to create civilised communities
but to establish an organisational structure supportive of business. For
that it constructs an artificial corporate community that remains an
engineered assembly of people for the sole purpose of organisational
performance. The ideological term community is only of value to HRM
when used to sell an HRM created community in the near total
absence of any input of such a community in creating it.
In contrast, a real civilised community tends to grow organically out
of itself without narrow organisational goals. Civilised communities set
forth human, not monetary values. HR managers are foremost inter-
ested in preventing harm to themselves rather than to others as
demanded by utilitarianism. Harm is usually offloaded to others as
numerous cases of downsizing, outsourcing, retrenchment, etc. have
shown.533 It is mostly the other – not HRM – that is outsourced and
downsized.534 In the organisational world preventing harm to others
operates in reverse gear. Harm is also offloaded to nature – through
environmental devastation – and to society in the form of industrial
illnesses such as from asbestos (Ramazzotti et al. 2012). In sum, rather
than adhering to utilitarianism’s No Harm Principle, HRM deliberately
offloads moral responsibilities to others even when this creates civilian
casualties as in the cases of Bhopal and Ford Pinto (Velasquez 2012).
The essence of HRM demands that it operates for organisational perfor-
mance rather than with the ‘people-over-profit’ maxim (Chomsky
1999). Based on this imperative, HRM can only ever represent the
extreme opposite of what utilitarianism calls ethical behaviour.
One of the key moral philosophers delivering key ideas on the No
Harm Principle has been John Locke (1633–1704). In his ‘Second Trace’
(1690) Locke emphasises ‘no one ought to harm another in his life,
health, liberty, or possession...and that all men may be restrained from
invading others’ rights’.535 This creates challenges for HRM that has
always been part of a structure that harms the lives of others (Pinto,
Zeebrugge, Bhopal, Seveso, Nestle baby formula, etc.), people’s health
(OHS), and liberty (HRM’s disciplinary action, its self-assigned right to
manage, and staunch anti-democracy).536 When, for example,
‘Rousseau’s general will manifests truth content beyond the sum of
individual wills’ (Schecter 2013:25), HRM rejects all three – the general
will, truth content, and that both go beyond the individual.
Meanwhile philosopher Locke also emphasised that men may be
restrained from invading others’ rights. For HRM it is a case of where
their rights and the rights of HRM start and where individual rights,
human rights, civil rights, and environmental rights end. HRM’s
organisational right to manage – almost by definition – curtails the
rights of others. HRM cannot respect their rights; it invades them.
Utilitarianism includes two main hindrances to human improve-
ment. The first is seen in not living up to the principle of perfect equal-
ity, the second in not avoiding power and privilege. But HRM
represents the exact opposite of both. It is not based on the principle of
‘perfect equality’ since the sole purpose of HRM is to create inequality
between ‘those who manage’ and ‘those who are managed’ – manager-
ial and non-managerial staff. If HRM would create perfect equality,
hierarchies like these topped up through present wage structures would
collapse and so would company hierarchies, organisational bonuses,
the separation between HRM and non-organisational staff, and finally
HRM itself (Diefenbach 2013a). In addition, HRM represents a hierar-
chy based on power. It lives for and with organisational power which it
uses, misuses, and even abuses to make others do what HRM wants
them to, irrespective of the utilitarian demand for equality. HRM’s
essence is manifested in having power over others in its top-down
‘I-manage-you’ approach.537 On top of that, HRM uses, possesses,
shows, and enjoys its privileges.
Hence, HRM is not a reflection but the mere opposite of Bentham’s
utilitarian idea of ‘each to count for one and no one for more than
one’ because organisational divisions between HRM and employees
result in authority, asymmetric power, hierarchies, and inequalities.538
This is depicted by almost all HRM activities performed in almost any

company. Furthermore, while utilitarianism criticises power and privi-
lege, it remains one of HRM’s core organising principles that support
organisational hierarchies and authority. Organisational hierarchies,
the always important lines of authority, and command-and-control
structures are based on the power and money code.539 Without money
(rewards) and (organisational) power HRM would not exist. In sum,
HRM represents a negation of the utilitarian principles of avoidance of
‘power and privileges’, and striving towards ‘perfect equality’.
The happiness principle as HRM’s organisational objective
Perfect equality is closely linked to the utilitarian obligations to ‘increase

the total happiness levels of existing persons…[and] to improve their
lives as much as possible’.540 This is in stark contrast to HRM’s task of
organisational performance which translates human behaviour into the
bottom-line. HRM is also not dedicated to the utilitarian principle that
demands to improve their lives as much as possible. Instead it does not
support human resources who are unprofitable as outlined in the ‘bal-
anced scorecard’.541 Utilitarianism’s telos is to create happiness for all
existing people while HRM’s telos is set towards serving those human
resources who are profitable to support the bottom-line. General
Electrics’ CEO Jack Welsh has expressed this to perfection. Welch
elaborated this by dividing his managers into four distinct types:
Type 1: he said, is everybody’s star. These people deliver on commit-

ments, financial or otherwise, and share our values.
Type 2: is the opposite: They do not meet commitments, nor share
our values-nor last long at GE.
Type 3: tries hard, misses some commitments, but works well with
people and shares the values. They deserve another chance.
Type 4: delivers the numbers, but does so by forcing them out of
people. Says Welch, ‘This is your big shot, your tyrant, the
person you’d love to be rid of – but oh those numbers’.542
In short, rather than being geared towards improving the lives of

people as much as possible HRM is geared towards something different.
For utilitarianism, however, the Happiness Principle can be achieved in
two ways: consequential and non-consequential. The former is seen as
• Act-Utilitarianism that seeks to choose an act which creates the best

consequences, the latter as
• Rule-Utilitarianism in which acts are performed according to rules

(Hooker 2012).
Inside both versions of utilitarianism negative consequences are

accepted but only in cases where the greatest amount of good occurs as
a result. For example, it would be possible to increase wages for all
non-managerial staff even if it means not to increase remuneration for
HR managers. But HRM’s practice of consistently widening the wage
gap is the very opposite. According to utilitarianism, it represents
immorality.
The ethics of narrowing the wage-gap, for example, carries connota-
tions to the utilitarian principle that sees people as equals. HRM
however not only does not see people – human resources – as equals
but deliberately turns them into non-equals in order to sustain wage-
gaps, hierarchies, and power. Utilitarian philosopher Sidgwick,
however, emphasised, ‘whatever action any of us judges to be right for
himself, be implicitly judged to be right for all similar persons in
similar circumstances’. Throughout its existence, HRM has worked
hard to ensure that people are not judged similarly. HRM’s primary
drive has always been directed towards the idea that an action is
judged right when it serves HRM and the bottom Line. But utilitarian
ethics demands that what is right for one person also has to be right
for another person. HRM distinguishes between itself and others. Both
are seen as dissimilar entities. Therefore others – employees – do not
need to be judged similarly as demanded by Sidgwick. The organisa-
tional dictum ranges from unequal pay for similar work to pay differ-
ences between men and women for similar or even for exactly the
same jobs. The very existence and structure of promotion and hierar-
chies negates the utilitarian ethics of Sidgwick. HRM holds the exclu-
sive right to promote and to privilege one but not the other, even in
similar cases.543 In conclusion, HRM can never make an ethical judge-
ment in cases of similar circumstances. If HRM was to act ethically, it
would negate itself. If it acts organisationally, it negates Sidgwick’s
ethics. It appears as if Sidgwick’s ethics and HRM are in an unsolvable
dilemma.
The Golden Rule of Sidgwick’s ethics is: do to others as you would
have them do to you. For HRM however this is not so. For example,
HRM still exists or covers up the corporate use of sweatshop and child
labour which has been hidden behind elaborate structures of sub-
contracts setting up a semi-distance between HRM and sweatshop and
child labour in some distant corner of the world.544 It is not likely that
these HR managers want what they do – or allow to have done – to
others to be done to themselves nor to their children. In general, HR

managers seek wage reduction that includes reducing bonuses, working
conditions, and benefits as a cost-cutting measure for employees while
simultaneously being extremely reluctant to apply its own cost-cutting
ideology to themselves.545 HRM operates on the exact opposite of
Sidgwick’s Golden Rule because a pay cut for employees and a reduc-
tion in their working conditions such as ‘precarious’, atypical work
arrangements, and the casualisation of employment for example, often
means the exact opposite for HRM, i.e. bonuses and promotions.546
Furthermore, Sidgwick formulates that it cannot be right for A to
treat B in a manner in which it would be wrong for B to treat A, merely
on the grounds that they are two different individuals. Again, the
reverse constitutes the very essence of HRM otherwise individual pay,
individual contracts, and the systematic hyper-individualisation of
employees would not exist:547
• ‘pay influence on individual employees’ (Kramar et al. 2011: 510),

• ‘individual coaching’ Kramar et al. 2011:58),
• ‘individual incentives’ (Kramar et al. 2011:518),
• ‘market individualism’ (Beardwell & Claydon 2011:391f.),
• ‘individual PRP’ (Beardwell & Claydon 2011:520),
• ‘individual appraisers’ (Macky 2008:275f.),
• ‘individual contracts’ (Macky 2008:120; Kramar et al. 2014:153),
• ‘individual bargaining’ (Gunnigle et al. 2011:288), and
• ‘an individual employee is called a position’ (Schwind et al.
2013:63).
That all this exists, testifies to the fact that HRM represents a funda-
mental turnaround of Sidgwick’s ethics. HRM treats two individuals
differently just because they are different individuals. Playing one off
against the other is one of the fundamentals of HRM while Sidgwick
demands that individuals in similar conditions should be treated sim-
ilarly. To cover up such obvious contradictions, HRM is at pains to
find even the most microscopic reason to justify that individuals are
being treated in different ways. They employ rafts of people such as
HR academics, consultants, and corporate lawyers to find reasons and
invent explanations as to why individuals are not to be treated the
same. These reasons can be as illusive as the fact that HRM’s power
rests on its organisational position – not on the power of the better
argument. HRM has hardly ever employed anyone in order to seek
reasons to justify why individuals are similar and conditions should
be similar.
Sidgwick also believed that consciousness can be intrinsically

good.548 That might explain why HR managers suffer from MADD:
moral attention deficit disorder or do not bring their consciousness
into work.549 Despite being highly moral in their private lives, they
leave their conscience at home when they enter the corporate world.550
For moral philosophers such as Sidgwick, a moral consciousness is
intrinsic to humans. For HRM however moral consciousness is sec-
ondary to their work and best left a home. HRM is about making
things work and getting a job done, not about moral contemplations.
When it comes to a conflict between organisational performance and
moral consciousness, the latter loses hands down.
HRM morality and Bentham and Mill
Sidgwick’s intrinsically good consciousness also carries references to

John Stuart Mill’s ‘Higher and Lower Pleasures’ (1861). Mill notes, the
creed which accepts the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest
Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they
tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse
of happiness.551 This is a code of conduct that cannot be accepted by
HRM’s drive for organisational performance, profitability, and the
rational application of resources to achieve profitable goals. HRM can
never see the rightness or wrongness of decision-making in the light of
promoting happiness. The essence of HRM does not manifest itself in
promoting happiness but in promoting organisational performance,
resource allocation, and human resource planning.552
Mill’s happiness principle relates to pleasure outlining that it is
wrong to suppose that human beings are capable of no pleasures
except those of which swine are capable. Human beings have faculties
more elevated than the animal appetites, something he called the
‘Swine-Principle’.553 It nominates Aristotle’s intellectual pleasures as
the pinnacle of ethics.554 But neither swine nor HRM find pleasure in
intellectual endeavours. Instead, just as swine have an insatiable
appetite for swill HRM has an insatiable appetite for performance man-
agement (Marr & Gray 2012). For Mill ethics means the superiority of
mental over bodily pleasures. For HRM it is the superiority of extrinsic
and intrinsic rewards over mental and intellectual pleasures. Neither
the practice of HRM nor its manifestations as an academic discipline
contain intellectual and scholarly virtues.555 Mill continues with
it is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied

better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.
For HRM, the reverse is the case. For Gare (2006), it is ‘The Triumph of
the Airheads and the Retreat from Commonsense’ and as Peter Drucker
might have said, HRM first of all appears to be like a mindless game of
chances at which any donkey could win provided only that he be ruth-
less (Klikauer 2012:155). If HRM is no more than a mindless game for
donkeys then it can satisfy a pig but not a human (Mill). It satisfies a
fool but not Socrates (Mill). HRM however likes to see employees as
satisfied fools (Mill) because satisfied employees will be productive
employees. This explains HRM’s deep-seated emphasis on employee-
and job satisfaction.556 For HRM, the utilitarian concepts of happiness
and satisfaction only appear as a Kantian means to an organisational
end which is defined as organisational goals manifested in profits
(Phillips 2012). If however, HRM is at all interested in employees’ hap-
piness and satisfaction, it is HRM that deletes happiness in favour of
simply job satisfaction. It is the sole authority of HRM that allocates –
or revokes – instruments that create or deny mere satisfaction. In a uni-
lateral and sometimes rather totalitarian manner, this is applied to
those HRM deems worthy.
One can define this totalitarianism as the process of defining
people’s happiness for them. This is the fundamental psychodynamic
of HRM’s totalitarianism. It alienates people from themselves while
handing over their happiness to HRM (cf. Railton 2012a). This struc-
tural arrangement gives some people – HR managers – power over
others. In HRM’s organisational processes workers and employees are
turned into objects of HRM’s organisational power on the basis of
HRM’s objective-rational power.557 HRM’s exclusiveness and power in
defining organisational happiness for employees stretches to a full scale
exclusion of democracy under the managerial heading ‘leaving labour
out’.558 HRM’s unilateral definition of happiness is almost self-evident
and never mentioned in HRM textbooks.559 This fulfils Schwartz’s
(1990:16) definition of totalitarianism. The psychodynamics of
totalitarianism is completed when HRM locks itself inside the self-
reinforcing organisational fantasy of knowing what is best for employ-
ees, their happiness, and satisfaction.560
HRM’s idea of employee satisfaction has no intrinsic value in-itself
(Kant). It is only pursued when it leads to productive employees,
thereby rendering it an instrument to achieve a specific goal. For HRM,
it is better to have a satisfied fool rather than an unsatisfied but intelli-
gent human being.561 A satisfied fool is a productive fool but a philo-
sopher – least of all Socrates – whether satisfied or not, might not be all
that productive. Mill thought to be human means to be an intelligent
human. He also stated that people lose their high aspirations as they
lose their intellectual taste. For HRM, an intellectual employee is not a
prime objective. A productive employee, however, is. HRM seeks
employees with functional knowledge serving organisationally defined
tasks. Whether an employee has intellectual taste or not is largely irrel-
evant to HRM.
For utilitarianism, as for almost any other ethical philosophy, it is
the brain and the intellect that makes us human. HRM represents the
opposite of this philosophy. It is the brain in action that is relevant for
utilitarianism but not for HRM – at least not an active brain that
diverts from HRM defined tasks. For Mill’s utilitarianism, human
beings constitute the end of human action and this sets – necessarily –
standards for morality. The end of human action for HRM is not utili-
tarianism but organisational performance. Its necessary standard is not
the Greatest Happiness Principle.
According to Henry Sidgwick’s ‘Method of Ethics’ (1907), the
‘Greatest Happiness Principle’ requires an individual to sacrifice his
own happiness for the greater happiness of others. For HRM, however,
it is the other way around. For example, when HRM denies wages and
rejects wage increases for employees, downsizes entire departments and
factories, cuts employee benefits, reduces working conditions,
retrenches workers and so on, HRM does not sacrifice its own happi-
ness for the greater happiness of others. In some cases, the very oppo-
site occurs. A mass-retrenchment of workers often leads to increases in
shareholder-value which translates into bonuses for HR managers
(Paauwe et al. 2013). This means increased competitiveness for com-
panies, recognition, legitimacy, and a favourable treatment of HR man-
agers by general management.562 Simultaneously, for employees
sacrifice and unhappiness become reality. There are hardly any cases
when CEOs sacrifice their stratospheric salaries, share options, and
other benefits beyond tokenism for the happiness of others (Tett 2012;
Bonea 2012). In general, the happiness of others is sacrificed for HRM
and CEOs. HRM reverses Sidgwick’s ethics by seeking greater happiness
predominantly for itself.
According to Sidgwick (1889:478), the Greatest Happiness Principle,
designed to create happiness whether private or general, is the ultimate
end of action. HRM does not engage much in private affairs other than
turning humans into human resources. But it engages in general
action. Here, Sidgwick’s ethics nominates happiness as the ultimate
end – Kant’s end in-itself establishing his ‘Kingdom of Ends’. However,
HRM cannot function by directing action towards happiness. Nor can
it accept happiness as the ultimate telos of its action. For HRM, the
ultimate end of action has always been organisational performance,
never happiness. Hence, inside HRM’s ‘Moral Maze’ (Jackall 2006),
happiness has to be negated for HRM’s ultimate ends. HRM must divert
its action away from true happiness as the ultimate end and therefore
has to act unethical according to Sidgwick’s ethical principle of happi-
ness being the ultimate end of action. The ultimate ethical end is to be
found in the utilitarian concepts of:
• being veracious,
• faithful to promises,
• obedient to law,
• disposed to satisfy the normal expectations of others,
• having their malevolent impulses, and
• their sensual appetites under strict control.
These utilitarian ideas appear to be a list of ideas that HRM cannot

deliver on. For example, Macklin’s (2007:266) ‘The Morally Decent HR
Manager’ quotes a manager who said ‘the important thing is to have a
good memory so that you don’t contradict the lies you have already
told’. Such deception can never depend on being faithful to promises
otherwise HRM – and perhaps even more so strategic HRM – would
hardly exist.563 Strategic HRM is often seen as the queen of HRM.564
Even more than day-to-day HRM (tactics), the deceptive character of
strategic HRM eliminates utilitarian ethics.
HRM can, however, afford to be obedient. It generally operates under
the maxim all is fine as long as you can get away with it. However, it
does not dispose itself to satisfy the normal expectations of others
unless this contributes to organisational performance. HRM’s inten-
tions and motives are not ethical (Kant) but organisational. Under the
ethics of consequentialism this might be justifiable. Consequentialism
only looks at the outcome or consequences of an action and not at its
intentions. Under the ethics of utilitarianism, however, this is ethically
not justifiable. HRM also needs to keep its ‘malevolent impulses’ and
its ‘sensual appetites under strict control’ which hardly seems to be the
order of the day when corporate excesses in pay, remuneration, female
escort services, lavish executive perks (Sage 2007), and the infamous
$6,000 shower curtain are considered. The corporate world – as
acknowledged and/or supported by HRM – depicts rather the exact
opposite. Utilitarianism also prohibits falsehoods based on four

reasons:
1. because of the harm it does to others by misleading them;

2. because of the mutual confidence that men ought to have in one
another;
3. because falsehood tends to produce a general mistrust of all asser-
tions; and
4. because it violates the general rule of respect in truth.
The falsehood of doing harm to others is contradicted by HRM. It is gen-

erally seen as HRM’s task to do harm to others in various ways such as
disciplinary action, dismissal, wage cuts for employees, etc.565 It is not
HRM’s task to create mutual confidence that men ought to have in one
another but rather the opposite framed as ‘the technical must versus the
ethical ought’ (Selekman 1959:16). In the reality of industrial relations,
for example, the very last thing HRM wants are trade unions who know
how far they can go in wage bargaining.566 HRM views unions as obso-
lete and outdated at best. At worst, HRM has no confidence in them and
perceives them as enemies. They may not be lethal for a company but
can be very costly for HRM. In ethical terms, HRM does three things: it
seeks to separate itself from so-called ordinary ethics by inventing a spe-
cialised niche of HR-morality. This is not possible but helps HRM to
appear ethical just as the invention and ideology of ‘business ethics’ as a
separate entity to morality helps businesses to appear ethical. Secondly,
HRM sees ethics like any other issue inside its orbit ranking below its
seven perceived fields of core activities: recruitment and selection, per-
formance management, remuneration and pay systems, and employee
training and development (Dessler 2011). Thirdly, HRM’s main actions
are inventions which it can win or lose, often related to issues of
bluffing, deception, and the destruction of mutual trust – the very oppo-
site of what utilitarian ethics considers to be moral.567
As an inbred consequence, HRM has to create general mistrust by
deceiving people.568 As an example, this is evident in the fact that HRM
has a secretive character enshrined in so-called ‘confidential’ docu-
ments and in ‘the secret pay check’ (DeCenzo et al. 2013:279). The
secrecy surrounding wage and salary levels is paralleled by a PR
machine installed to eclipse HRM’s true intentions.
HRM is not about truth but about supporting The Real Bottom Line.
Its general rule on truth appears to be: it is nice to have when it comes
along free of charge but easily disposed of when it hurts. In short,

HRM’s structural imperatives violate all four principles outlined by the
utilitarian prohibition of falsehoods. Thereby it needs to be unethical
when measured against these principles that together create utilitarian
ethics. According to utilitarianism, these four aspects are not a restau-
rant menu from which HRM can select one while negating others.
Ethical HRM needs to live up to all four. HRM’s inability to do so
shows its unethical character.
Utilitarian ethics also includes the principle that a moral action is
right when it produces more good than could have been produced by
any other action open to the agent. HRM falls within this principle as
it can select from a range of HRM techniques falling under what is
known as decision-making and instrumental rationality.569 In HRM
instrumentalities such as:
• decision-making processes, cost-benefit rationalities;

• ‘reducing labour costs’ (Jackson et al. 2012:189);
• ‘cost monitoring’ & ‘agency cost’ (Kramar et al. 2011:479 &
2014:494);
• ‘benchmarking’ (Kramar et al. 2014:423f. & 438–440);
• ‘costs minimisation’ (Beardwell & Claydon 2011:4); and
• ‘transaction cost HR’ (Gunnigle et al. 2011:42 & 85)
instrumental rationalities (Macky 2008:420f.; Grobler et al. 2011:134;

Jackson et al. 2012:61) tend to overtake ethics. They impact on day-to-
day HRM and strategic HRM. For HRM, the utilitarian principle of pro-
ducing more good than any other action is unilaterally defined by the
organisation and not by utilitarian ethics (greatest happiness). This is
done in adherence to the present HRM ideology of individualism
rather than as an understanding and the application of utilitarian
ethics. HRM can select from a range of policy and technical options
just as the ethics of utilitarianism defines. Therefore, it falls within the
parameters of this particular utilitarian premise. HRM cannot,
however, select the options of utilitarian ethics. It has to divert from
utilitarianism in order to fulfil its own essence of instrumental rational-
ity and organisational determinism. Utilitarianism also demands that
things be achieved for the largest number of people. Inside any
company, HRM usually is a small number of people – a self-serving
group – operating at the expense of a larger one (employees) and
thereby contradicting utilitarian ethics.570 Utilitarianism’s Happiness
Principle and the essence of HRM’s instrumental rationality are contra-
dictory when it comes to HRM’s decision-making processes.571
For Jeremy Bentham ethics was simple. The ethics of happiness, so

he thought, is like English marmalade.572 It should be evenly spread
around. Following Bentham’s analogy of marmalade-ethics, restricting
ethical options to a small number of people is like piling up marmalade
in one corner of your toast. Happiness in the organisational world
should also be spread around evenly. HRM negates this. Firstly, not
happiness but organisational performance is HRM’s essential telos.
Secondly, HRM’s power, hierarchies, authoritarianism, organisational
privileges, pay structures, bonuses, etc. indicate that HRM is not at all
about spreading things around evenly. The opposite is the case. If HRM
does create happiness it is usually an accidental by-product of its
actions. Privileges and power are reserved for HRM. Thirdly, HRM has
reduced happiness to an engineered ‘reward-happiness’ ideology equal-
ising happiness with rewards and, in a further step, equating: 1 bonus
= happiness → 2 bonuses = twice the happiness. On the downside
there is HRM’s distaste of minimum wages that is framed as the
‘minimum wage debate’ (DeCenzo et al. 2013:281) attempting to
diminish a legal right in many countries. DeCenzo’s et al. (2013)
eleventh edition of ‘Fundamentals of HRM’ deliver a striking example
when it states ‘minimum wage laws are controversial…clearly there is
no easy solution to this debate’.573 While the working poor on
minimum wage suffer from ‘Nickel and Dimed: on (not) Getting by in
America’ (Ehrenreich 2011) and legislation has been put in place to
protect the weakest in the labour market, HRM pretends that protect-
ing the weakest is ‘controversial’ and still debated.574
Ever since Taylor’s (Un-)Scientific Management,575 the development
of management, its offshoot HRM, and its links to behaviourism,576
HRM believes that a scientific engineering of human behaviour –
behaviour modification – is possible.577 The uncritical acceptance of
Taylorism by HRM has been expressed by Merkle (1980:290):
Taylor’s concept of ‘military authority’ owns little to the personal

knowledge of military command, but represents an important atti-
tude of the scientific managers concerning the ignorant, bullying,
coercive aspects of traditional authority in…industry.
Contrasting one of HRM’s key beliefs, Bentham thought that science

should be moral – not militaristic – science and scientific advances
should be used to enhance morality and ethics, not militarist hierar-
chies, domination, and authoritarianism. But HRM uses science and
scientific advances to enhance its power, authority, and rule over
people. Science – whether sociological, psychological, or behavioural –
has become HRM’s ‘Servant of Power’. For ethics, science can only be
seen as moral science with the inherent telos of improving morality.
For HRM, science in the service of HRM is seen as functional science
that leads to improvements in support of the money and power code.
For one, science and morality are equal and moral science merges with
moral actions. For the other, science is subservient to HRM and sup-
ports organisational actions. In sum, the moral science of ethical
philosophy contradicts the submissive role science plays inside HRM’s
quest to rule over people.578
John Stuart Mill’s rule-utilitarianism demands to obey rules such as
‘don’t lie, keep promises, and avoid hurting people’. It offers HRM two
choices. It can either act ethically when emphasising an ethical act or
an ethical rule or it can avoid doing so and thereby act unethically. Mill
essentially offers a clear roadmap towards utilitarian goals directed
towards fulfilling utilitarianism’s Greatest Happiness Principle. But HRM
negates rule-utilitarianism by adhering to its own rules and policies. It
has problems with keeping promises.579 Finally, HRM is – at least not
primarily – geared towards avoiding that people are being hurt.
Utilitarianism’s Greatest Happiness principle also includes the
concept of the multiplication of happiness. On this, Mill (1861:391)
emphasised, ‘the multiplication of happiness is, according to the util-
itarian ethics, the object of virtue: the occasions in which any person
(except one in a thousand) has it in his power to do this on an
extended scale – in other words, to be a public benefactor – are but
exceptional; and on these occasions alone is he called on to consider
public utility’ (Sample et al. 2004).580 In sharp contrast to this, HRM’s
essence does not manifest itself in the creation of a single happiness
and even less so in the creation of a multiplication of happiness. It
lacks standard utilitarian ethics and the ethics of a multiplication of
happiness, thereby negating Mill’s objective of virtue. Not to provide a
multiplication of happiness if one is able to do so is a clear violation of
Mill’s core principle of utilitarian virtue. It is an ethical demand if
HRM has the power to do so. HRM clearly has this power but it chooses
not to multiply happiness.
Roughly 100 years have passed since the invention of Scientific
Management (Taylor 1911; Wren 2005) and its bedfellow of managing
people, and it has been roughly 25 years since the switch from person-
nel management to HRM. During this time personnel management
and HRM had the option to multiply happiness but have consistently
chosen not to. It testifies to the fact that HRM is not an ethical actor
who has the creation of a multiplication of happiness as its essence.
This is especially true when considering that HRM is in the somewhat

unique position of being able to use its power to do this on an
extended scale (Mill). In sum, this is not a failure of HRM but a histor-
ically proven indication that the multiplication of happiness is not
part of HRM’s essence (Driver 2009).
Finally Mills’ ethics also demands that ‘an actor shows that on occa-
sions…he is called on to consider public utility’. HRM needs to con-
sider ‘public utility’ if it wants to be an ethical actor, however, it exists
inside company confinements and as such argues that these bound-
aries do not concern ‘public’ utilities. For HRM, the ethical concept of
public utilities is negated under externalisation. Utilitarian concepts
such as public utility, public helpfulness, public value, and public
service are not part of HRM and its ideology of individualism that treat
public utility as an external factor that only needs to be engaged when
enforced by regulation and this has to be based on Rawls ‘justice as
fairness’.581 While HRM divides justice into procedural-, organisational-,
and distributive justice,582 adjusting it to HRM’s imperatives seen as
‘justice and business sense’, social justice, and egalitarianism are conve-
niently excluded in HRM’s ideologically driven inclusion-exclusion
framing of justice.583 In that way, HRM conforms to, for example, busi-
ness ethics writer Solomon who simply declares ‘theories of social
justice [are] irrelevant to the workaday world of business’ (Lippke
1995:21).584
To some extent, justice is seen as an externality that should not
infiltrate HRM’s organisational order with potentials to hinder business
success. Through the success of the organisational ideologies of deregu-
lation and the so-called industry self-regulation HRM has developed a
space in which it can relinquish many ethical duties enshrined in the
ethics of public utility. As a consequence, it seeks to insulate itself from
organisationally unwanted societal consequences of its actions. The
general relationship between HRM and public utility can be described
in two ways:
• the public is to be used when needed;

• otherwise, it has to be kept off limits when HRM acts.
Hence, the HRM-public interchange is not seen by HRM as a sphere in

which happiness can be fostered. It is neither seen as an area in which
the utilitarian principle of the multiplication of happiness can take
place. In short, HRM’s relationship to public utility is rather defined by
taking and offloading than by giving and servicing.
Bentham and Mill have created an ethical philosophy that raises

serious questions for HRM because it highlights the latter’s unethical
position. But their philosophy creates also an additional problem for
HRM. Mill thought that one should defend a minority against a major-
ity view because a majority view can easily become a tyranny of the
majority. Similarly, Bentham thought that obedience to a majority
opinion would actually lead to social stagnation since there would no
longer be organised resistance to a decision-making authority. Both
concepts are highly challenging for HRM who, together with its ideo-
logy of individualism, is anchored inside the mass media engineered
majority opinion of today’s society. Invented and assumed ‘majority
opinions’ are also moored inside teaching institutions, textbooks, con-
ferences, journals, etc. One of the prime ideological tools of HRM is
individualism that reaches into primary socialisation starting with
private primary schools and for-profit kindergartens.585 The majority
opinion on individualism remains fundamentally unchallenged and
any critique on HRM’s TINA (there is no alternative) is made to appear
pathological (Marcuse 1966). HRM and its entourage of crypto-
scholarly writers camouflaged as academics have truly established a
tyranny of majority.
This has led to stagnation inside society engineered through HRM
ideologies and the overall theme of Managerialism that gives indi-
vidualism the appearance of being eternal. The success of individualism,
for example, has created a society that unconditionally accepts the rules
of individualism. This has been achieved largely through modern cor-
porate mass media. Today’s society is constructed in a way that it func-
tions purely as a support mechanism for capitalism run by lifeless (Kant)
human resources. The original ideology of capitalism supporting society
has been turned upside down. Today, virtually the whole of society
works exclusively towards supporting capitalism. This has, for example,
become visible in the reversal of one core utilitarian principle: the fair
treatment of all is a higher good than majority rule. Virtually all
advanced capitalist societies show that the majority rule of individual-
ism has been converted into a higher good than the fair treatment of
all. Today’s global society is departing ever more from fair treatment of
all but is moving ever closer to a world governed by individualism.586
Mill’s utilitarian ethics commands that a morally higher good is
manifested in the recognition that human beings have the power to
sacrifice their own greatest good for the good of others. HRM takes
issue with that. In fact, it reverses this. HRM has the power to sacrifice
its own ‘greatest good’ because of its unique organisational position as
the sole guardian of the self-assumed right to manage human beings.

However, HRM’s power and the right to manage others is also the very
organisational essence that determines the reversal of Mill’s concept.
Given HRM’s organisational position and power, it can never sacrifice
its own ‘greatest good’ for the good of others. Nor can it equalise itself
with employees without damaging its own source of power, namely
hierarchy and control over others. Controlling others appears to be
one of the core rules of HRM just as its willingness to extract itself from
the scene whenever sacrifices are engineered. Usually, these sacrifices
are presented by HRM in a passive format, such as ‘sacrifices have to be
made’ (Klikauer 2007 & 2008). HRM take itself out of the equation by
shifting any burden onto those who have been designed to make these
sacrifices invented by HRM. The greater good of others always ranks
below the greater good of HRM. Employees, for example, are disposable
from HRM’s point of view but not those who manage them – HRM
itself.
In sum, utilitarianism’s concept of sacrificing one’s own greater good
for the greater good of others (Mill 1861) is negated by HRM. This has
happened ever since the Godfather of ‘managing workers’ – Taylor
(1911) – constructed workers as expendable. This occurred under per-
sonnel management at first and was later carried forward into modern
HRM. HRM remains non-expendable. The essence of HRM even disal-
lows the recognition of workers as workers.587 HRM denigrates working
people as human resources performing to achieve organisational objec-
tives. These unnamed and unrecognised human beings have been con-
structed as beings positioned at the receiving end of HRM’s
organisational decisions (Klikauer 2007:152). As a consequence, HRM
negates the complete set of Mill’s utilitarian ethics.
Mill also saw what German philosopher Hegel called ‘The Others’ as
equal to oneself rather than on the receiving end. Mill emphasised, ‘to
do as one would be done by, and to love one’s neighbour as oneself’
constitutes the perfection of utilitarian morality. This Biblical state-
ment is negated by HRM at two levels. HRM’s neighbours are compet-
ing management departments, trade unions, and employees. They are
the objects of strategic HRM in an attempt to use military means to
win at the organisational battlefield. Hence, HRM can hardly ever see
their organisational competitors as neighbours. They definitely do not
love them as prescribed by the Bible and by utilitarian ethics. No text-
book on strategic HRM will ever advocate loving your neighbour.
Rather the extreme opposite is often the case. In short, strategic HRM is
about winning, not about loving.588
If one of the ultimate utilitarian principles is the Biblical idea of

‘loving one’s neighbour as oneself’, Mill’s next concept creates even
more problems for HRM. In ‘Utilitarianism’ (1861) Mill notes the
proposition that happiness is the end and aim of morality does not
mean that no road ought to be laid down to the goal, or that
persons…should not be advised to take one direction rather than
another. In utilitarian ethics, happiness is the end and aim of morality.
This is not so for HRM because its end and aim is organisational perfor-
mance translating the work of employees into profit-maximisation.
During the end of the 19th century HRM’s predecessor – factory admin-
istration – started to form itself. This was the time of Mill’s utilitarian-
ism. With it he opened up a road towards the goal of the utilitarian
‘Happiness Principle’. During the late 19th and the 20th century, HRM
could have travelled this road to become an ethical actor adhering to
utilitarianism but it chose not to.
It is irrelevant whether HR managers, HRM, and HRM educators
knew utilitarian ethics in 1861 or not. But it remains relevant that
HRM consistently negated utilitarian ethics and continues to do so
ever since its self-invention. HRM did so when it converted itself
from the brutal factory administration of the satanic workshops into
personnel management and eventually into HRM.589 During the
21st century, HRM added semi-academic disciplines and ideologies
such as ‘work hard’, individualism, etc. to its portfolio. Throughout
decades of writings in HRM, HRM education, HRM seminars, HRM
books, HRM journals, HRM conferences and conventions, HRM theo-
ries and models, and so on, HRM never took the road that was
opened by Mill. It did not become an ethical actor in the utilitarian
understanding. Instead HRM took the road laid out by instrumental
rationality.590
Finally, Mill’s ethics also engages in HRM’s means-ends calculation.
Mill emphasised that in the utilitarian doctrine, happiness is desirable,
and the only thing desirable, as an end with all other things being only
desirable as means to that end. In other words, if HRM had taken Mill’s
road towards utilitarian ethics, it would have happiness as its essence.
Its essence of organisational performance, shareholder value, and profit
maximisation would have to be negated. HRM would have become an
institution directed towards happiness. This would have demanded a
severe shift in HRM’s overarching paradigm. All organisational func-
tions would have to serve the ethical goal of happiness rather than the
organisational goal of profits. The fact that none of this ever happened
during the last two-hundred years of ‘factory administration → person-
nel management → HRM’ testifies to the reality that HRM – including

its predecessors – is not concerned with the ethics of utilitarianism.
HRM does not see happiness as an end under which all other activities
are seen as means serving this end. In conclusion, HRM represents a
sustained negation of Mill’s ethics of utilitarianism. But Mill is not the
only philosopher concerned with utilitarianism.
HRM’s morality and E. G. Moore
According to utilitarian philosopher E. G. Moore (1873–1958), ethics

entails not only the greatest happiness principle but also three obvious
intrinsic goods which are pleasure, friendship, and aesthetic enjoy-
ment.591 In contrast to Moore’s ethics, HRM’s three obvious intrinsic
goods are organisational performance, performance management, and
HR policies. Moore’s concept of pleasure is annulled by HRM’s essence
of not being about pleasure for the greatest number of people. Some
HR managers, however, might gain pleasure from achieving organisa-
tional performance through reducing their(!) workforce in their(!)
department by 10 per cent to receive an end-of-the-year bonus, and by
rejecting wage claims made by a trade union. These organisational
actions, however, are not conducted out of ethical/unethical motives.
Neither do they result in a good, ethical, and moral consequence for a
great number of people.
Moore’s ethical concept of friendship has never been part of HRM. In
non-textbook versions of HRM (cf. Schrijvers 2004), the following has
been emphasised: ’don’t tell your colleagues and HR managers too
much. You must sharpen your talent for measuring and exposing
others’ (Furnham 2012). Given this, one is hardly inclined to view
HRM’s ‘Moral Maze’ as a place of friendship (Tengblad 2012). Hiring
people, for example, is not about friendship but about integrity, intelli-
gence, and energy.592
Moore’s third concept is that of aesthetic enjoyment. Inside HRM,
next to nobody has ever been hired for showing aesthetic enjoyment.
Employees who engage in aesthetic enjoyment are all but useless to
HRM. Nor does the history of HRM testify to Moore’s concept of
aesthetic enjoyment when it comes to managerial work. Neither
19th century cotton and steel mills and manufacturing workshops nor
underground coal mining, fragmented work tasks, Tayloristic factories,
Ford’s assembly line, modern sweatshops, child-labour places, and not
even today’s standard office workstations and cubicles have ever
depicted aesthetic enjoyment.
In the 21st century, neon-lit offices furnished with cheap laminated

standard desks, uncomfortable office chairs, faceless laptops, a grey
computer with a non-ergonomic but equally grey keyboard, a bleak
joyless plant in the office corner, and a standard poster on the creamy
wall found in any standard office are not exactly depictions of aes-
thetic enjoyment. Moore’s three obvious intrinsic goods of pleasure,
friendship, and aesthetic enjoyment build utilitarian ethics while HRM
has never engaged itself with even one of them. Instead, it relies on
‘qualities’ (!) such as ‘promotability’, being talented, showing leader-
ship qualities, being goal-oriented, and showing team spirit.593 Rather
than living up to utilitarian ethical values, HRM demands its own
values that represent a near total negation of Moore’s concept of util-
itarian ethics.
Utilitarianism also entails that in the real world when people lie others
are hurt and their own reputation is damaged. This concept is continued
with: when people break their promises, and fail to return favours, they
lose their friends. In the real world of HRM it is an HR manager who lies:
‘you will be promoted’. For example, in his study on ‘The Morally
Decent HR Manager’, Macklin’s (2007:266) memorable quote notes an
HR manager who said ‘the important thing is to have a good memory so
that you don’t contradict the lies you have already told’. Meanwhile
workers are downgraded from the status of being a person to being a
resource exposed to being an object of HRM’s power (Bauman 1989).
These resources are expected to show obedience to organisational
authority (cf. Milgram 1974). HRM’s own reputation is hardly damaged
when ‘blaming the victim’ and blame can be shifted onto others such as
employees, an enemy manager, trade unions, state regulation and the
like that prevent HRM from ‘hiring-&-firing’ willy-nilly.594
There are cases when the reputation of HR managers can even be
enhanced by a lie or a broken promise. What counts for HRM is organ-
isational performance. HR managers contribute significantly to that
even when lying (Costea et al. 2012). They do so when their own
power base supports their action as Milgram (1974) has comprehen-
sively shown. HR managers are even more willing to operate with
untruths when these can be offloaded onto those positioned down-
stream in the organisational hierarchy. This is especially the case when
those downstream are so powerless that repercussions for HRM can be
minimised, externalised, or annulled altogether.
In the eyes of other HR managers and top-HRM these sorts of HR
managers have often achieved the unachievable. They are deemed pro-
motable. Lying and deceiving the enemy are the classical tools of
strategic HRM used on the battlefield in which one has to win. For
Peter F. Drucker to win means to be ruthless. In other words, ruthless-
ness, lies, broken promises, and deceptions are part of the organisa-
tional game. It is the negation of Moore’s ethics of not lying, not
hurting others, not damaging reputations, not breaking promises,
returning favours, and not to lose friends.
The core assumption of Moore’s version of utilitarianism is that in
the real world people lose their friends if they engage in actions such as
lying, breaking promises, and hurting others. In the artificially created
unreal world of HRM, things are different. These three unethical ele-
ments are all part of the daily routine inside the Moral Maze of HRM.
The world of HRM is not based on friendship and therefore losing
friends is not an issue. The trick however is, according to Schrijvers
(2004), not to lie to the people who have power over you and not to
break promises that one makes towards HRM. Loyalty is an issue of the
upstream, not the downstream position in the organisational hierar-
chy. In short, loyalty is a one-way street. Finally, hurting others is an
idea not unfamiliar to HRM. Hurting employees that are to be dis-
missed (cost-cutting and downsizing) and punished by demeaning
work assignments and disciplinary action, etc. are all part of HRM.595
In sum, rather than working actively against the unethical behaviour
of lying, breaking promises, and hurting others as outlined in Moore’s
ethics of utilitarianism, HRM engages in all three highly unethical
forms of behaviour.
In conclusion, the core concepts of utilitarian ethics of Jeremy
Bentham (1748–1832), John Stuart Mill (1806–1873), Henry Sidgwick
(1838–1900), and G. E. Moore (1873–1958) have been outlined in this
chapter. They have been brought into a relationship with HRM to
reveal the closest possible approximation to the organisational truth of
HRM. In the Hegelian concept of dialectics that is commonly associ-
ated with thesis → anti-thesis → synthesis, the thesis part has been rep-
resented by key concepts of utilitarian ethics. The anti-thesis was
presented by HRM in its real, non-textbook version (Harding 2003).
Bringing both – thesis and anti-thesis or positives and negatives – into
a relationship made it possible to highlight a number of syntheses on
the issue of HRM ethics. Having applied this method to the most rele-
vant forms of utilitarian ethics and HRM, the overall conclusion (syn-
thesis) is that HRM negates virtually every single version of utilitarian
ethics. In other words, at Kohlberg’s stage 5 of utilitarianism, HRM fails
to live up to the ethical standards put forward by this version of moral

philosophy. At the next stage of Kohlberg’s model, HRM is measured
against the ethical standards of, perhaps one of the world’s foremost
ethical philosophies: the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant.
6
Morality 6: HRM and Universalism
The very existence of ethics demands universalism. This reaches to the

core of what ethics and moral philosophy is because ‘philosophy
emerged in Greece against doxa and orthodoxy as the call to explore
and live according to universal ideas’.596 Perhaps German moral
philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) remains one of modernity’s
single most important philosophers on universal morality [universale
Moralität]. This is due to Kant’s categorical imperative or universal law
denoting ‘act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the
same time will that it should become a universal law without contra-
diction’.597 Today, Kant’s moral philosophy of universal law is, for
example, found in universal human rights that apply to all human
beings without exception.598 It dates back to the
Déclaration des Droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen de 1789
and today’s
Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948599
In contrast to both, HRM hardly ever views human rights as being

‘designed to consider the right of people, especially the most vulnera-
ble in society, to moral protection’.600 The example of an ‘accredited’
HRM textbook tells HR-managers the following:601 there are no univer-
sal human rights, just some legislation on human rights; these are not
facts but they are just ‘designed to’; you do not need to adhere to them
just ‘consider’ them is enough; these are claimed rights of ‘some
161
people’; well, those who are most ‘vulnerable in society’. The ‘hidden
transcript’ tells HR-manager the following:
• if you do not employ these most vulnerable – don’t bother;

• the phrase ‘in society’ does not necessarily mean ‘in your company’;
• these people might have ‘moral’ protection, i.e. these are not laws,
so legally you – as an HR-manager – are not obliged to hold them up
and incorporate them into your HR-policies;
• they are merely for protection, i.e. they are not pro-active or pos-
itive liberties but rather negative liberties (Berlin 1969); and finally,
• they are just for protecting people which does not apply to your
company because ‘your’ employees are already protected by HRM.
In sharp contrast to HRM’s take on human rights, Kant’s deontological

and universal morality enshrines universal obligations and universal
moral duties that judge the morality of an action based on the adher-
ence to rules. It also defines rights by reference to the good that is com-
monly achieved through good actions. Kant separated two
‘imperatives’ that both apply to every rational being: a ‘hypothetical’
and a ‘categorical’ imperative.602 Hypothetical imperatives operate as
‘if-then’ constructions, for example, ‘if’ HRM seeks to be moral, ‘then’
it needs to do the following. This is a classical ‘hypothetical’ impera-
tive. Kantian morality, however, is formulated exclusively in ‘categor-
ical’ imperatives where moral statements or, as Kant would say, moral
laws have to be formulated in ‘imperatives that are commands and
orders’.603 Kantian morality does not exist in ‘if-then’ formulas and
there cannot be a condition attached to moral formulas. They are
simply a must. In contrast to wishes and desires, categorical impera-
tives bind us to act morally. Kantian morality does not offer HRM a
choice other than to be either moral or immoral notwithstanding any
organisational desires and wishes. There is no middle ground and one’s
behaviour, and even more importantly one’s intentions, cannot be ‘a
bit of both’, i.e. moral and immoral at the same time.
Both hypothetical and categorical imperatives imply that morality
can only be created by rational human beings such as, for example, HR
managers.604 For Kant, morality is not an issue of religious scripture
and God. Instead, it is to be established through rational, systematic,
and logical arguments in the spirit of Enlightenment.605 Kantian
morality needs to be free of any inclinations and feelings. It is guided
purely by rational moral laws that are recognised by rational moral
Morality 6: HRM and Universalism 163
human beings such as mature and adult employees and HR managers.

For Kant, morality is the purest expression of achievement of the
human intellect. However, for HRM0 things are different. The purest
expression of an achievement of the organisational intellect is a well-
run HR department and a functioning company that produces organ-
isational outcomes.606 The human intellect is only useful to HRM if it
works towards organisational goals – HRM’s codeword for company
based profits. In contrast, Kant’s dictum is: to act only according to
that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should
become universal law.
Kant’s universalism is in stark contradiction of many HR practices
that include for example pay-for-performance, ‘individual bargain-
ing’,607 HRM’s non-disclosure clauses and things done behind closed
doors.608 So that these do not come to light, HRM focuses attention on
‘whistle blowing’, in order not to contradict HRM.609 DeCenzo et al.
(2013:100) delivers a good example on how to deal with whistle
blowers by emphasising:
whistle blowing occurs when an employee reports the organisation

to an outside agency for what an employee believes… In the past,
these employees were often subjected to severe punishment for
doing what they believed was right. Employees of most private
employers lack federal whistle-blower protection.
Translated for HR-mangers this means a) whistle blowing is based on

what someone believes hence the textbook double-emphasis on believ-
ing; b) it is an act of betrayal to an ‘outside’ agency damaging ‘your’
company and breaking ‘our’ esprit de corps; c) there is a tradition of
‘severe’ punishment for such people – hence you can continue to act
immoral because d) they are not protected by federal legislation.610 In
sum, if you as an HR manager failed to suppress whistle blowing you
have a green light to punish. But HR-managers should remember two
things: make sure your ‘protecting the company’ is framed as a morally
decent act; and always remember not to contradict yourself.
In his seminal study on ‘The Morally Decent HR Manager’, Macklin
(2007:266) quotes a manager who said ‘the important thing is to have
a good memory so that you don’t contradict the lies you have already
told’. The agreements that keep secret issues secret are often termed
‘individual agreements’ reflective of HRM’s drive towards individualism
and its inherent company orientation (DeCenzo et al. 2013:5). Such
individualistic HRM regimes are specifically set up not to be universal

but to serve a narrowly defined situation. Since they exclude universal-
ism they achieve the ultimate goal of HRM: profit-maximisation.611
At times these individualistic HRM regimes are created to hide HRM
immoralities that can no longer be measured against universal stan-
dards. At other times, they, especially informal HR practices, are simply
unlawful. The aim of HRM, despite all ideologically driven corporate
and, above all, paternalistic PR announcements such as ’we are all in
one boat’ and ‘we are one big family’ (cf. Warren 1999), is to engineer
employee-vs.-employee competition destroying human solidarity.612 In
the eyes of HRM this translates into an organisational HR monopoly
leading to real profits. Entities that endanger HRM’s organisational
monopoly such as trade unions and state regulations are seen as
impediments to HRM and are consequently framed as ‘legal concerns’
or HRM has to ‘conform to trade union pressure’.613 HRM’s adherence
to such regulation is all too often nothing more than a fig leaf. HRM is
often at pains to avoid being noticed by the few remaining regulations
and state regulatory bodies in an age of widespread ‘deregulation’ of
labour laws.614 In some cases however, HRM is interested in giving its
organisational HR regime the appearance of being universal.615
In contrast, Kant’s universal morality is about humans and human-
ity, whereas HRM de-recognises humans only to mention them as
resources, e.g. in resource allocation.616 In other words, humans,
people, individuals, workers, and all those who make things (Aristotle)
appear only as ‘resources’ inside HRM’s organisational orbit. For Kant
humanity is central while for HRM it is a mere periphericum. Humans,
i.e. human material, human capital, and human resources are lumped
together with material that is to be allocated through HR planning in a
profit-generating activity (McMahan & Harris 2013). In some ways, the
successor of Kantian philosophy can be seen in German philosopher
Hegel (1770–1831) who’s ‘Struggle for Recognition’ between Hegel’s
‘Master and Slaves’ – today’s HRM and employees – has been denied by
HRM’s one-dimensional ideology.617 In the same way, HRM has elim-
inated Kant’s morality of humanity.618
The pure essence of HRM is not to be found in treating humans as
ends but in treating them as a means as outlined in the organisational
goal of creating performance through others. HRM represents the com-
plete opposite of Kant’s ‘Kingdom of Ends’ demanding that humans be
treated as ends, not as means (Korsgaard 1996). HRM writer Legge
(1998:24) notes, ‘people are being used as means to an end, contradict-
ing a basic principle of Kantian ethics’. HRM represents a ‘Kingdom of

Means’. Undeniably, there are exceptions but the very reason for
HRM’s existence as an institutional setup inside companies and corpo-
rations is not to treat people as ends but as means. In the organisa-
tional world, HRM sees human beings/resources as a cost to a company
that has to be incurred in order to realise profits just as prescribed in
Kaplan & Norton’s ‘scorecard’ (1992 & 1993).619 But costs – according
to one of HRM’s main ideologies – also have to be kept down. In both
respects, HRM fails to live up to Kant’s means-ends imperative.620
In Kantian terms, HRM’s very existence is based on an immoral
model. But HRM also treats people outside a company such as prospec-
tive employees, job applicants, candidates for poaching, and other
people useful to HRM as valuable only if they can be turned into well-
functioning employees (Dowling & Donnelly 2013). For HRM, it is the
employee/resource that generates profits as a result of organisational
efforts. At work, humans have no value in-themselves (Kant) for HRM.
They only become valuable when they can be converted from being a
human (end) into a means for profits. HRM has perfected this when
human beings are no more than a numeric figure on a ‘scorecard’.
HRM’s organisational and functional regimes have no interest in
humans beyond their roles as human resources – those who make
things (Aristotle). Meanwhile, Kant demands that we ‘value the human
subject...as an end in himself’.621 For HRM however, the value of
humans rests only in their function inside a process. Therefore, when
measured against Kant’s means-ends imperative, HRM fails to carry any
moral value because it violates Kant’s categorical imperative:622
• act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own
person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to
an end, but always at the same time as an end.
One way of treating everyone as a means is the use of others (e.g.

employees) as an arbitrary means, a tool, or an instrument. On this
Kant noted, ‘man and, in general, every rational being that exists has
an end in himself and [is] not merely a means to be arbitrarily used by
someone else’s will’. Hence Kantian morality denies HRM the right to
use others, indeed every rational being, as a means. The right to
manage and the so-called organisational prerogative of HRM is, in
Kantian morality, an expression of an organisational will of HRM that
turns rational beings into means while denying them to be ‘ends in-
themselves’. For HRM every rational being that exists as an end in
himself is useless. It only becomes useful to HRM if it can be converted
into an instrumental means that produces and consumes.
Kantian morality rejects not only the arbitrary use of rational beings
(Orwellian Oldspeak) and human resources (Newspeak) but also the
idea of processing human beings into human material and resources,
thereby converting the morality of a being with an ‘end-in-themselves’
into an immoral means-for-HRM. The concept of organisational pre-
rogative has been invented precisely because HRM uses people arbitrar-
ily. In Kantian terms this is something a moral person will never do
and contradictory to the ‘good will’.
Kant sees the good will as essential for morality: it is good only
because of its will – it is good of itself. When HRM acts out of good
will, it acts morally. However, in most cases HRM acts out of purposive
rational and instrumental choices favouring an organisational good
over a human good and HRM’s will over a moral will. HRM links this
to self-invented and externally driven necessities to relinquish its own
morality. It is the absence of Kant’s good will that makes HRM poss-
ible. The good will is deformed into an organisational will for profit
maximisation. In short, HRM negates the Kantian good will by acting
out of an invented, purposive rational [Zweckrationalität], and above
all, organisational will.
The absence of the Kantian ‘good will’ almost implies a similar
absence of Kant’s cultivated reason deliberately devoting itself to the
enjoyment of life and happiness.623 HRM cultivates reason and ratio-
nality that may be deliberate but it does not devote itself to the enjoy-
ment of life and happiness. Instead, organisational life is devoted to a
life of company driven confinements, managerial demands, market
shares, and business in general. Buchanan & Badham (2000:41), for
example, found that our organisations are not always the happy, har-
monious, collaborative communities that HRM textbooks imply.
Instead, the HRM environment alienates employees just as much as HR
managers themselves. Even the enjoyment that may be found in
beating a competitor in HRM’s game of promotions and the like
remains both short lived and false.
Kant says it is unavoidable for human nature to wish for and seek hap-
piness. HRM diverts such human wishes into organisational goals and
converts the human quest to seek happiness into organisational perfor-
mance to achieve organisational goals. This supports organisational out-
comes – profits – not an adherence to Kantian morality. In order to

convert human nature into organisational resources, HRM has to repress
Kant’s human nature that wishes and seeks happiness with all the patho-
logical consequences that follow ranging from absenteeism, the much
feared ‘high turnover’, workplace alcoholism, bullying, mobbing,
violence, stress, ‘psycho-terror, etc.624 These pathologies are also an indi-
cator that Kant’s moral concept of human self-determination is system-
atically suppressed by HRM.
Kant’s concept of self-determination is an end in-itself.625 It demands
that human beings must be able to determine their own being and
their own self (Railton 2012, Walker 2012). For HRM this is not poss-
ible – it can never permit either one, never mind both. HRM’s sole
existence is based on determining the lives of others. Thus, Kant’s
morality of self-determination might easily mean the end of HRM.
Therefore, HRM not only represents the very opposite of human self-
determination but also actively fights against it.626 HRM regimes
demand that people who fall under them are determined by HRM
rather than by their own self.627 Kant’s concept of self-determination is
circumvented by HRM by turning everything and everyone into an
organisational means. For HRM, the morality of self-determination has
no value in itself. It rather constitutes a danger that has to be avoided.
Kant’s self-determination can only ever be a HRM-determined organi-
sational existence that serves as a tool to achieve organisational goals.
In short, HRM represents the total opposite of Kant’s moral concept of
self-determination as an end in-itself.
Motivation is at the core of self-determination inasmuch as Kant
advocates you to decide for yourself rather than to have somebody
else or something else make a decision for you or on your behalf.
This is the essence of Kantian morality but the exact opposite is true
for HRM. It is HRM’s very essence to make decisions for others. In
line with the philosophy of essentialism, ‘making decisions for
others’ is not accidental but essential for HRM. For example, hiring
decisions are not made by applicants but by HR managers. Job
descriptions, performance review criteria, workplace design, reward
structures, etc. are all made not only to the exclusion of the morality
of self-determination but usually even ‘on behalf’ of employees. The
denial of self-determination by HRM is paralleled by its ideology of
individualism and individual choice so that HRM’s structural impera-
tives pre-fabricate a workplace regime in which individual self-
determination no longer takes place.
In fact, the slow ‘quasi-scientification’ of administering and later

managing people that converted ‘personnel management’ into HRM
led to the total opposite of Kant’s morality. This process began at the
time of Taylor’s crypto-scientific management that not only called the
worker ox and gorilla but also stole workers’ earlier craft knowledge
and skills and shifted it to management and subsequently to manage-
ment’s specialised field of personnel management and later HRM.628
Consequently, early factory administration, personnel management,
and today’s HRM make decisions while employees and ‘those who
make things’ (Aristotle) have been confined to carry them out. Inside
today’s global corporations the very existence of HRM depends on
making decisions for others by way of a self-invented so-called organ-
isational prerogative and HRM’s right to manage (Parry et al. 2013).
This sits at the very heart of HRM and sharply contradicts Kant’s
morality to decide for oneself.
Perhaps the key problem of HRM is manifested in its inability to make
decisions outside of organisations. HRM’s inherent company focus
renders it largely incapable of ‘thinking outside the box’.629 To a large
extent HRM’s narrow focus on organisational decisions is influenced by
general management, the ideology of so-called market-determinations,
and HRM’S relationship to other management departments to which it
reacts. Faced with other managerial departments – e.g. marketing,
finance, and operations management – HRM’s ability to allow decision-
making by employees remains limited. Viewed from the sociological
‘actor-vs.-structure’ dichotomy, HRM transmits organisational-structural
confinements onto employees. On the ‘actor’ side of the equation, HRM
acts within the managerial orbit of an often insecure position in compar-
ison with other managers. This violates Kant’s morality because HRM
tends to focus on internal affairs rather than spending attention on
external affairs that it sees as mere externalities.630 Perhaps HRM’s ‘inter-
nal-vs.-external’ view of the world alone limits its ability to engage in
Kant’s universalism. Therefore, the very essence of HRM constitutes a
negation of the Kantian morality of self-determination and universalism.
This turns HRM, in the words of Miles & Snow (1978), into being merely
a reactor that ‘re-acts’ to internal/organisational more than to
external/societal influences. This destroys HRM’s legitimacy to be an
actor of universal morality and narrows its existence.
But this is not the only problem Kant’s concept creates for HRM.
Ultimately, HRM is defined as achieving performance through ‘others’,
i.e. workers. In many cases these others must make decisions on HRM’s
behalf while being confined to KPIs. Hence, the decisions taken by

those who HRM depersonalises as ‘others’ or dehumanises as ‘human
resources’ remain somewhat out of HRM’s direct control.631 As a conse-
quence of HRM’s negation of Kant’s morality of self-determination, it
also has to negate the morality on self-decision-making and therefore
violates two core moral principles of Kant. By making decisions ‘other’-
directed under HRM’s KPIs – especially under management – the level
of autonomy on a scale from ‘minimal autonomy to full autonomy’
(Lippke 1995:28) tends towards the lower end.632 Despite this, HRM
has so far failed to totally exclude minimum levels of autonomy over
minor workplace decisions.633
Like self-determination, Kant (1788) also sees truthfulness as an end
in-itself: it is a moral duty to tell the truth – a lie always harms another
– if not some other particular man, still it harms mankind generally.634
To be truthful and honest in all declarations, therefore, is a sacred and
absolute command.635 Kant’s universal morality of truthfulness creates
a number of problems for HRM. For one, information giving and with-
holding is a key component of HRM.636 Kant’s morality of telling the
truth cannot be honoured by HRM because information-giving and
information-withholding are two key elements of organisational
power.637 On the other side of the coin is information voluntarily and
involuntarily given by employees to HRM638 and HRM’s invasion of
privacy to gather information on employees. HRM practices range from
accessing social network sites – Facebook – to checking on job appli-
cants, accessing employees’ email accounts, video surveillance, drug-
testing, ‘criminal’ background checks, etc.639 This has been summed up
as ‘you work for me – I am your privacy policy’ (Schwind et al.
2013:464).
Secondly, HRM is not about truth at all. It is about managing human
resources. For example, HRM can never openly publish the wages,
salaries, and bonus payments of all employees and managers on a
company notice-board. It has to withhold such information for so-
called ‘organisational reasons’. Meanwhile HRM invented confidential-
ity clauses in employment contracts that even prevent employees and
managers from even mentioning simple dollar-numbers. HRM
manages employees not with the ‘intention’ of being truthful but
because it generates organisational power and turns human beings into
objects of administrative power.640 The only truth that is useful to
HRM is organisational truth which services HRM’s goals and comes at
no cost to HRM.
A standard definition of HRM denotes that it provides the construc-

tion, maintenance, and improvement of an administrative system
which coordinates, plans, allocates, and transforms human resources
into profit-making operations. The word truth fails to appear as it is
not an essential component of HRM. Truth and truthfulness only
become relevant inside a cost-benefit analysis when the true cost of
employees (e.g. hard HRM) is at stake.641 In short, while truth in
Kantian morality has an intrinsic and universal value that represents a
good in-itself, for HRM it only has a meaning when it is useful or when
truth contributes to organisational outcomes, i.e. The Real Bottom
Line.
At the level of individual HR managers, speaking the truth seems to
be something that managers tend to avoid. Hence HRM has developed
its very own language. Inside the world of HRM language, special
Weasel words greatly assist HRM in hiding the truth when ‘seeking
other opportunities’ hides ‘you are fired’! At the daily operative level,
HRM and individual HR managers tend to do the opposite of what
Kantian morality demands. Inside the Moral Maze (Jackall 1988 &
2006) of HRM truth telling is not encouraged but discouraged as most
HR managers cannot ‘afford’ (!) to tell the truth. This negates Kant’s
universal morality on truth (Korsgaard 2012).
The outcomes and negative results of HRM’s non-truth telling are
located outside the corporation and/or are offloaded onto subor-
dinates. Instead of following Kant’s dictum of truth-telling, HRM seems
to contradict it by assuming that as long as it is not self-damaging and
detrimental to HRM, the truth does not need to be told. It appears that
HRM ‘is economical with the truth’ because truth could be used against
HRM, for example, by an employee, an external labour lawyer, a court,
or a trade union. HRM seeks to pre-empt and outperform such chal-
lenges in order to ensure winning the battle of the organisational
bellum omnium contra omnes and for that truth can be more of a hin-
drance than an advantage. In sum, HRM sees truth, almost like any-
thing else, in zero-sum terms: never telling the truth and even telling
untruths makes you win while telling the truth might assist others in
winning over HRM.
Being part of general management might lead to a certain complicity
in hiding the truth when the withholding of truth results in handsome
profits for industries and managers because negative side-effects of
immoral behaviours can be offloaded onto others. Inside the organisa-
tional zero-sum game of ‘truth-vs.-shareholder-value’ it is the latter
that wins. In conclusion, the very essence of HRM disallows HRM to
tell the truth unless it is profitable to do so. For Kant it remains a moral
imperative to tell the truth but this is something HRM can ill afford. As
a consequence, HRM’s use of truth as a tool directed towards goals that
support HRM instead of seeing it as a virtue in-itself contradicts Kant’s
morality.
Kant’s ethical philosophy: Means, human resources, and

ends
Perhaps one of the foremost central moral themes of Kant’s universal

moral philosophy in regard to HRM is a categorical imperative that
compels everyone ‘to act so that you treat humanity always as an end
and never as a means only’. This creates Kant’s ‘Kingdom of Ends’ and
goes to the very heart of Kantian universal morality around which all
other Kantian imperatives centre (Korsgaard 1996; Velleman 2012). If
one seeks to comprehend Kantian morality in relation to HRM, one
needs to understand his two moral imperatives of universalism and
means-ends. They also highlight the way in which ‘The Servants of
Power’ (Baritz 1960) in the form of textbook writers twist and turn
Kant to make it look as if Kantian morality was in support of HRM.642
First of all, HRM does not treat humanity as being important in-itself
as it has no relationship to humanity as such.643 HRM seeks to pretend
it exists in splendid isolation of humanity and turns human beings
into human resources.644 Concepts such as humanity, humankind,
civilisation, and the human race have no meaning for HRM and never
appear in its textbooks. They are absent from its thinking, from the tra-
ditional training institutions for HR-managers, i.e. business schools,
and from the realm of HRM-academics as well as their conferences,
journals, and magazines. The moral term of humanity does not appear
anywhere in HRM textbooks and is excluded from the everyday lan-
guage used by HR managers (Klikauer 2007 & 2008).
Put simply, HRM and its entourage of compliant academics have sep-
arated the world of HRM from the world of humanity. Each has
become a separate entity that never meets the other. Outside the world
of corporate globalisation HRM has next to no presence.645 The world
of humanity, in contrast, encompasses everyone. HRM has cocooned
itself from even knowing what the world of humanity entails and
therefore cannot act in accordance with it. This might be a reflection of
Rawls’ ‘veil of ignorance’ (1985). According to Kant’s concept of uni-
versalism, such a separation is not possible and therefore constitutes
immorality when measured against his morality of universal humanity.
The term humanity [Menscheit] is also a key term in Kant’s means-ends

maxim:
Handle so, dass du die Menschheit sowohl in deiner Person, als in der
Person eines jeden anderen jederzeit zugleich als Zweck, niemals bloß als
Mittel brauchst.646
‘to act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that
of another, always as an end and never as means only’
Kant’s categorical imperative does not mention the word ‘respect’ but
business ethics is eager to introduce ‘respect’ to dilute and perhaps
divert attention away from the devastatingly sharp categorical impera-
tive.647 As a rhetorical devise (Klikauer 2008) ‘respect for persons’ is
introduced.648 Generally, business ethics textbooks that always touch
on HRM as it deals with people follow with the non-Kantian but
invented ‘taxi-driver’649 and hairdresser example.650 This is introduced
to divert attention away from Kant’s categorical imperative and elim-
inate what Kantian moral philosophy means for HRM. This ideology
serves and protects business ‘ethics’, management and Human
Resource Management by avoiding to apply the imperatives of Kantian
moral philosophy to HRM.
All too often there is also a straight forward and quick move from
highly individualised taxi-driver/hairdresser stories to ‘leaving Kant to
one side for the moment’ (Maclagan 2007:51). This represents an ideo-
logical move away from Kantian moral imperatives in favour of sup-
porting business and HRM. It permanently eliminates Kant’s rather
damaging ‘means-ends’ categorical imperative altogether. It is done to
eradicate the fact that HRM treats people exclusively as ‘means’ and
almost never as ‘ends in-themselves’ (Kant). This can be most easily
detected when HRM converts human beings into human resources =
resource, material, tool, asset, chattel, thing, and ‘possession’ of
management.
But even the rhetorical tool of respect creates serious problems for
HRM. HRM’s focus on respect – and on ‘respectful rejections’ (Jackson
et al. 2012:208) – has several functions.651 Firstly, HRM’s use of ‘respect’
diverts our attention away from Kant’s means-ends morality that sees
the ‘Kingdom of Ends’ as the final destination of morality. Secondly, it
waters down morality to an issue of mere respect hiding the immoral
use of humans as a means by HRM in the form of human

resources/material. Thirdly, it denigrates morality to the mere side
issue of respect and thereby neglects the fundamentality of Kant’s uni-
versal morality. Finally, it invents and creates the highly agreeable
notion of ‘don’t we all respect other people’.652 In HRM textbooks this
is reinforced to create a personal feeling when personalised cases are
presented. This sort of rhetorical trickery is applied to distort Kant’s
morality. HRM textbooks depart from Kant’s means-ends dictum
through phrases like ‘the kind of respect’, ‘morality requires that we
respect’, and finally, ‘to respect persons, therefore, is to respect them as
rational beings’.653
It is hard not to conclude that shifting morality onto issues of
respect serves to misrepresent Kantian morality. It eclipses his morality
by diverting our attention away from Kant’s real intention towards the
simplistic issue of respect. Meanwhile Kant’s morality is about treating
people as an end in-themselves. This is what constitutes morality and
it is therefore strongly linked to universal humanity. Universal human-
ity, however, is highly challenging to HRM. The focus on respect con-
verts Kant’s critical morality into a more user-friendly version for HRM.
Kant‘s morality however has to be seen in the light of his Kingdom of
Ends. This is what Kantian morality is all about (cf. Wood 2010).
Rather than Kant’s Kingdom of Ends, HRM represents a version of a
Kingdom of Means and Resources. It can never treat humanity as an
end in-itself. Employees can only be means.654 Only as means do they
have value for HRM. HRM needs to negate Kant’s Kingdom of Ends
because its ideology is predominantly based on means and on achiev-
ing organisational outcomes through others. Kantian morality would
destroy the very essence of HRM. HRM has to prevent this from
occurring.
By using specific examples from the realm of HRM, textbook writers
negate Kant’s universalism. These individual and sometimes even indi-
vidualised cases – labelled ‘case studies’ – rely on individual assump-
tions presented in the case to support HRM while simultaneously
destroying the universalism of Kant’s morality. Textbook cases are
often selected because they constitute individual acts behind which
HRM’s structure of power relations remains hidden. Many of HRM’s
textbook cases therefore are a form of false universalism.
Since people are employed inside a societal structure that has been
identified as industrial or labour relations comprising of three key
actors – management/employer federation, trade unions, and state
agencies – one wonders why highly individualised case studies are used
to make a generalisation on HRM. Simultaneously, these case studies

neglect the societal character of HRM that is defined by a larger struc-
ture, namely industrial relations.655 Since labour relations and IR are in
many ways structural determinants for HRM, HRM-textbooks contain
the obligatory chapter on them. But rather than showing HRM’s
dependency on a larger structure (e.g. labour law, etc.) in an IR → HRM
model, in HRM textbooks IR is made to appear as being part of
HRM under the heading of ‘managing industrial relations’ (Macky
2008:129). HRM textbooks reverse the relationship between IR and
HRM to: HRM → IR. In that way, HRM is not only portrayed as being
in a position to shape IR, it also takes specific forms of organisational
behaviour and presents them as universal. In that way, HRM’s conver-
sion of human beings into human resources inside parameters set by
HRM appears acceptable.
Another problem of standard textbook case study examples rests on
the mistaken conversion of Kant’s categorical imperative into a hypo-
thetical imperative. Kant distinguishes between both. For him morality
exists in the realm of the categorical imperative. Therefore, others have
to be treated as ends in-themselves. There cannot be any conditions
attached to categorical imperatives, for example, it is different at work,
etc. Kant’s imperatives are ‘musts’, not ‘if-then’ constructions. For
example, statements and even more so simple HR policies such as
‘employees must be treated with respect’ tell us that only when human
beings are converted into employees/human resources they must be
treated respectfully. As true as it is, it simultaneously negates the uni-
versal morality of Kant by placing a condition on the treatment of
human beings – employment. But Kant’s universal morality leaves no
other option than to act morally with respect to universal humanity –
not just human beings in employment.656 In other words, HRM’s own
particularity – its organisational focus – annihilates Kant’s universal
morality. Based on Kant’s categorical imperative we must – not should
– respect ‘all’ people. In sharp contrast to Kantian morality, HRM and
its affirmative writers have to turn Kant’s categorical imperative into a
hypothetical one in order to make it sound plausible that Kantian
morality supports HRM when it can never support any particularistic
morality – only a universal one.
Many examples used in HRM textbooks negate that there are other –
non-market driven and non-organisational – relationships. These text-
books present cases in a TINA-like fashion: there is no alternative. But
there are alternatives to being employed in managerial regimes and
under HRM (Semler 1989, 1993, 2004). There are non-capitalist and
non-organisational ways even though that is outside of HRM’s ima-

gination. The point of textbooks, however, is to show TINA, not alter-
natives to HRM. The alternatives are deeply enshrined in Kant’s
Kingdom of Ends but remain unmentioned in HRM’s standard text-
book case studies that seek to manipulate morality so that it appears as
if morality is supportive of HRM.
Another problem HRM faces is constituted in Kant’s moral impera-
tive ‘to act so that you treat humanity always as an end and never as a
means only’. For HRM it is the other way around: act so that you treat
humanity always as a ‘means’ and never as an ‘end’. HRM turns moral-
ity into an unsustainable upside-down position. It has no value for
HRM other than in an extracted form of human beings → human
resources. As such human resources have value for HRM when they
can be converted into productive employees. Once HRM has achieved
the conversion of an end (humanity) into a means (employees), a
Kantian reversal is fulfilled. The term ‘only’ assumes a central role.
When people are profitable, do not impair profits, and contribute to
shareholder values, ‘only’ then might they be treated as ends (Paauwe
et al. 2013). But this remains the exception in a system that is based on
human material/resources and The Real Bottom Line.
Unlike utilitarianism that only looks at the outcome of an action
when determining whether or not this action is moral, Kant’s morality
examines an actor’s motives and intentions. Inside Kant’s means-ends
dictum it is the intention that counts when examining the morality of
an act. The application of Kantian ethics would lead to a radical depar-
ture from HRM’s means-driven textbook examples that are based on
market-forces. Such alternatives would no longer be viewed simply
under the market-dictates enshrined in the ‘competitive advantage’
(Porter 1985). As a consequence, they would convert HRM’s industrial
relations that currently confines people to pure ‘means’ (human tools,
assets, resources) towards a Kantian end-in-themselves (Nankervis et al.
2014:94–96). HRM’s ‘Kingdom of Means’ would proceed to Kant’s
ethical ‘Kingdom of Ends’. In other words, the reality of employment
relationships would be different from HRM’s paradigm presented as
TINA.
The morality and reality of employment relations is based on the
moral intention and motive of two other actors, namely trade unions
and states. These have a determining influence not only on the way
work is shaped but also whether actions at work are moral or not as
demanded by Kantian morality (Sallaz 2013:1ff.). Perhaps much
of the discomfort and immoralities experienced in modern work
arrangements result in the fact that deregulation has diminished the

role of states while simultaneously HRM has sought to eliminate trade
unions. With the absence of two key moral actors, employment rela-
tionships have become one-dimensional.657 In the one-dimensional
shaping of relationships at work the moral intentions of HRM can no
longer be compensated by the two other former actors and Kant’s
moral end in-itself is further in danger. HRM’s one-dimensional rela-
tionships are based on organisational means. In the more plausible
employment relations case, the intention and motive of HRM is to
treat employees as a means, not as an end in-themselves. After all, the
task of HRM is to achieve performance through others. Once the
motives and intentions of HRM for employment, for the use of
humans, and for the conversion of human beings into human mater-
ial/resources becomes obvious, the only conclusion Kantian morality
allows is that these acts are immoral. Consequently, HRM and today’s
organisational reality of employment negate Kant’s categorical means-
ends imperative and even represent the total annihilation of Kantian
morality.
Under HRM’s supervision morality in general can only be a means to
an end (cf. Paauwe et al. 2013). But examining HRM on a Kantian
version of morality is nothing more than a minor sub-image of HRM.
When needed, morality and even Kantian morality can supply moral
appearance to HRM.658 Morality can be a contributor to The Real
Bottom Line but only when deprived of the essence of Kantian moral-
ity. For that morality has to be reformulated as HRM’s morality and
converted into a pure means, never an end. HRM’s attempted syn-
thetic, but morally unsustainable, separation of organisational techni-
calities from morality does not pay tribute to what Kant called ‘good
will’. It points to HRM’s attempt to extract itself from ‘good will’. In
Kant’s morality human ‘dignity’ (cf. Bolton 2007a), happiness, and
good will are seen in line with the highest good in the world. However,
good will, the intention, and motivation for good will have never been
HRM’s prime motivations.
In sharp contrast to Kant’s intentions and motivations to do good,
HRM’s intentions and motivations differ strongly from what Kant calls
moral. The prime intentions of HRM are to create value for shareholders,
deliver productive human resources, and to link work to rewards
through performance management. HRM’s ‘highest good in the world’
(Kant) is shareholder value. This is not supported by Kantian morality.
Substantial for HRM is not the intention to do good but the intention to
do something for profit. Profits, however, cannot be seen as synonyms
for doing ‘good’ as an intention in Kantian morality that has value in-
itself and is self-determining. Having the intention to do something to
achieve shareholder value reduces any action to a means that has no
value in-itself and is not self-determining. It is non-self and externally
determined and thereby annihilates Kant’s self-determination.
Kantian morality also sees universal human dignity as a prime goal
of morality which therefore becomes a categorical imperative. Again,
HRM’s essence does not rest in the achievement of universal human
dignity but the Real Bottom Line as the prime modus operandi. This is
the extreme opposite of Kant’s morality of universal human dignity.
For Kant, the moral concept of universal human dignity applies espe-
cially to rulers and leaders. Through its inextricable link to general
management, obviously HRM is seen to be the ruler and leader. On
rulers and leaders, Kantian morality denotes that it is the moral duty of
rulers to act as if you were a member of an ideal society in which you
are both ruler and ruled at the same time.659 Kantian universalism
demands anyone – and especially rulers and leaders – to imagine them-
selves as being part of an ideal society. This is manifested in his
concept of The Kingdom of Ends. But HRM, as a representative of The
Kingdom of Means, does not see the ideal society as an end in-itself.
HRM has no concept of an ‘ideal society’ and an ‘ideal’ organisational
community bar an ‘ideal society’ outside its traditional realm of opera-
tion, i.e. a company. For HRM, society therefore is reduced to an exter-
nality to which HRM has next to no linkage. Hence, ‘society’s concerns
about fairness’ (Jackson et al. 2012:74) are presented as mere external-
ities that force themselves onto HRM. The impression is that this is
unwarranted and an unnecessary infiltration into the affairs of HRM.
By extension, this view tends to reject the universal values of fairness.
For HRM, fairness can never be a universal affair. It can never be
absolute but has to be adjusted to HRM because HRM treats some fairer
than others, as Orwell would have put it. What is sought by HRM is
the capacity of human beings to perform tasks under KPIs as human
resources – not adhering to the universal morality of fairness and
‘justice as fairness’ (Rawls 1985 & 2001).
Inside corporations, HRM has never established the universality of
fairness and justice. Rather than representing the moral entity of Kant’s
ideal universe, the realities of HRM reflect Jackall’s ‘Moral Maze’ inside
which the non-democratic and authoritarian dictates of a few seek to
enshrine extreme inequalities and hierarchies.660 This represents the
total negation of Kant’s moral universe. The second part of Kant’s
concept – act as if you were both: ruler and ruled – establishes an even
greater problem for HRM. HRM almost never puts itself into the posi-
tion of those who are ruled. On the whole, HRM remains steadfast
inside its own orbit where it is the sole rule-maker and rule-interpreter
while excusing itself from rule-obeying. HRM has deliberately sepa-
rated itself from those over whom it rules. The spectrum of separation
ranges from minuscule issues such as different floor levels in office
buildings, different parking spaces, and different refectories to more
substantial issues such as different remuneration schemes, working
time arrangements, contractual obligations, and general privileges.
But it gets even worse. Those who actually make things (Aristotle) are
often mentioned in standard HRM textbooks as subordinates, human
resources, and underlings. HRM mis-recognises those who are ruled by
it and its HR policies. Thereby, HRM remains incapable to follow
Kantian morality. By solely focusing on one side – the ruler – and de-
recognising the humanity of the other – the ruled – HRM has deliber-
ately excluded itself from the Kantian concept of universal human
dignity. In Kant’s own writing there is, however, one sentence that
signifies HRM like no other. Kant says:661
As long as human nature remains as it is, human conduct would thus be

changed into a mere mechanism in which, as in a puppet show, everything
would gesticulate well but there would be no life in the figures
HRM is very much interested in the 200-year-old fact that human

nature remains as it is. Ever since the invention of capitalism and the
invention and managerial construction of HRM, the essential
dichotomy between master and servant (Hegel), boss and worker
(Marx), or manager and employee remains unchanged. None other
than George Orwell (1949:210) has expressed this to perfection when
noting, ‘from the point of view of the low, no historic change has ever
meant much more than a change in the name of their masters’. This is
what the historical continuation of the brutalities of overseeing
18th century Satanic Mills, to 19th century’s punishing factory adminis-
tration, to 20th century’s personnel management, to today’s HRM has
achieved (Dickens 1853; Klikauer 2012:207). There have been name
changes from labourer → worker → employee → human resource →
associate → team-member → human capital and so on but never to the
principle fundamentals of Hegel’s Master-Slave dialectics.662 These
remain inside labour-HRM relationships and have yet to change.663
HRM has, however, achieved that human conduct at work resembles
a mere mechanism in which human resources, as in a puppet show,
fulfil their pre-designed organisational tasks.664 HRM textbooks call this

job- or work-design.665 Like Kant’s puppets on a string, HRM’s human
resources remain remote-controlled through sophisticated HRM-
techniques. Key performance indicators, balanced scorecards, and per-
formance related pay make sure that human beings – now advanced (!)
to human resources – act as if they were in a puppet show. Their
puppet-like mechanical acting is further reinforced through work psy-
chology.666 Once behind the corporate gates, human behaviour
becomes organisational behaviour that is deprived of humanity.
During HRM’s induction programmes, a digitalised barcode swipe-card
is issued to new employees granting access but also swiping off human-
ity, filling former human beings with organisational conformity.667
They are no longer beings in-themselves (Kant) but mere puppets who
perform. Social interaction no longer takes place between persons but
between performances (Baudrillard 1994). The organisational world has
become a world of performers rather than one with real people inter-
acting at a human level. On the organisational stage of this version of a
‘puppet show’ organisational performers carry out their KPI-enforced
scripted behaviours. They gesticulate and simulate HRM-guided
chimeras and images rather than living reality (Klikauer 2007:163).
This represents the extreme opposite of the Kantian concept of self-
determination.
Human life at work is reduced to what Kant described as ‘there is no
life in these figures’. French philosopher Baudrillard has described sim-
ulating humans as ‘Simulacra’ (1994). They are not self-determined
(Kant) but simulate what HRM’s performance management mechan-
isms demands from them without truly living it. It is an existence
emptied of life like a static movement of dead figures (Kant) confined
to a never ending wheel of HRM’s behaviourist action-reward model
supported by ‘intrinsic and extrinsic rewards’.668 HRM’s organisational
world filled up with performing hollow operators represents almost
everything Kant envisioned as the extreme form of anti-morality. In
the world of HRM human conduct is reduced to the mere mechanism
of HRM techniques. Real people are converted into wooden instru-
ments with HRM holding the strings and pulling them in a mari-
onette-like puppet show in which gesticulated movements are
performed. Such a stage-managed theatre allows HRM to pull humans
like objects of an unseen power, almost unnoticed to the casual
observe. Such choreographed performance makes unconscious
observers believe that the scripted behaviour is real. In reality however,
the organisational script-writing is the only thing that remains real.
Script-writing, rehearsing, and choreographing operate behind the

scenes. It allows HRM the ultimate excuse that immoral acts are not
committed by HRM but by others.
This organisational puppet show reduces acting subjects to mere
string-dummies that move almost in an automated way deprived of
self-determination and morality. In 1788, Kant almost perfectly
described what later happened under Taylor’s task oriented division of
labour (1911). He truthfully predicted work on Ford’s assembly line
(1930s) perfectly expressed in Charlie Chaplin’s masterpiece ‘Modern
Times’ (1936) as well as every setting that applies Taylor’s and Ford’s
methods today, ranging from McDonald’s to call centres and to univer-
sities’ Student Processing Centres (Ritzer 2011). According to Kant, this
reduces humans to non-moral puppets and mechanical automats. In
the spatial absence of HRM, their movements are made to appear as if
they are moved by an alien hand. This predates concepts of alienation
(Hegel and Marx).669 According to Hegelian philosopher Adorno
(1903–1969) humans are condemned to live inside an alien world from
which they are made to develop alien ideas about morality.
For Kant however, the exact opposite makes us moral actors. For
Kant, there is a moral responsibility to create self-knowledge. Ever since
Taylor’s division of labour into brain (HRM) and hand (those who
make things, Aristotle) these two have been separated (Klikauer
2007:153). Non-managerial staff is largely deprived of Kant’s moral
responsibility of self-knowledge. HRM instead seeks the creation of
limited and functionally related organisational knowledge. Such a form
of knowledge has no value in-itself and does not represent an end in-
itself. It only represents a means to support organisational goals. Self-
knowledge is useless to HRM unless it can be turned into
organisational knowledge.
Under the ideological supervision of Managerialism, the so-called
knowledge company or knowledge society is not a company or society
that allows Kantian self-knowledge. It rather fosters knowledge in
support of management and Managerialism. Consequently, most of
today’s knowledge-transfer through schooling is not directed towards
the Kantian morality of self-knowledge but towards knowledge that
can be used in an organisational process.670 Hence, schooling, colleges,
and universities have become institutions that take out the ‘self’ in
Kant’s self-knowledge and replace it with textbook-knowledge that is
not self-determined (Kant) but scripted by Managerialism. This sort of
highly functional knowledge and its resulting certification in degrees
are often accredited to so-called industry associations such as charter
accountants, HRM’s professional associations and so on. They sanction

organisational knowledge. Beforehand, school knowledge is produced
by for-profit educational and today’s multi-national textbook corpora-
tions. As a result, before the human being → human resources conver-
sion through employment, years of primary socialisation in schools
and colleges have already produced conditioned pre-‘Organisation
Men’ who only need minor adjustments during secondary socialisation
(HRM’s induction programmes) to become fully functional ‘mechan-
ical puppets’ (Kant).671
In sum, outside of the traditional realm of HRM, an educational
system has been established that negates Kantian self-knowledge and
instead produces organisational use-knowledge to be traded in
exchange for employment. Inside corporations, self-knowledge does
not exist either as HRM only needs organisational knowledge. Rather
than nurturing Kantian self-knowledge, HRM needs to avoid it by
focusing on organisational knowledge. But Managerialism always lives
with the fear that the development of Kantian self-knowledge by indi-
viduals might encourage them to depart from HRM and the ideology
of Managerialism. The self cannot be tolerated by an immoral system
that needs human resources that are compliant to organisational
demands.
HRM has to contradict Kant’s moral concept of self-knowledge
because it does not deliver anything to The Real Bottom Line unless
knowledge is converted into organisational knowledge. The pre-
engineered world that exists inside and outside of corporations testifies
to the success of Managerialism. External training courses at corporate,
school, and university level have established highly supportive mechan-
isms for the conditioning of people. These training regimes have suc-
cessfully eliminated Kantian self-knowledge and replaced it exclusively
with knowledge in the service of HRM, taught by ‘The Servants of
Power’. Such HRM trained human resources represent the triumph of
non-self-knowledge. They are deprived of almost all self-determining
potentials ready to be used up in the organisational process.
The Kantian concepts of self-knowledge and the ‘Kingdom of Ends’
support moral subjects and assist them in preventing what Kant called
self-deception. Deception, however, is one of the core principles of
HRM. Many HRM principles operate on deception. High-ranking
among that is, for example, HRM’s favourite ‘open-door policy’.672 But
once HRM starts to believe in its own ideology, self-deception is
fulfilled. HRM depicts a substantial degree of self-deception inside and
outside of organisations (Gare 2006). Instead of avoiding self-deception
so that you act morally (Kant), HRM fosters deception opening up the
pathway to self-deception.
HRM‘s success demands that it uses sophisticated psychological tech-
niques that rely on emotional deception which in turn annihilates
Kantian morality that teaches us to avoid self-deception. The more HR
managers take on the deceptive ways of Managerialism, the more suc-
cessful they become (Schrijvers 2004). And the more these ideologies
become part of an HR manager’s self, the more self-deception is estab-
lished. Subscribing to the deceptive and ideological ways of HRM leads
to success but it does not lead to Kantian morality. Instead, it departs
further and further from it.
For Kant, not only the avoidance of self-deception is important for a
moral actor but also a moral cognition of one’s self which seeks to pen-
etrate into the depths of one’s heart. HRM has to prevent this from
happening for two reasons. Firstly, it does not foster moral cognition
because it is not conducive to The Real Bottom Line. Any moral cogni-
tion by HR-managers and even more so by employees might even lead
to several problems for HRM: moral cognition can foster self-doubt,
pondering, self-assessment, and critical self-reflection. This can mean
inaction as a form of moral cognition. Secondly, in some cases, moral
cognition can also lead HR-managers to bypass these problems by con-
sciously and cognitively linking HRM to morality, thereby claiming
that some forms of organisational action are immoral and cannot be
solved through the application of HRM techniques.
HRM needs the exact opposite of moral cognition. It needs to foster
cognition of facts and figures (Phillips 2012). The concept of being
one’s self in moral cognition needs to be obliterated. Therefore, HRM
has invented a raft of technical instruments to avoid moral cognition,
thereby creating MADD: moral attention deficit disorder.673 These
instruments focus primarily on facts and figures which are simply
designed to take the morally acting human out of the equation. Simple
HR-quantification like headcounts helps, sometimes enormously, to
depoliticise difficult HR decisions. What it really means is that the de-
politicisation is a depersonalisation and dehumanisation so that the
moral self is taken out when making so-called difficult HR decisions
such as mass-dismissals and retrenchments that are not directed
towards HRM itself but towards employees.674 For HRM it is enor-
mously important to take out the human factor (depersonalise) and
Kant’s moral cognitive. In that way morality does not penetrate into
the depths of one’s heart (Kant).
The organisational avoidance of self-determination and moral cogni-

tion of one-self also avoids what Kant called ‘to have the courage to
make use of your own understanding’. HRM not only seeks to circum-
vent being a self-reflective and moral cognitive agent, it also cannot
foster courage and self-understanding. Kant’s universal morality
emphasises the four essential parts: self-reflection, moral cognition,
courage, and self-understanding. Independently as well as together,
they contradict HRM’s organisational regimes. HRM cannot tolerate
people who have their own understanding. Instead, it has to convert
self-understanding into organisational understanding.
Kantian morality always includes two ways of understanding that
relate to the current state of affairs. The first one relates to ‘what is’
while the other is a speculative and somewhat utopian way of thinking
‘what ought to be’.675 While HRM detests utopian and speculative
thinking, it simultaneously fancies itself as ‘strategic’ HRM forgetting
that ‘strategy’ is nothing but a speculative attempt to fore-plan the
future (Schwind et al. 2013:15). Kant’s concept of ‘what ought to be’ is
directed to the moral goal of ‘The Kingdom of Ends’. Philosophically,
‘what is’ always includes a possibility directed towards ‘what ought to
be’. In philosophy, one is not thinkable without the other. Both
depend on each other and often one represents the negation of the
other. For Kant both ways of thinking are relevant. For HRM however,
things are different. For HRM, the only things that evolve by them-
selves are organisations and in HRM’s scenario, human resources are
assigned a place called ‘support function’. HRM cements this at the
expense of Kant’s ‘what ought to be’, thereby cutting off the relevant
second part of Kantian morality. In HRM’s organisational order,
efficiency, and practice smothers Kant’s morality.676
While HRM focuses on what is (numbers that tell the real story about
human resources, facts, and figures), morality focuses on what ought to
be: a universal moral world directed towards Kant’s ‘Kingdom of Ends’.
Both constitute fundamentally opposing positions inside which HRM
negates Kantian morality and Kantian morality negates HRM. Kantian
ethics places more than a ‘question mark over HRM’ as Legge (1998:23)
noted: ‘in terms of deontological ethics there is a question mark over
HRM’. The sharp contradiction between Kantian ethics’ ‘ends’ and
HRM’s ‘means’ represents the final conclusion of this chapter. It has
examined the key concepts of Kant’s philosophy such as universal
morality, means-ends, universalism, categorical imperatives, ‘The
Kingdom of Ends’, self-determination, self-knowledge, and moral
cognition. It has brought Kant’s universal morality (thesis) into a rela-

tionship with HRM’s particularities (anti-thesis) to reflect on ‘the truth
of the thing’ (synthesis). As a consequence, the only final conclusion
permissible is the synthesis that HRM’s narrow organisationally bound
and particular focus and Kant’s universal morality contradict each
other.
7
Morality 7: Sustainability and the
Natural Environment
At stage 7, the ethical rights of stage 6 are extended to issues that

appear to be totally useless to HRM because they are located beyond
humanity.677 Human rights are applied to a wider holistic context
rather than being restricted to humans alone. Ethical awareness
embraces forms of life such as animals and ecological systems regard-
less of their social and corporate utility.678 Animal ethics, for example,
sets forth principles for the ethical treatment of animals. The applica-
tion of these principles contradict HRM rather indirectly as they are
seen as an HR support function of the corporate need to turn animals
into values by exploiting, misusing, abusing, and eventually killing
them. HRM manages those who commit these inhumane acts against
animals in Tayloristic and Fordist factory farming and industrial labo-
ratories by applying performance management and KPIs.679 In the
deceptiveness of Managerialism’s language this is called ‘utilising
nature’.680
It starts with the organisational use of plants in mono-culture planta-
tions using pesticides, herbicides, and genetically modified organisms
for making profits (Schwartz & Salia 2012). The elimination of the non-
truthful term ‘culture’ in agri-culture leaves the latter as agri-business.
It occurs through the conversion of nature and animals into manage-
able units. While semi-officially HRM seeks to separate itself from these
issues, it remains nevertheless deeply involved if not complicit for two
reasons: a) it is part of the organisational-managerial system and b) it
always manages those who run, organise, manage, and administer
immoral facilities, production methods, and companies. The immoral-
ity of these organisational processes can be highlighted when HRM’s
administrative-organisational support role is related to environmental
ethics that represents the core of stage 7.681
185
At its most basic point environmental ethics can be seen as a part of

moral philosophy that is concerned with the moral relationship of
human beings to the environment and its non-human contents, e.g.
plants, earth, nature, animals, and land. Environmental ethics relates
to the value and moral status of the non-human environment. When
environmental ethics speaks of ‘climate change’ and ‘global warming’,
HRM speaks of the ‘the global arena, benefits of the global environ-
ment, HRM’s global perspective, and globalisation and business’.682 In
sharp contrast to moral philosophy and environmental ethics, the
term ‘environment’ is used in HRM, HRM studies, and HRM textbooks
as:
Table 7.1 The use of the term ‘environment’ by HRM
Examples of HRM’s usage and meaning of ‘environment’
• ‘the importance of the external and organisational environments’ (Jackson

et al. 2012:15),
• reacting to and anticipating a changing environment (Jackson et al.
2012:113),
• ‘the external environment’ (Jackson et al. 2012:440),
• ‘the organisational environment’ (Jackson et al. 2012:481),
• ‘external environment of technical skills development and productivity’
(Jackson et al. 2012:300 & 523–529),
• characteristics of the workforce and human resource environment’ (Kramar
et al. 2011:16),
• the ‘influence of external environment’ (Beardwell & Claydon 2011:57),
• the ‘business environment’ (Beardwell & Claydon 2011:627f.),
• the ‘working environment’ (Beardwell & Claydon 2011:187; Nel et al.
2012:359–361),
• ‘influence on work environment’ (Macky 2008:316),
• the ‘psychosocial environment’ (Macky 2008:380 & 397–402),
• ‘work environment factor in performance’ (Macky 2008:283),
• the ‘legislative environment’ (Nel et al. 2012:35),
• the ‘political environment’ (Nel et al. 2012:533),
• ‘human resources in the economic environment; (Nel et al. 2012:557),
• ‘the dynamics of the HRM environment’ (DeCenzo et al. 2013:3–27),
• ‘environment, profession and discipline’ (Nel et al. 2012:556),
• ‘the office environment’ (Grobler et al. 2011:150); and finally,
• ‘opportunities and threats present in the organisation’s external and internal
environment’ (Stone (2013:36).
Table 7.1 shows that HRM has cleansed the word ‘environment’ of
‘any’ connotations to the natural environment, environmentalism,
and most importantly, of environmental ethics (Magdoff & Foster
Morality 7: Sustainability and the Natural Environment 187
2011; Magnuson 2013). By contrast, when moral philosophy and envi-

ronmental ethics use the term, its meaning is totally different from the
way HRM uses the same word (Hodgson 2013:197ff.). For HRM, the
term environment carries next to no connotations to what moral
philosophy and environmental ethics understand as environment (see
above). HRM has excluded moral philosophy’s meaning of the term
environment from its vocabulary, from its considerations, and from its
thinking. The philosophical understanding of environment carries
next to no intrinsic values for HRM other than something that is exter-
nally imposed on HRM by the political-legal, social, and (labour)
market environment.
HRM’s carving up of slices of specific sets of environments such as
the labour market environment, the organisational environment, etc.
is in sharp contrast to moral philosophy’s holistic view.683 The use of
environment in moral philosophy indicates two conflicting areas:
instrumental vs. intrinsic/non-instrumental value. In Kantian terms,
the environmental ethics of ‘instrumental values’ is enshrined in the
value of things as ‘means’ to further other ‘ends’. ‘Intrinsic values’ are
values of things as ‘ends in themselves’ regardless of whether they are
also useful as means to – for example commercial and organisational –
ends.684 This is different for HRM. HRM is a version of instrumentalism
representing a ‘Kingdom of Means’ rather than a ‘Kingdom of Ends’
because it uses people as a means (human resources) and not as ends in
themselves. Virtually, the same applies to plant life, animals, land, air,
water, earth and so on. They do not represent anything that is valued
as an end ‘in-itself’ (Kant) for HRM. They are only of use to HRM when
they serve an organisational purpose in a managerial process of which
HRM is part.
In Kantian terms, HRM tends to treat the environment as it treats
human beings, as a means (resource) to an end (shareholder-value i.e.
profit-maximisation), not as an end in-itself. Therefore, nature has no
intrinsic or non-instrumental values for HRM, only an indirect instru-
mental value as along as it can be used in organisational processes
overseen by human resources and managed through HRM’s perfor-
mance management. The environment only serves as an indirect
resource. However, at stage 7, organisational resource utilisation
extends to nature. HRM’s guided organisational processes convert the
environment into an environmental resource. Hence those parts of
industry that are concerned with the extraction of resources such as
mining are labelled resource industry, not ‘environmental’ or ‘nature’
industry because only the latter’s use as a resource is relevant
(Hayton 2012:344). In sum, when moral philosophy and environmen-

tal ethics mention the term environment, it means nature. When HRM
talks about environment, it means the organisational environment, the
labour market environment, and the resource environment to be
exploited. HRM reverses Kant’s means-ends dictum and through organ-
isational practices and by being part of management extends it indi-
rectly to the environment. HRM’s extension of the ‘Kingdom of Means’
to the environment faces severe problems when viewed from the
standpoint of moral philosophy and environmental ethics. These prob-
lems start with one of the world’s foremost moral philosopher of
modernity, Immanuel Kant.
In his ‘Lectures on Ethics’ Kant formulated ‘Duties to Animals and
Spirits’. His categorical imperative implies that cruelty towards a dog,
for example, might encourage a person to develop a character which
would be desensitised to cruelty towards humans. For Kant, cruelty
towards non-human animals would be instrumentally, rather than
intrinsically, wrong. Kant’s human centred philosophy does not view
the environment as having intrinsic values. Instead, his understanding
of instrumentalism sees cruelty towards the environment as wrong
because it negatively affects humans, the human character, and human
morality.685 Tormenting or even torturing a pet, animal testing,
chicken farming in cages, etc. for fun, for profits, or for any invented
and perceived necessity is morally wrong because it is malicious,
unpleasant and nasty.686 It portrays human indifference to suffering
that may manifest itself in people’s dealings with non-rational animals
and in the treatment of rational agents such as humans.
Although cruelty towards animals and lab testing may not infringe
any human and legal rights as understood by Kant, they are still
morally wrong, independent of their negative effect on animal lovers,
PETA (people for the ethical treatment of animals), or any other
person with a moral consciousness (Carruthers 1992a&b & 2004).
Consequently, all humans have a moral duty to consider how humane
treatment of animals affects humane treatment of human beings. If
being cruel to non-humans makes us more likely to be cruel to human
beings, humans ought to refrain from it. HRM is organisationally posi-
tioned exactly at this interface: between animals and human resources.
But this also works in the reverse case; if human beings are appreciative
and grateful to animals, it assists them in being appreciative and grate-
ful towards humans. Hence, human beings have to be appreciative and
grateful to animals.
HRM’s indirect organisational use of animals as an instrument or

resource for profits, the bottom line, and shareholder-value often
entails cruelty to animals because of the denigration of animals to
mere resources. For Kant, running HRM for an animal laboratory or
industrial meat production lines, for example, means cruelty to
animals that affect workers and managers. To protect itself from this
moral dilemma, HRM has installed several distancing mechanisms that
range from excuses like ‘HRM only deals with people’ to HR-planning
for systems such as outsourcing, sub-contracting, franchising, and the
legal separation of companies (Stone 2014:61ff.). All of these seek to
distance HRM from the operations of unethical animal laboratories and
factory farming.687 Since Milgram (1974) and Bauman (1989) it is
known that spatial distance is essential when it comes to unethical
behaviour, torturing (Milgram) and mass-killing (Bauman). The greater
the distance, the more willingly unethical operations are conducted.688
In other words, HRM’s ultimate excuse that it is not part of the unethi-
cal treatment of the environment and animals is contradicted by the
fact that HRM remains a vital part of management. In conclusion,
Kant’s instrumental version of environmental ethics exposes HRM’s
inability to escape the inevitable: HRM remains part of an organisa-
tional structure that engineers animal cruelty.
That cruelty towards animals is morally wrong also relates strongly
to the environmental moral philosophy view of ‘anthropocentrism’
(MacKinnon 2013:172). This is the concept that humans are the
central and most significant entity in the universe and that any assess-
ment of reality has to be done exclusively from a human perspective.
This issues a moral duty that reaches beyond humanity by stating that
human moral duties towards the environment are related to the moral
duties of all human inhabitants.689 It determines two things:
• firstly, there are moral grounds for protecting animals and the envi-
ronment and
• secondly, environmental degradation has to be corrected (Besio &
Pronzini 2013).
This creates two problems for HRM. Firstly, anthropocentrism places

the human at the centre, thus reflecting on pre-Socratic Greek philo-
sopher Protagoras’ (490–420 BC) famous statement that ‘man is the
measure of all things’. HRM cannot be representative of anthropocen-
trism because it is neither human centred nor does it view man as ‘the
measure of all things’. Instead, it measures ‘man’ against KPIs in perfor-

mance assessments and against selection criteria in recruitment and
selection.690 In HRM it is always the human that is measured against
some HRM-invented instrument – never the other way around.691
These are ‘the measure of all things’ for HRM. Secondly, being non- or
anti-anthropocentric, HRM cannot derive environmental ethics from
its standpoint. It fails on both human and environmental centered-
ness. But this is not new.
An early form of environmental ethics that also reaches beyond
humanity has been expressed in Leopold’s ‘A Sand County Almanac’
(1949). It advocates that human beings have a moral duty towards land
as outlined in the ‘FFFF-dilemma over land use priorities: food (for
humans), feed (for cattle), fuel (for engines), or forest (that is reserves
of biodiversity and carbon sinks’.692 Leopold’s original and seminal
‘land ethics’ is based on the moral concept that land is part of a living
community. This is the basic concept of ecology and therefore land has
to be loved, respected, and preserved. Leopold (1949:224f.) noted that
‘a thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and
beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise’.
For HR managers setting up the HR-side of a new facility as a green-
field site, for example, such land is not part of a community but a com-
modity that can be bought and sold when needed and owned through
a contractual arrangement that transfers it from one to another.693 For
HRM as for general management, a contract ends the relationship to
any former owner, including the community.
Hence, HRM sees it as its right to use a commodity disregarding the
duty to ‘preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic com-
munity’. These have no value to HRM. Negative consequences of land
use such as the non-preservation and the ‘destruction of the environ-
ment by agents of corporate greed’,694 the obliteration of a biotic com-
munity, and even the extinction of animal species are mere
externalities to HRM even though HRM ‘manages’ the people who do
this through its performance management systems.695 Nevertheless,
HRM seeks to claim that it has only an ‘indirect’ link even though this
link is very direct in the form of human resources carrying out their
tasks. The planned destruction of land which in some cases – construc-
tion and mining – has been written into employment contracts by HR
managers is never related to land and land ethics.696
The U.S.-based theologian and environmental philosopher Holmes
Rolston (1975 & 1983), for instance, argued that ‘species protection’ is
a moral duty.697 Going one step further, Christopher Stone (1972) pro-
posed that trees and other natural objects should have at least the same
standing in law. Both views are problematic for HRM. Rolston’s ‘species
protection’ is not a moral duty for HRM as it excuses itself from moral-
ity through its focus purely on the ‘human side of the enterprise’
(McGregor 1960 & 2006). Through that, HRM seeks to offload its moral
responsibility onto externalities such as society, environmentalists, and
any other actors outside the realm of HRM while simultaneously elim-
inating the fact that HRM remains part of our natural environment.
Stone’s (1972) proposal is even more problematic for HRM because
once natural objects such as trees are given the same standing in law as
corporations occupy, this would have highly negative consequences
for general management just as it has for HRM. Therefore, HRM and
with it Managerialism have to prevent this from ever happening.
Instead of supporting ‘species protection as a moral duty’ and protect-
ing it via a legal status equal to those given to modern business corpo-
rations, HRM has to assure that both modalities never become realities.
In short, HRM’s interest is the exact opposite of Rolston’s and Stone’s
concepts of environmental ethics.
HRM’s company-based and corporate interest is not only in opposi-
tion to Rolston (1975 & 1983) and Stone (1972) but also set against
‘Deep Ecology’.698 Deep Ecology was founded by philosopher Arne
Dekke Eide Næss (1912–2009). Næss distinguishes between shallow and
deep ecology. The former is concerned with fighting against pollution
and resource depletion and has the health and affluence of people in
developed countries as key focus. Deep ecology focuses on biospheric
egalitarianism, the moral standpoint that all living things are alike
(Glikson 2014). They all have an inherent value in their own right,
independent of their usefulness to others. The moral principles of
shallow and deep ecology are highly challenging to HRM for whom
the fight against pollution, resource depletion, and the health of
people are mere externalities.699 For one, indirectly and organisation-
ally driven by shareholder-value and profit-maximisation, HRM – just
as general management – is inclined to operate on a short-term basis.
Secondly, anything that is not directly related to HRM’s self-created
sphere of human resources operations is simply excluded from the
mental orbit of HRM. Thirdly, if HRM was to include the moral
demands of shallow ecology, it would view them as costs and these
have to be kept low just as the overall HRM mantra dictates (Rothwell
& Benscoter 2012:176). Therefore, instead of aligning itself with the
morality of shallow ecology, HRM’s corporate focus aligns it with

general management that creates at least three reasons not to adhere to
the environmental ethics of Næss.
Furthermore, HRM is not interested in preventing resource depletion
but to do the exact opposite by relating it to rewards in employment
contracts, through performance management, KPIs, and balanced
scorecards (Kaplan & Norton 1992, 1993, 2004). This creates human
resources that are incentive-driven towards the exploitation of
resources which include natural resources in the form of the environ-
ment and human resources in the form of people. To HRM, the natural
environment is nothing more than a resource – a position on a list of
KPIs to be achieved until the next performance assessment.700 Finally,
HRM has no real interest in the health of people and this relates to
people inside corporations as well as outside. Inside corporations, any
OHS measure is a cost that must be kept down. Even HRM itself is
often seen as no more than a cost by general management.701 To show
otherwise, HRM often becomes a ‘willing executor’ (Goldhagen 1996).
Equally, the health of people outside of corporations is a mere exter-
nality i.e. not the concern of HRM. This is covered up through
Managerialism’s ideology of ‘stakeholder value’.702
If, for example, HR managers manage human resources – accoun-
tants, brokers, financial analysts, etc. – in a pension fund seeking
investment opportunities to maximise ROI, the return of investment,
and their investment leads to environmental destruction in a distant
location whilst ROI remains positive, these managers not only measure
up to KPIs but also receive bonus payments, perks, and promotions. In
sum, even when benchmarked against the relatively weak moral
demands of shallow ecology, HRM fails on several accounts. As a
matter of fact, HRM rather engineers the complete opposite of the
morality of shallow ecology, as the linear chain of pension-fund
manager → investment → environmental destruction → ROI → bonus
shows. But with the more demanding morality of ‘deep’ ecology, the
problems for HRM increase. Deep ecology’s key moral principle of bio-
spheric egalitarianism creates at least four elementary problems for
HRM:
• Firstly, HRM does not include biospheric concepts in its concepts,

textbooks, teachings, and actions.703 HRM is anti-holistic (focusing on
human resources) and selective in its operations (focusing on com-
panies). The biosphere framed as being well outside the realm of HRM’s
operations (Killmeier 2012) is considered an externality by HRM.
• Secondly, HRM is anything but concerned with egalitarianism

because its very existence is based on the opposite. HRM engineers,
supports, and re-enforces organisational hierarchies, power struc-
tures, direct and indirect control over others, dissimilarity, fragmen-
tation, isolation, competition, winners-&-losers, inequity,
differentiations, and asymmetrical relationships.
• Thirdly, HRM has to negate deep ecology’s moral standpoint that all
living things are alike. HRM assigns different values to different
things in monetary terms and calls them extrinsic rewards.704 Even
humans are assigned values along a pay-scale. The same applies to
everything HRM touches. Predominantly, monetary expressions
have value to HRM as seen in reward management, remuneration,
etc.705 In a domain governed by non-egalitarian monetary values,
‘living things can never be alike’. They must be different and kept
different and there must be an ideology that supports these engi-
neered differences.
• Fourthly, for HRM our natural environment can never have any
‘inherent value in its own right’. It can only have the value HRM
assigns to it.706 For HRM the value assigned to things can never be
‘independent of their usefulness to others’ – just as HRM’s conver-
sion from human beings→human resources indicates. Human
beings are of no value to HRM – human resources, on the other
hand, are. Value can only ever be ‘dependent’ on their organisa-
tional usefulness to HRM. Organisational usefulness extends to use-
value, exchange-value, and sign-value.707
In short, HRM is strongly challenged by the morality of shallow

ecology but is even more challenged by deep ecology. Deep ecology
proposes the adoption of a moral ‘total-field image’ of the world in
which relations of humans, plants, land, and animal organisms have to
be understood as ‘knots of a biospherical net’. Deep ecology extends
Kant’s individual and Hegel’s ‘other’ to non-human entities. Hence,
human identities are essentially constituted by our relations to human
and non-human ‘others’. This creates an ecological relationship of
humans to all other living things. It is a version of environmental
ethics that proposes an identification of humans with nature to enlarge
the boundaries of the self ‘beyond my body and consciousness’. Hence
the respect to care for oneself denotes the respect to care for the
natural environment. ‘I am part of the natural environment and it is
part of me. I should identify myself with the environment and have a
moral duty to care for it.’ HRM negates this in several ways. For one,
HRM does not see itself as being a knot in a biospheric or any other
environmental net. It sees itself in a position of managing people
inside an organisational net. It is precisely because of ideologies such as
‘de-layering’ and ‘networks’, that the prevailing HRM structure remains
deeply hierarchical and pyramid-like.708 This is depicted in organisa-
tional charts shown in HRM textbooks.709 No business organisation has
ever viewed itself as an environmental ‘net with knots’ because it is
contradictory to what business organisations and HRM are all about.
Inside such a ‘knots-&-net’ model, there would be no CEO, no HRM,
no divisional HRM, and no HRM staff. HRM is the total opposite of
deep ecology’s image of a knot in a human net. Extending this human
net to a biospheric net would be even more contradictory to every-
thing HRM stands for.
Secondly, HRM sees itself in relation to others but these others are
constructed as ‘non-equals’ – depicted in organisational status symbols
– based on hierarchically structured segregations between HRM and
non-HRM, between managers and workers, between the human and
the natural world, etc. Since HRM’s asymmetrical power over non-
managerial staff is based on inequality, there is no room for any other
relationship beyond that. Thirdly, HRM cannot identify itself with
non-human entities in nature. Its lack of respect for others is mani-
fested in its construction of human beings as human resources seen as
a cost factor. HRM is not moving ethics upward from human beings to
self-reflective, self-determining (Kant), self-actualising (Hegel), mündige
(Adorno), environmentally conscious (Bookchin) beings. Instead, it
moves human beings ethically downward: from human beings to
human resources. With a lack of respect for other humans HRM is
unable to extend respect to non-human entities. In sum, HRM does
not identify with non-managerial staff, i.e. workers and neither can it
identify itself with nature which it views as an externality at best and
as a production factor to be exploited at worst. HRM is not a knot-in-a-
net. It is unable to identify itself with human and non-human entities.
Therefore, it negates two essential moral elements of deep ecology.
But this approach to environmental ethics creates another problem
for HRM also representing an oppression of ‘outer nature’ in its organ-
isational support for a subjugation of the natural environment. This is
achieved through HR techniques and the absence of environmental
ethics from the curriculum of HRM and a similar absence found in
standard HRM textbooks with the single most noticeable exception of
Sims’ ‘HRM: Contemporary Issues, Challenges And Opportunities’
(2007:521).710 This comes at a very high price because HRM’s project of
human domination demands domination of one’s own ‘inner nature’

in the form of alienating, destroying, and deforming human creativity,
self-determination, self-realisation, self-actualisation, and autonomy.
To eclipse these forms of human alienation and immoralities, HRM
creates a positivistic engineering model of instrumental rationality that
can never be replaced with humanistic principles.711 In short, HRM
cannot be based on value aesthetic, morality, and the sensuously
expressed character of human nature. For that reason, it cannot
include but has to exclude the environment. It would mark a radical
departure from HRM’s raison d’état to do otherwise. Only after expos-
ing its own shortcomings, its ideology of instrumental rationality, and
its positivist fallacies might HRM be able to move beyond company
confinements and its existence inside the managerial box.712
Such a radical departure is also advocated by the moral philosophy
of the ‘new animists’ who seek to go beyond ‘traditional animists’.713
The former seeks to replace the older view which positioned a person-
alised soul inside animals, plants, and other material objects. ‘New ani-
mists’ see instrumentalism, profit extraction, positivism, corporations,
management, and Managerialism of which HRM is part as accountable
for much of today’s destructiveness directed towards nature (Larson
2012). In the disenchanted world of Managerialism that claims there is
no meaningful and natural order of things except for the organisa-
tional order of things directed towards shareholder-value and profit-
maximisation, the organisational order of things does not contain
environmental aspects outside the organisational domain.714 According
to Harvey (2006:212),
we have never been separate, unique or alone and it is time to stop

deluding ourselves. Human cultures are not surrounded by ‘nature’
or ‘resources’, but by ‘a world full of cacophonous agencies’, i.e.
many other vociferous persons. We are at home and our relations
are all around us. The liberatory ‘good life’ begins with the respect-
ful acknowledgment of the presence of persons, human and other-
than-human, who make up the community of life. It continues with
yet more respect and relating.
The morality of the New Animists demands several things from HRM.
HRM can no longer construct itself as being separated from society,
environment, and almost everything that exists outside of business
organisations. Secondly, it can no longer view itself as not being sur-
rounded by nature. HRM can only be moral in relation to everything
that surrounds it. Environmental ethics denotes that our natural sur-
rounding is not a resource. Therefore, if HRM seeks to act morally it
has to respectfully acknowledge the presence of persons, humans and
other-than-humans, who make up the community of life. Unless HRM
converts these perceived externalities into truthful internalities, it is
not a moral actor respectful of the New Animist’s environmental
ethics. Instead of offloading the environmental consequences of organ-
isational actions, it has to view itself as being part of the environment.
Today, the very opposite is the case.
Organisationally created environmental externalities are often
offloaded to operations in regions which are all too often very far away
from HRM’s corporate headquarter. Impacts often increase with the
remoteness of such regions (Milgram 1974). But organisational actions
remain inextricably linked to moral philosophy. In environmental
ethics, this concerns ‘bioregionalism’, a merger between biology, envi-
ronmentalism, and regionalism. Bioregionalism’s moral understanding
of the environment constitutes a defining state of affairs of commun-
ities. As such, it seeks the security and safety of all local human and
non-human lives. It is based on those people who know the region.
They have intimate knowledge of the region because they have learned
its wisdom. Regional people and communities have adapted their lives
and local being to their region (Stanescu 2010). For centuries, they
have developed local understanding and life as a sustainable entity
within ecological limits as outlined in Meadows’ et al. ‘Limits to
Growth’.715 Only the life and knowledge of regional communities can
enable people to enjoy the fruits of local self-liberation and self-
development. In many cases, HRM exists disconnected to specific
regions when being part of multi-national and managerial structures.
In other cases, it exists within these regions but the organisational idea
of the region has not been developed much beyond regional labour
markets which HRM can exploit (Edwards et al. 2012). Bioregionalism
is certainly not a term all too often used in standard HRM literature
and its textbooks despite HRM’s impact on regions – from managing
labour in greenfield sites, economic processing zones, business parks,
industrial rezoning, resource exploration, etc.
In general, HRM does not view the security and safety of all local
human and non-human lives as important to its operations. They are
viewed as externalities and as non-essential to company-internal HRM
and external labour markets. Furthermore, HRM does not view ‘those
people who know a region’ as relevant as they are regarded as lacking
the necessary organisational knowledge to understand organisational
operations. Thirdly, ‘regional people and communities that have

adapted their lives’ to their region are largely irrelevant to HRM. And
finally, that they have developed local understanding and life as a sus-
tainable entity within ecological limits is of no consequence to HRM
because HRM’s operations and HRM knowledge does not depend on
regional understanding, sustainability, carbon footprints, and ecolo-
gical limits.716 In sum, the ethics of bioregionalism is ignored by HRM
even when it affects ‘sentient beings’ (MacKinnon 2013:189).
Similarly, utilitarianism views the interests of all sentient beings as
essential.717 These are beings capable of experiencing pleasure and
pain, including non-human – animals – and human beings or human
resources in HRM language. However, utilitarianism also denotes that
whenever something affects sentient beings it is a moral duty of those
who carry out such actions to take the ability to feel pleasure and pain
into consideration. This is to be done before such an act occurs to
assess the moral validity of an action. However, even when HRM per-
forms an impact study before an organisational action is conducted,
the issue of sentient beings is most likely not considered. In a dogma
driven by performance management and organisational outcomes, sen-
tient beings feature, if at all, far down on any list of performance
measures. The level of pain and pleasure of human – and non-human –
resources is not part of HRM. In hard-HRM, for example, it is numbers
that matter – e.g. ‘staff numbers’ (Macky 2008:200), ‘numerical labour
flexibility’ (Beardwell & Claydon 2011:145), ‘numerator management’
(Macky 2008:263), ‘quantitative methods’ (Nel et al. 2012:166), and
‘objectives that determine the number and types of employees needed’
(Schwind et al. 2013:102). HRM has developed its own specialised
vocabulary, much of it quantitative because of two factors:
a) in many cases HRM requires the discipline of quantifications in,

for example, what HRM calls ‘human resource planning’
(Alagaraja 2013); and
b) numbers are essential to strategic organisational performance
(Director 2013).
Inside HRM’s paradigm, consideration of pain and pleasure of sentient

beings is simply non-existent. In sum, the moral philosophy of sen-
tient beings is located outside the realm of organisational understand-
ing and HRM’s operations. But utilitarianism also attributes intrinsic
value to experiencing pleasure and an interest in satisfaction as such. It
is not necessary to actually have an experience of pleasure and pain
but to be able to have such an experience. All sentient beings do so

whether human or non-human. This is one of the rare cases, where
there are indeed striking similarities between humans and animals.718
Human beings and animals respond in the same way when confronted
with pain stimuli.719 Animals and human beings have brains, nerves,
neurons, endorphins, and other pain-transmitting structures. Both are
relatively close to each other genetically and on an evolutionary
scale.720 Since they are similar to each other in these ways, we have
good reason to believe that animals might even be conscious, just as
human beings.
One of the earliest philosophers to put forward such an argument
was Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) in his influential ‘Reverence for
Life’.721 Schweitzer’s ethics denotes that all living things have a ‘will to
live’ and humans should not interfere with or extinguish it (Schweitzer
1923). But indirectly, HRM contradicts Albert Schweitzer’s moral
philosophy of viewing animals as having an inherent or intrinsic will
to live just as it disregards the human will of workers when they are
converted from human beings into human resources and performance
measured under Kaplan’s and Norton’s balanced scorecard (1992 &
1993). It is the opposite of what Schweitzer saw as morally correct
when stating that one should not interfere with or extinguish this will.
For HRM, it is the interference with the human will through behaviour
modification/manipulation in order to convert it into organisational
behaviour and organisational will that counts in the case of humans
(Sandler 2013). The same applies to non-human entities. By virtue of
its own being, HRM interferes with Schweitzer’s ‘intrinsic will to live’
in the form of managing people who run industrial animal farming
and animal laboratory testing and so on. This interference includes
‘extinguishing this will’ in order to become a human resource.
Humans’ ‘inherent will to live’ is converted into something useful to
HRM.
Utilitarian moral ethicist Tom Regan (1983 & 2006) also suggests
that those animals with intrinsic or inherent values have a moral right
to respectful treatment by human beings. This produces a general
moral duty on the part of humans not to treat non-human entities as
mere means to other ends (Kant). It also leads to the environmental
ethics of biocentrism that is deontological. Biocentrism argues that all
individual living entities in nature, i.e. humans, animals, plants, and
even micro-organisms, constitute a teleological centre-of-life. This
ethics carries a good life and wellbeing as key moral issues that can be
improved but not annihilated (cf. Jones et al. 2007). Therefore, all indi-
viduals who are ‘teleological centre-of-life’ entities have equal intrinsic

value. This gives them the right to moral respect. The problems this
creates for HRM are manifold.
Firstly, HRM operates basically on experience, e.g. the Harvard
Business School’s Case Study method, and not on hypothetical issues.
It is the exact opposite of what utilitarian animal ethics proposes. For
HRM an issue is not ‘theoretically’ relevant unless HRM has ‘experi-
enced’ its actual usefulness. Concepts as such Kant’s ‘in-itself’ have no
theoretical moral values and are not useful to HRM. Secondly, HRM
cannot attach any intrinsic value to animals other than that of having
an indirect monetary value inside a system that creates shareholder-
value. As a result, HRM seeks to escape from the morality of treating
animals respectful. Thirdly, HRM cannot support the moral concept of
not treating non-human entities as mere means to other ends because
it treats humans as means to an end and not as an end in-itself (Kant)
and applies – albeit indirectly – the same to non-human entities. In
direct human and indirect non-human affairs HRM shows the reversal
of Kant’s moral imperative. For HRM, human and non-human entities
are a means to an end. HRM needs a Kingdom of Means, not a
Kingdom of Ends (Kant; Korsgaard 1996). Finally, HRM is not able to
apply the ethics of biocentrism to its operation because it does not see
itself as a living entity that is ‘in’ nature. Instead, it views itself as being
above nature. It has constructed nature as a distant resource to be
exploited via the management of human resources who carry out the
exploitation of nature.
For HRM the exploitation of nature is carried out under an instru-
mental-functional premise that views nature as serving an indirect
function. It seeks to separate a moral entity from moral claims.
However, individual sentient and non-sentient natural entities are ‘not
designed by anyone to fulfil any purpose and therefore lack function’
(Brennan 1984). Nature has no inherent function but an inherent
morality even though HRM excludes this. Furthermore, humans have a
moral responsibility to care about nature and to preserve it.
Philosopher and ethicist Warwick Fox (2007) has championed a theory
of ‘responsive cohesion’ that gives supreme moral priority to the sus-
tainability and maintenance of ecosystems and the biophysical
world.722 Environmental philosopher Eric Katz723 goes one step further
by outlining the moral duty of restoring damaged nature. He argues
that a restored nature is really just an artefact designed and created for
the satisfaction of human ends, and that the value of restored environ-
ments is merely instrumental. This leads to the moral standpoint that
restoring nature means merely a re-establishing of the wild. It is an

attempt to humanise something that had been non-humanised, i.e.
wild. Restoring it is merely a form of bringing nature under control of
humans, i.e. non-wild (Hettinger & Throop 1999:12). Unlike a recre-
ated, redesigned, and restored nature under human control, the non-
human controlled and non-recreated nature is intrinsically valuable
precisely because it is wild. For HRM there is no such thing as attach-
ing value to something that is inherently wild and uncontrolled by
humans. HRM seeks the opposite by focusing performance manage-
ment issues on organisational outcomes rather than at preserving and
restoring the wild.724 Through managing people, HRM has to control
nature even if nature is destroyed in this process under HRM’s top-
down ‘I manage you’ approach.725 Anything that is untamed, uncon-
trolled, and wild in-itself (Kant) has neither purpose, nor beauty, nor
meaning for HRM.
Whether sentient or non-sentient entities have been designed by
anyone to fulfil a purpose is largely irrelevant to HRM when it comes
to performance management of those who engage in environmental
destruction.726 What is highly relevant is that humans, as ‘human’
resources, and animals as ‘material’ resources have a function inside
the organisational process.727 In short, HRM does indirectly assist the
exact opposite of what environmental ethicist Brennan sees as moral.
What counts for HRM is functionality and functional human resources
whose rewards and benefits have been linked to outcomes as measured
by KPI in performance management.728 This does not lead to res-
ponsive cohesion. Inside HRM’s organisational paradigm no supreme
morality is attributed to ‘the sustainability and maintenance of ecosys-
tems and the biophysical world’. Instead, one-hundred years of person-
nel management followed by HRM have proven over and over again
that HRM does the opposite. Instead of maintaining ecosystems and
the biophysical world, HRM is part of an organisational structure that
does the reverse. It has a thoroughly functional approach to the ecosys-
tem and the biophysical world – just as to human beings per se. Hence,
protecting wilderness and restoring damaged nature have never been
priorities for HRM’s activity – neither at the point of recruitment and
selection, in job descriptions, in reward management, nor in terms of
performance management. Such moral actions might add cost to an
organisation. But HRM just like general management must keep costs
down. Secondly, restoring nature is all too often offloaded to society
under the premise of externality.
Finally, Hettinger and Throop (1999:12) demand that HRM and the
human resources it manages have to leave the wild untouched as it has
an intrinsic value precisely because it is not under human control. But
for HRM, the wild has no value unless it can be utilised in terms of per-
formance management, for shareholder-value, and profit-maximisation.
Leaving the wild untouched is not an option when shareholder-values
are concerned.729 Rather than respecting the moral value of the wild
because of its unspoilt character, HRM respects managerial demands,
shareholder-value, and profit-maximisation. They override any moral
concern for the wild. In sum, unlike environmental ethics, HRM
attaches only an organisational function to humans and the non-
human environment. HRM has to reject the moral philosophy of
‘responsive cohesion’. It denies having a moral responsibility to restore
nature, and it does not respect the ‘wild’ as an entity to protect and
preserve. Rather than positively engaging with environmental ethics as
a moral standpoint and creating positive action out of moral demands,
HRM’s intrinsic value structure demands the exact opposite of environ-
mental ethics and ecology.
HRM morality and social ecology
The environmental ethics of ‘social ecology’ sees environmental prob-

lems as directly related to social problems (www.social-ecology.org),
thereby linking human society, ecology, human morality, and environ-
mental ethics. For HRM, there is no such link because HRM and the
environment are not directly connected. Nature exists outside of busi-
ness organisations, organisational thinking, HRM training facilities,
HRM textbooks, HRM organised management training systems, and
business schools. However, moral philosopher Murray Bookchin
(1921–2006) sees ‘hierarchies of power’ as defining factors in modern
societies. These hierarchies have fostered a hierarchical relationship
between humans and the natural world.730 Indeed, hierarchies of
power are not only a defining category of society but of HRM as well.
HRM’s sole existence rests on hierarchy and power. Without both
there is no HRM. This influences HRM’s thinking and operations. The
natural environment is largely excluded by HRM or features at the very
end of the list of HRM’s organisational priorities (Bartram & Rimmer
2012). Notable exceptions are symbolic mission statements and occa-
sional corporate PR announcements. To put it bluntly, ‘Corporate
Social Responsibility statements are rubbish’.731 This lays out a clear
task, position, and hierarchy for HRM – first comes profit – framed as
organisational performance (Paauwe et al. 2012) – and then ‘other
issues’. In sum, the hierarchical thinking, practice, and operation of
HRM demands that it is concerned with performance management,
HRM’s competitive environment, and even workplace environment,
but not with the natural environment.
HRM’s self-prescribed ideology of competition has facilitated such
hierarchies, thereby reducing human beings and the natural world to
mere commodities and resources as seen in human resources, the
resource industry, resource exploration, resource trading, etc. Social
ecology however argues that the liberation of both humans and nature
is actually dependent on one another. For HRM, however, there is no
liberation. Liberation is a term never used in HRM teaching and curric-
ular, its textbooks, conferences, and even populist HRM magazines.
Instead of liberation from hierarchies and oppressive power structures
which is the moral demand of social ecology, HRM seeks the other
extreme. It is not interested in the liberation of human beings and sub-
sequently has no interest in the liberation of animals, plants, and the
environment in general.
When the moral philosophy of social ecology demands that humans
must recognise that they are part of nature and not being segregated
from it, HRM advocates the reverse. HRM’s self-invented dictum, bipo-
larity or bipolar disorder, sees organisational processes as company-
internal while the natural environment is seen as externality that exists
quite distant from HRM’s sphere of operations. HRM views itself as
having next to no moral responsibility for the environment which is a
non-measurable externality. Instead of a self-invented and artificial
separation between organisational and natural world, social ecology
advocates that everyone and everything – organisational and human –
relates to nature. Humans and nature exist inside non-hierarchical rela-
tionships that can be found within the natural world. Within an
ecosystem, there is no entity more important than another – a tree has
no higher value than a whale. It is neither top-down, nor measurable,
nor hierarchical, nor HRM’s ‘I manage you’. In nature nobody and
nothing manages, there is no performance management, no recruit-
ment, no retention, and no balanced scorecards exist. For HRM, nature
is a system-alien concept. It is systemic, interlinking mutual support
and interdependence of all parts of the holistic structure that estab-
lishes nature. This kind of moral interdependence would demand a
radical rethinking of HRM which is based on the assignment of differ-
ent values to different entities – market values, performance manage-
ment, etc. Organisational thinking is not about interdependence and a

mutuality of all parts to create a complete and holistic system. These
are very alien terms, concepts, modes of thinking, and moralities to
HRM.
For the environmental ethics of social ecology, human-to-nature
relationships must be ‘mutualistic and interrelated’. For HRM, this
would constitute a reversal of its traditional hierarchical and power-
based thinking stipulating that relationships between HRM and those
‘who make things’ (Aristotle) and the environment have to be radically
recreated. Employees could no longer be constructed as human
resources, subordinates, and underlings. And the environment could
no longer be constructed as natural resource commodity. All of this
would have to be changed towards mutualistic interconnectedness.
The moral demand of mutualism would end HRM’s existence. As a conse-
quence, HRM can never see itself as interrelated to non-managerial
staff and the natural environment. It has to treat both as commodities
under its ideology of human capital.732 HRM’s existence is not based
on the moral demand of interrelatedness but on a disconnection
between itself, commodities, resources, and the human capital it
manages. Interrelatedness means the end of such a separation (Mayo
2012).
For social ecology, it is interdependence and the negation of hierar-
chy in nature and environment that provides a blueprint for a non-
hierarchical human and moral society. Interdependence, however, is a
moral concept that has to be excluded from HRM’s organisational
domain. If one defines interdependence as a dynamic of being mutu-
ally responsible to others and sharing a common set of principles, then
HRM has to negate this. It does not see any mutual responsibility
except its responsibility to create performing human resources
(Holbleche 2001:121ff.). Other than that, HRM’s prime responsibilities
are ‘how to evade responsibilities’ (Schrijvers 2004). In sum, HRM has a
responsibility to general management and the responsibility to evade it
in other cases. No HRM textbook can ever talk about mutual respons-
ibilities and a non-hierarchical relationship to nature and society.
Instead of having an interdependent relationship with human
beings and nature, HRM’s foremost interest lies in ‘dependence as a
linear concept’. It seeks to make others dependent on HRM while
simultaneously avoiding the reverse. Trained in the zero-sum ideology,
HRM views this as a game to be won. Instead of interdependence, HRM
operates on dependencies. Making someone dependent on HRM puts
HRM in a strong position and confines others – employees – in a weak
one. When social ecology advocates independence as a sort of ultimate

good, HRM advocates making others dependent on HRM because it
delivers power at no cost. When social ecology denotes an interdepen-
dent relationship and devotion to family, community, society, and
nature, HRM opts for a devotion to general management. When social
ecology sees interdependence by recognising the truth in each position
and weaves them together, HRM only allows its version of the truth
that is HRM’s version of an organisational truth, as a non-interwoven
form of a one-dimensional truth. Finally, social ecology views coopera-
tion and mutual aid with one another and nature as interconnected-
ness.733 HRM does not view mutual reliance to one another in terms of
social, economic, environmental, and political surroundings. Instead,
it operates two versions of cooperation:
• in the first version ‘co-operation is an arrangement whereby you

and I get together to do something for me’ (Quinn 1953:99);
• the second version is defined through informal arrangements to cir-
cumvent workers’ unwarranted responses to HRM’s managerial
regime (Gall et al. 2011).
In other words, what HRM longs for is not mutual aid and not even
cooperation among its workforce but creating, stabilising, and sustain-
ing its monopoly position as the sole manager of people. Therefore,
mutual aid is an alien if not outright dangerous concept for HRM
unless it comes along as a monopoly supportive of HRM’s organisa-
tional position.
Finally, social ecology would advocate the abolition of HRM and its
organised existence of competition. The morality of social ecology
establishes the interconnectedness with nature. In order to truly over-
come economic, political, and organisational hierarchies, a transforma-
tion must take place which promotes ecological living in small local
communities (Jones 2008; Magnuson 2013). This would break the
boundaries of organisations and the boundaries inside which HRM’s
thinking and imagination has been trapped. Such company-boundaries
transcending communities would be based on sustainable agriculture,
participation through deliberate democracy, social, ethical, political,
and economic equality, freedom, and non-domination.734 These moral
principles will help creating richer and more equal human commun-
ities by transforming present for-business organisations and its societies
into a more benign relationship with nature. But HRM can never get
rid of hierarchies. Secondly and externally, HRM depends on economic
and organisational hierarchies and not on equalities. Thirdly, HRM can

never allow a society based on small local communities because of a
corporate global quest or what HRM calls ‘International HRM’.735 Such
localised communities might create self-reflection, self-determination,
self-actualisation, and an awareness that anti-democratic HRM struc-
tures are incapable of establishing a moral community that lives in
harmony with nature and are therefore obstructs to HRM that often
operates large scale for-profit organisations.736
HRM’s seeking to reach beyond company boundaries applies more to
national and global cultures than to regional, localised, and small com-
munities. The aim is to destroy the cultural identity of small commun-
ities and even national cultures so that global organisational
imperatives – KPIs, performance management, efficiency, effectiveness,
etc. – shape the lifestyles of everyone. And this, of course, is to the
exclusion of social ecology. In sum, social ecology sets forth a moral
philosophy that is contradictory to the essence of HRM. The moral
philosophy of social ecology and HRM represent two totally different
sets of thinking and acting. There does not appear to be any middle
ground between both. Formulated as a Kantian categorical imperative:
one either adheres to the morality of social ecology and acts morally or
one works against every principle of social ecology and behaves
immoral. HRM does the latter because it exists in contradiction to
nature, is only interested in utilising nature as a resource, does not see
the link between social institutions and the environment, and seeks to
prevent a transformation of its for-profit institutions to respect and live
in harmony with the environment.
Instead of respecting the wild and nature, HRM’s so-called utilisation
of (human and non-human) nature (Orwellian Newspeak) extends via
the management of human resources deep into oil spills to the utmost
torturous treatment of animals in industrial farming and industrial
agri-‘culture’ where no culture exists any longer, and to testing labora-
tories. In an attempt to falsify reality HRM artificially seeks to distance
itself from these horrors by claiming it only manages people.
Meanwhile HR managers have sought to fictitiously distance them-
selves from animal mistreatment and environmental destruction
through elaborate and nebulous, but always sophisticated organisa-
tional structures that make up reality.737 However, in ‘Obedience to
Authority’ (1974), social psychologist and ethicist Stanley Milgram
(1933–1984) has comprehensively shown that this can never exempt
HRM from moral responsibility. Nevertheless, HRM still claims ‘just to
do a job’, to be only a manager, just a supplier of human resources,
simply a recruiter of people, and merely providing a performance man-

agement system. Bauman (1989) and Arendt (1994) have scrupulously
explained that the ‘Eichmann-excuse’ of ‘just doing a job’ can never be
sustained.738 Despite all excuses and distancing attempts, HRM is
unable to eliminate ethical responsibilities. Yet excuses, diversions,
hidings, and denials are frequently rehearsed by HRM and its
entourage of willing academics. Supported by corporate mass media,
these organisational myths may be able to eclipse and mask unethical
practices but they can never excuse HRM from its ethical obligations to
humans and to the non-human environment.
HRM cannot develop an awareness of the integrity of the environ-
ment and other systems as environmental ethics demands. It can never
link itself to human society and nature outside of the confines of their
company. HRM’s sole responsibility is inward (company and general
management), not outward (animals and nature). Any ethical aware-
ness of the environment has to be negated because HRM is only
responsible to general management. It is not responsible to the envi-
ronment and nature as they are not part of HRM’s organisational orbit.
HRM has disassociated itself from animals, the environment, and
nature. They only feature as a cost, a production factor, and a dispos-
able item on a balance sheet. They are never seen as holistic beings and
entities with a moral demand to be treated well. Kant’s ethical concept
of ‘well-being’ is not seen as being universal and extending to the envi-
ronment. Instead, it is restricted to an organisation. Because HRM’s
responsibility is only directed towards an organisation, the environ-
ment can never be important to HRM. It is the essence of HRM to be
linked to organisational profit maximisation. To exchange this with
environmental care and animal welfare would constitute the eradica-
tion of HRM. The essence of HRM as well as its conduct throughout
the history of factory administration, personnel management, and
eventually HRM testifies to the fact that HRM represents the total
opposite to the morality of stage 7.
HRM has constructed an asymmetrical relationship between the
environment and itself. This relationship can never be free of domina-
tion because the essence of HRM is domination. CEOs dominate top-
management, top-management dominates HRM and HRM dominates
those ‘who make things’ (Aristotle). But HRM not only dominates
those below. By being part of general management, HRM indirectly
also dominates anything that is outside a company in the form of
animal and plant life (Marder 2013). It can never adhere to the philo-
sophical principle of truth about the environment and animals.739
It is exactly this essence of HRM that determines HRM’s relationship

to nature and animals.740 In his ‘Ethical Respect for Nature’ (1981 &
2004) American philosopher Paul Warren Taylor has shown that tradi-
tional human ethics came from a ‘human-centred’ standpoint and
that, instead, a more holistic version of ethics needs to be environmen-
tal ethics that relies on a ‘life-centred’ standpoint.741 Taylor’s ethics
includes two basic moral principles:
1. every organism, species, population, and community of life has a

good of its own which moral agents can intentionally further or
damage by their actions; and
2. essential to the morality of respect for nature is the idea of inherent
worth.
Given HRM’s lack of human-centred ethics it is hard to imagine how

HRM could extend beyond this to a life-centred ethics that includes
nature. For HRM, nature – just like any other resource including the
human resource – is just another facility to be allocated and utilised
towards an organisational goal. In sum, rather than moving from
‘human-centred ethics’ towards ‘life-centred ethics’ HRM is locked into
being HRM-centred. HRM negates Taylor’s two life-centred principles
because it is an agent that is more likely to intentionally damage than
further nature. Secondly, for HRM human nature has no inherent
worth. Its worth only appears when it is used. For HRM, worth can
only be expressed in monetary terms – framed as extrinsic rewards.742
This is not inherently so but something that HRM attaches to it. What
has worth to HRM is not nature but human resources and this also
extends to animals (Singer 1990).
HRM’s morality and environmental ethics
In ‘All Animals are Equal’ (Singer 1990), Australian utilitarian ethicist

and philosopher Peter Singer argues, ‘The basic principle of equality
does not require identical treatment; it requires equal consideration.
Equal consideration for different beings may lead to different treat-
ment and different rights’.743 However, this is not part of the essence of
HRM because HRM always considers itself first.744 Inside HRM’s ‘Moral
Maze’ (Jackall 1988 & 2006) plant life and animals rank very low, if
considered at all. The essence of HRM determines that it must conduct
unequal considerations and thereby contravene Singer’s ethics. To
further the morality of animals, Singer (www.utilitarian.net) argues

that,
precisely what our concern or consideration requires us to do may

vary according to the characteristics of those affected by what we
do: concern for the well-being of children growing up…would
require that we teach them to read; concern for pigs in a place
where there is adequate food and room to run freely. But the basic
element – the taking into account of the interest of the being, what-
ever those interest may be – must, according to the principle of
equality, be extended to all being, black or white, masculine or fem-
inine, human or nonhuman.
Singer’s ethics demands that HRM see animals not as material and
resource to enhance organisational gains but consider their interests.
Given the present structure of HRM any consideration of animals’
interest would reduce the surplus value HRM has to extract from man-
aging human resources in charge of ‘animal utilisation’ (Orwellian
Newspeak). This is the essence of HRM while the ethical imperative of
equal consideration of animals advocates the opposite.
This also highlights English philosopher Jeremy Bentham’s
(1748–1832) utilitarian ‘suffering/enjoyment’ concept denoting ‘when
a being is able to experience suffering or enjoyment it is our ethical
duty to take this into consideration’.745 Singer continues to argue that
racists give greater weight to their race, sexists give greater weight to
their gender, and speciesists give greater weight to their species.746 The
pattern is identical in each case. If Singer’s ethics is applied to HRM,
the following takes place: HRM gives greater weight to their managers
because it ‘allows the interests of their own managers to override the
greater interests of others’. In short, HRM favours its managers. In con-
clusion, the essence of HRM determines that it sees a stone, a mouse,
and all non-organisational humans as resources because HRM allocates
and transforms human and material resources into profit-making oper-
ations. It does so in near total disregard of the ‘enjoyment and suffer-
ing’ (Bentham) of these resources. Singer’s ethics determines that if a
being suffers there can be no moral justification for refusing to take
that suffering into consideration. When HRM violates this through
using KPIs that support, whether directly or indirectly, such treatment
and immoralities, it acts immoral. There is no moral justification for
HRM’s refusal to alleviate suffering. In short, when taking a holistic
understanding of ethics into account by linking it to animal and
nature, HRM fails on both accounts. It can never transcend beyond its
self-created organisational confinements. It has to treat everything as a
resource. This negates everything Bentham’s and Singer’s environmen-
tal ethics demand from HRM.
In conclusion, having examined key concepts of environmental
ethics such as Kantian environmental ethics, anthropocentrism, the
biotic community, species protection, Deep Ecology, biospheric egal-
itarianism, the biospherical net, the new animists, bioregionalism, sen-
tient beings, Albert Schweitzer’s Reverence for Life, teleological
-centre-of-life moralities, responsive cohesion, ecosystems and the bio-
physical world, social ecology, mutualistic interrelations, ecological
interdependence, life-centred ethics, and the utilitarian ethics concept
of equal consideration in relations to HRM, the conclusion of this
chapter is that HRM violates, circumvents, contradicts, negates, and
rejects every single moral philosophy put forward by environmental
ethics.
8
Conclusion: Seven Moralities of
HRM Examining HRM Textbooks
and Beyond
The concluding chapter is designed to achieve three key aspects of the

book. Firstly, it provides a brief summary of the main arguments out-
lined in the previous chapters. Secondly, it should discuss one of the
key questions of the entire project, namely, what is the level of moral-
ity of HRM. And finally, it should reflect on the key material used to
ascertain the level of HRM’s overall morality, namely how HRM pre-
sents itself as a field with a coherent body of knowledge. In the case of
HRM – as in the case of many scholarly fields ranging from mathemat-
ics to medicine or history – this occurs through the material that has
been used to teach students, i.e. textbooks. As a consequence, the final
chapter will be divided into roughly three parts.
As a first general conclusion this study shows that HRM and morality
are inextricably linked to one another. Both deal with people, their
motives and behaviours. As soon as HRM engages in organisational
decisions and actions that affect others such as employees, morality is
concerned. There is no escape from it. Ever since humanity evolved,
human-to-human conduct has involved morality. As soon as human
beings started to live in enlarged family units, groups, and tribes, we
began to create rules and moral codes that organised communal living.
This marked one of the milestones of human evolution because early
humans knew that a group is stronger and more successful than indi-
viduals. In hunting, for example, human beings faced the same
dilemma that many of the most successful animals found themselves
in. What evolutionary psychologists formulated as the ‘lion-dilemma’
became essential for us: ‘hunt together or not hunt at all’ which
demanded cooperation, coordination, mutual aid, and sharing instead
of competition, egoism, and individualism.
210
Conclusion: Seven Moralities of HRM Examining HRM Textbooks and Beyond 211
Hence, the origins of humanity rest on cooperation, not on compet-

itive groups or in the overtly romantic, conservative, fictional, and
plainly nonsensical illusion of a Robinson Crusoe-like individualistic
and selfish hunter scenario. Once seen from an evolutionary viewpoint
instead of a fictional fantasy, it becomes evident that Crusoe would
have been incapable of surviving. Despite the ideologies of selfishness,
individualism, egoism, and competition, even today’s individualistic
CEO would be as dead as the selfish hunter without others. The hunter
depends on a group just as a CEO depends on general management
and HRM and, more importantly, on those ‘who make things’
(Aristotle), i.e. workers.
Quite aside Lucy’s group (AL 288-1) as the first upright walking
human beings 3.2 million years ago, today, the advocates of the
modern ideology of competition as the foundation of HRM and society
also face an additional problem.747 Early life already demanded that
humans develop moral codes on how their groups were living together.
Had these early humans been individualistic and competing indi-
viduals, no such codes would have ever developed. Therefore, it was
cooperation, not competition that remained essential. Despite, or
better because of the obvious ideological fallacy of individualism,
selfishness, egoism, and competition, the ideological project of
Managerialism has to be reiterated through corporate mass media
almost on a daily basis (Baudrillard 1983).
But individualism, selfishness, egoism, and competition are more than
simple ideological tools of Managerialism. They also foster competition
inside companies and corporations. HRM spends a great deal of time and
effort to individualise and atomise itself, other managers, and non-
managerial staff. Historically, this practice is as old as early capitalism.
Early methods used by HRM to desolidarise, individualise, and atomise
former peasants – now employed as workers in factories – included pun-
ishment regimes in what became known as ‘Satanic Mills’.748 Termed as
factory overseers, business administrators (MB‘A’), overseers, supervisors,
brutal and ruthless discipline enforcers, HRM started at the compara-
tively lowest level of morality when measured against the seven stages of
HRM morality. This is shown in Figure 8.1.749
The historical perspective of HRM morality that is shown in
Figure 8.1 starts with early capitalism’s pre-HRM that viewed labour as
a process-able commodity. The converting of peasants into factory
workers occurred under the use of punishment regimes rather than
incentive schemes. These punishment regimes relied on sometimes
highly cruel and brutal methods to ‘domesticate’ peasants into horrific
17th to 19th Century 20th Century 21st Century
1 2 2
factory overseers personnel management Human Resource Management
Figure 8.1 Seven HRM moralities in historical perspective
working conditions.750 They sought to create an obedient workforce

ready to be consumed in the early factories of liberal capitalism. For
decades, HRM’s own rather dark history founded in these ‘Dark Satanic
Mills’ has been suppressed in contemporary HRM textbooks in favour
of ‘personal history assessments’ and ‘the history of performance
measurement’.751 Apart from ‘airbrushing out’ HRM’s brutal and
violent history in standard textbooks, standard HRM ideology presents
HRM’s history, for example, with the words, ‘the history of personnel
management begins around the end of the 19th century, when welfare
officers (sometimes called ‘welfare secretaries’) came into being. They
were women concerned only with the protection of women and
girls’.752 Two issues are noticeable:
1. Suddenly, ‘at the end of the 19th century’ HRM appears from outer
space. 18th century’s workshops and their violent character, child
labour, poverty, starvation, no health care and education had ever
existed.
2. There is no link between the 18th and 19th century’s overseer’s whip
and today’s HRM.
3. Thankfully, HRM started off with ‘welfare officers’ whilst trade
unions fighting long and hard battles ‘against’ companies and their
HRM/PM departments also never existed.
4. One is not told against ‘whom’ women and girls needed to be pro-
tected? Perhaps the predecessors of HR-managers, namely factory
overseers.
Apart from the ideological pretence of HRM’s history, there are not too
many current textbooks on HRM that include an obligatory chapter on
the bloody, violent, aggressive, and even sadistic history of HRM’s his-
torical linage of brutal factory overseers → personnel management →
HRM and the use of punishment regimes. It appears that another pre-
ferred method to eliminate history is to start HRM textbooks with a

chapter on ‘strategic’ HRM or not to start at the beginning but with
‘HRM for the 21st century’.753 Nevertheless, there was a time when
HRM’s direct predecessors preferred methods that register at the lowest
level of morality. Hence, Figure 8.1 shows the first stage of morality –
punishment and obedience – in bold. The second stage (2) of that
period in time – rewards and benefits – is depicted smaller representing
its historical prevalence.
During the 17th to 19th century in pre-Taylorism/Fordism times,
workers received minor salaries, rewards, and benefits. These were
scarcely used by HRM to make human resources obedient to the new
work regimes. Only 20th century Taylorism and Fordism with huge pro-
ductivity advances forced personnel management and later HRM to
agree to trade union wage demands in selected cases. Organisationally
driven punishment regimes that created obedience continued to exist
throughout the 19th century. Only when Taylorism and Fordism linked
individual work efforts to productivity and wages, rewards and benefits
moved slowly towards the centre of HRM’s thinking replacing earlier
punishment/obedience regimes. This did not occur because of a moral
obligation felt by HRM but because of Taylor-Fordist individualised
‘effort→reward’ structures. In that respect Taylor’s new form of work –
horizontal and vertical division of labour (Klikauer 2007:153) – mas-
sively aided the move from stage 1 to stage 2.
Figure 8.1 shows the 20th century as the time when the move from
stage 1 (punishment and obedience) to stage 2 (rewards and benefits)
occurred. The completion of this move has been associated with Henry
Ford and Fordism, and the subsequent conversion of manufacturing
into ‘mass’-manufacturing, of poverty into mass-consumerism, and of
the proletariat into a petty middle-class. This allowed HRM to focus
more on rewards and benefits rather than punishment and obedience.
Again it was not a moral move on the part of HRM that enhanced
HRM’s morality from stage 1 to stage 2 but system demands enshrined
in Fordism’s drive towards mass-consumerism. These system demands
made it necessary to pay human resources enough so that they were
able to purchase mass-manufactured commodities. At this point,
workers were not only appropriated by factory regimes but their off-
work activities also became part of a new form of consumer-capitalism.
From now on, HRM structured workers’ existence at work while mar-
keting structured their off-work affairs.754 Workers’ buying power was
needed to convert liberal capitalism into consumer capitalism. This
also demanded a double function from human resources. They needed
to create surplus-value at the point of production but also extra profits

at the point of consumption.
Since HRM morality focuses on the place of production, Taylorism
and Fordism made it easier for HRM to agree to trade union wage
claims. Based on extraordinary profits, HRM accepted higher wages as
fought for by workers and their trade unions also allowing wages to be
set increasingly at ‘piece-rate’ levels linked to the introduction of
‘piece-rate incentive schemes’.755 This became part of the package that
shifted HRM’s apparatus from the morality of stage 1 to 2. The most
decisive HRM writing signifying HRM’s 1→2 shift came with
McGregor’s ‘The Human Side of Enterprise’ (1960 & 2006). It popu-
larised ‘Theory X & Y’. Theory X reflects the morality of punishment
and obedience (stage 1) while Theory Y is concerned with the morality
of rewards and benefits (stage 2). One of the most celebrated advances
in HRM represents a minor upward change when measured against the
seven stages of morality.756 While the ‘punishment→reward’ shift has
been the defining moment for HRM during the 20th century, for moral
philosophy it is no more than a microscopic correction. But neither
piece-rate wage nor McGregory’s Theory X & Y had anything to do
with a deliberate and conscious moral decision undertaken by HRM.
What greatly supported Theory X & Y and the factual introduction
of piece-rate wages was the application of Skinner’s ‘behaviourism’ to
human resources throughout the 20th century. When a number of new
crypto-sciences were created, such as management science, behavioural
science, organisational behaviour, HRM, and organisational psycho-
logy, the ideological character of HRM became hidden behind univer-
sity walls that supplied the subject with credibility and legitimacy.
Industrial psychologists were trained in finding ever more sophisti-
cated instruments of incentive pay systems culminating in HRM’s
latest fashions of performance related pay (PRP) and Harvard’s bal-
anced scorecard. Virtually all of them focus on the single most relevant
question in the realm of managing people: how to get those human
resources to work longer and harder so that their work effort can be
utilised for shareholder-value, organisational outcomes, and profit-
maximisation. Not surprisingly, the respective morality as outlined in
stage 2 was firmly locked in the centre of HRM during the 20th century
(Figure 8.1). This is set to continue during the 21st century.
Figure 8.1 also shows stages 1 and 2 as relevant to the 21st century
because of HRM’s overwhelmingly strong focus on performance man-
agement. The focusing on stages 1 and 2 is for two reasons: firstly,
stage 1 continues to be part of HRM because punishment and obedi-
ence – now called ‘disciplinary action’ in HRM language – continue to

be part of HRM. Virtually every business organisation has an informal
or formal policy on disciplinary action. Often these punishment
regimes are ‘informally’ called ‘three strike rules’ and are codified in
company internal HRM policies.757 Secondly, stage 3 – conforming to
social expectations, gaining approval, reciprocity, shared norms, inter-
personal associations, norm maintenance, and conformity to group
norms – has not replaced stage 2 – rewards and performance manage-
ment – in the orbit of HRM.
When measured against stage 3’s focus on virtue ethics, for example,
HRM’s incapability to conform to social expectations as put forward by
society becomes clear. As a consequence, HRM is not only unable to
apply or enhance virtue ethics but cannot meet society’s and workers’
ethical expectations. While virtue ethics applies reciprocity, HRM
shows a distinctive lack of it.758 The moral concept of reciprocity as
outlined by Descartes, John Locke, Kant, Simone de Beauvoir, Rawls,
and Kropotkin is non-existent in HRM’s hierarchical management→
employee relationship (Gintis et al. 2008). Also, HRM itself is not a
coherent monolithic group with ‘shared norms’ because its own norms
are extensively different depending on which area of HRM is
concerned.
Stage 3 – virtue ethics – and 4 – maintaining the organisational order
– mark the limits of where HRM can go on the scale of morality. Stage
5 is concerned with democracy. Since HRM is not a democratic institu-
tion – perhaps it can even be considered to be outright anti-democratic
– stage 5 remains closed for HRM. Simultaneously, stage 5 also marks
the moral philosophy of utilitarianism as applied to society. HRM’s
narrow focus and confinements to ‘managing people’ inside companies
severely limits its ability to move beyond stage 3 and 4. This not only
limits HRM’s move beyond stage 4 but it also renders the two highest
stages of 6 and 7 – universalism and environmental ethics – unreach-
able for HRM. The realisation that HRM is incapable of moving beyond
stage 4 leads to the question: where exactly can HRM be located?
As the previous chapters – one to seven – have discussed HRM’s rela-
tionship to each stage of morality, a more detailed examination of
HRM can now be conducted by examining not so much HRM itself but
its constitutive elements. For that, rather than looking mainly to HRM
as a coherent body of knowledge, the focus will be predominantly
directed to HRM’s core activities. These will be measured against the
seven stage model that constructed much of what has been said before
and can answer two key questions: a) what are the key subject areas of
HRM that make up HRM and b) how do these subject areas and HRM
itself relate to the seven stages of morality. Taken together this exam-
ination will not only establish a clear picture of HRM’s overall morality
but will also answer the question: at which stage of morality is HRM
located?
Seven HRM moralities and seven HRM areas
While the previous chapters examined HRM largely in-itself (Kant) and
also highlighted key themes of HRM, this concluding section will
examine the constitutive elements of HRM in a more structured way.
The examination is conducted on the basis of HRM’s key activities that
can be broken down into several areas in which HRM operates
(cf. Table 8.1. below). These ‘key areas’ of HRM established here mirror
what has been used in the seven key textbooks taken from seven coun-
tries. Textbook details were initially outlined in Table P.2.759
Upon examining these seven textbooks, twenty-eight subjects
(Table 8.1 below), collected from the textbooks’ ‘table of contents’,
were identified. Overall, HRM textbooks have to reflect a wide range of
human activities related to the managerial process. Necessarily, they
deal with a wide area of different subjects reflected in the textbook
chapters (Table 8.1). The event of a subject area appearing as a full
chapter in the HRM textbooks is indicated through the number ‘1’ in
Table 8.1. This follows the alphabetical list of countries from Australia
to the USA. The left-hand column (Table 8.1, shaded grey) provides the
total number of listings in the seven textbooks. They range from ‘7’
indicating that a specific HRM subject area is part of every single text-
book, to the number ‘1’ that indicates that only one textbook contains
this subject area. Table 8.1 shows this in greater detail.
Table 8.1 shows that there are twenty-eight subject areas reflected in
HRM textbooks. But these appear in different frequencies in the seven
textbooks. Based on that, four clusters can be identified:
1. the first cluster are those subjects discussed by all seven textbooks.
These can be labelled as ‘must haves’;
2. the second cluster is ‘important issues’ comprising those subjects
mentioned in five textbooks;
3. it is followed by the ‘relevant issues’ cluster based on textbooks that
mention a subject between three and four times; and
4. the last cluster is that of ‘marginal issues’ covering those textbooks
that mention a subject once or twice.
Table 8.1 Subject areas of HRM textbooks
No. Issues in Table of AUS CAN GB IRE NZ SA USA Total:

Contents
1 ER, Unions, 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 7
Collective Bargaining
2 HRD, Learning, and 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 7
Training
3 Introduction into 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 7
HRM
4 Performance 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 7
Management
5 Rewarding, Benefits, 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 7
Remuneration
6 HR Planning 1 1 1 1 1 5
7 Occupational Health 1 1 1 1 1 5
and Safety
8 Recruitment and 1 1 1 1 1 5
Selection
9 Work and Job Design 1 1 1 1 1 5
10 International HRM 1 1 1 1 4
11 Strategic HRM 1 1 1 1 4
12 Diversity 1 1 1 3
Management
13 Ethics, Equity, 1 1 1 3
Fairness in HRM
14 Organisational and 1 1 1 3
National Context
15 Outlook, Future, 1 1 1 3
Evaluation of HRM
16 Career Management 1 1 2
17 Turnover and 1 1 2
Motivation
18 Labour Markets and 1 1 2
HRM
19 Leadership 1 1 2
20 Legal Context of HRM 1 1 2
21 Performance-Related 1 1 2
Pay
22 Talent Management 1 1 2
23 Retention 1 1 2
24 Competency-based HR 1 1
25 Contextualising HR: 1 1
critical thinking
26 Participation and 1 1
Involvement
27 Technology and HRM 1 1
28 Work Life Balance 1 1
Table 8.2 Eight highly relevant subject areas for HRM
1 IR Industrial and employment relations, unions, and collective

bargaining
2 HRD Human resource development, learning and training
3 PM Performance management
4 reward Reward management, benefits, and remuneration
5 HRP Human resource planning
6 OHS Occupational health and safety
7 RS Recruitment and selection
8 OPM Work and job design – operations management
The ‘must have’ cluster contains four issues discounting the standard
introductory chapter that all textbooks have. These ‘must haves’ are
employment relations, unions, and collective bargaining; HRD, learn-
ing and training; performance management; and rewards, benefits, and
remuneration. The key subject areas of HRM are comprised of two sets
of data: i) those with the frequency 7 and those with the frequency 5
(Table 8.1). When the four ‘must haves’ – HR planning, OHS, recruit-
ment and selection, and work and job design760 – and the four ‘impor-
tant’ issues are added, the following picture emerges. This is shown in
Table 8.2.
Table 8.2 shows the eight subject areas that virtually all textbooks
hold as important to be taught to HRM students. These eight areas
comprise the core areas in which HRM takes place. Perhaps the most
noticeable and also the most obvious area for HRM remains IR (indus-
trial relations, cf. labour relations, employment relations). IR is seen to
be a relatively important issue because all HRM takes place inside a
framework provided by IR. In other words, the IR framework that con-
sists of i) employers, management, and employer federations, ii)
workers and their trade unions, as well as iii) states with labour laws,
judiciary, and administrative-regulative powers represent a decisive
factor inside which HRM operates and from which HRM cannot disas-
sociate itself. Much in line with the International Labour Organisation
(ILO) membership of all countries and the ILO’s traditional threefold
IR model, the existence of employers, trade unions, and state regula-
tion more or less forces an organisational entity such as HRM into a
position that is – albeit to different levels – determined by the
labour/industrial relations framework in all countries.761 In that, the
first issue (IR) of Table 8.2 takes on quite a different role when com-
pared to the other issues listed in the table. These other issues do not
appear to take on quite the defining role that is determining for HRM
as the overall IR framework is. Beyond these eight core HRM subject
areas, more clusters appear.
The middle cluster of ‘relevant issues’ contains international and
strategic HRM; diversity and ethical HRM, as well as organisational and
national context, and textbooks on the future and evaluation of HRM
(Fisher & Southey 2005:609). Lastly, there are also ‘marginal’ issues rel-
evant to some but not to other HRM textbooks. These include: career
management, turnover, labour markets, leadership, legal frameworks,
PRP, talents, retention, competency, contextualising HR, participation,
technology, and work life balance.
Having outlined the key constitutive elements that together create
much of what HRM is about, the second step of this analysis of HRM
textbooks to ascertain the morality and moral level of HRM is to
include a judgement. This relates to HRM’s morality based on the
seven stages of morality. Table 8.3 shows the result of this analysis.
Table 8.3 shows an overview of the subject areas relevant to HRM in
relation to the seven levels of morality. The most visible fact appears
on the far right hand corner of Table 8.3 indicating that no subject
outlined in the textbooks reaches the moral stages of universalism (6)
and environmental ethics (7). In other words, HRM textbooks are not
concerned with ‘human rights as universally applied’ and similarly,
they do not engage with environmental ethics at a substantial and uni-
versal level.762 The former might be explained by the strong organisa-
tional focus of HRM restricting it to companies rather than ‘defending
everyone’s right to justice and welfare, universally applied’. Viewed
from a descending level of morality, the highest level with which HRM
– at least partially – can engage is that of ‘promoting justice and
welfare within a wider community, as defined in open and reasonable
debate’ (level 5).
The concept of being ‘defined in open and reasonable debate’ is
Kohlberg’s version of democracy. Since HRM is a non-democratic affair
and does not engage in an open debate with ‘its subordinates’ (!),
democracy has to be temporarily eliminated – adopting HRMs’ true
dictatorial authoritarian character – in order to enable HRM textbooks
to enter this level of morality. This means that HRM is only able to
enter the sphere beyond stage 4 (e.g. 5, 6, and 7) when one discounts
HRM’s anti-democratic stance. Given the high premium Kohlberg’s
model – and society in general for that matter – places on democracy,
HRM can only ever partially enter higher levels of morality.
If one takes away democracy and moves on to dictatorship, three sub-
jects remain: diversity, work-life balance, and employment relations. In
220
Table 8.3 The morality of textbook subjects
Performance-Related Pay
Talent Management
Labour Markets and HRM Competency-based HR
Turnover & Motivation Outlook& Evaluation
Career Management Strategic HRM Work Life Balance
Org. & National Context International HRM Participation
Recruitment and Selection Work & Job Design Diversity Management
Leadership Rewarding, Remuneration HR Planning Legal Context of HRM OH & S
Retention Performance Management HRD, Learning & Training Ethics, Equity, Fairness ER, Unions, CB
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
employment relations’ three actor model two of the three actors are
democratically constituted (states and trade unions) while manage-
ment/HRM is a non-democratic affair. State parliaments are elected via
popular elections and trade unions through membership elections as
determined by labour laws.763 Despite the managerial side lacking
democratic legitimacy, some of the issues outlined above carry connota-
tions to ‘promoting justice and welfare within a wider community’.
HRM’s insurmountable barrier between level 4 and 5 of morality – non-
democracy vs. democracy – is indicated through a double-line in
Table 8.3. Unlike democratic states and democratic trade unions, HRM
can never cross this barrier without ending its own existence as an
element of non-democratic and authoritarian managerial regimes that
have, ever since HRM came into existence, fought – bitterly and brutally
– any attempt to introduce workplace and industrial democracy.764
At the next level below HRM’s inability to be democratic, one finds
‘law-&-order’ issues defined as ‘protecting law and order and maintain-
ing the existing system of official social arrangements’. This relates to
society. But HRM reduces this to complying with legal regulations –
when forced to do so – and to organisations.765 At HRM’s exclusively
organisational level, it means protecting corporate policies and the
organisational order as well as maintaining the organisational system
of managerial arrangements. For HRM, this can be achieved through
participation which, on exceptionally rare occasions, can reach into
the morality of democracy (level 5) when applying democratic stan-
dards. Overall, four societal and higher level morality engaging issues
remain. These are: Occupational Health and Safety, the legal context,
equity, and fairness. In all four of these subject areas, HRM textbooks
convert country-specific legal provisions into HR policies and organisa-
tional outcomes.
The second largest area of morality for HRM textbooks (Table 8.3) is
the one that can be described as ‘conforming to HRM’s expectations
and gaining its approval’. Here one finds subjects that are designed to
convert ‘human’ behaviour into ‘organisational’ behaviour, turn
‘human’ men into ‘organisation’ men (Whyte 1961), and human
‘beings’ into human ‘resources’. HRM textbook issues that carry these
connotations are (i) competencies, (ii) the outlook and evaluation of
HRM, (iii) strategic and international HRM, (iv) HR planning and learn-
ing, as well as (v) job and work design. The first two seek to make HRM
fit into a company while (iii) approves of strategic management and
assists the sending and returning of managers to overseas appoint-
ments as ‘parent country nationals’ (Macky 2008:59); (iv) shows the
usefulness of HRM to management while (v) adjusts human resources

to managerially designed job- and work regimes (Sayers 2005).
Finally the most common form of morality for HRM textbooks
remains ‘personal benefits and rewards as well as getting a good deal
for oneself’ (level 2). Ever since ‘The Human Side of Enterprise’ moved
personnel management from ‘Theory X’ (punishment) to ‘Theory Y’
(incentives), ‘personal benefits and rewards’ have moved into HRM’s
centre stage.766 This is correctly reflected in HRM textbooks. Virtually
all of these subjects foster the moral egoism of ‘personal benefits and
rewards’ (Abreu & Badii 2006:104): performance related pay, talent
management, motivation, career management, recruitment and selec-
tion, rewarding and remuneration, as well as performance manage-
ment. This leaves only two issues to what McGregor calls ‘Theory X’:
‘obedience and punishment avoidance’. These are, at least partly, lead-
ership and retention. The often unmentioned negative side of leader-
ship comprises those who are made to follow those who Bolchover
(2005) calls ‘The Great Leader’. Similarly, the HRM subject of ‘reten-
tion’ is more often than not – and even for HR managers – associated
with the fear of job loss.767
Overall, some relevant limitations of this book should briefly be out-
lined. Because most of the data for this book is compiled from seven
HRM textbooks, to a considerable extent the above chapters reflect
what has been outlined in textbooks. Secondly, highly fashionable sub-
jects such as, for example, talent management that appears only in two
textbooks as a free standing chapter, are an issue that is nevertheless
contained in more than just those two textbooks.768 While ‘talent man-
agement’, for example, is part of HRM’s litany, it most commonly does
not seem to warrant a full chapter in standard HRM textbooks. This
also applies to a few other issues. However, in order to provide a rough
overview of what is found in the textbooks from seven different coun-
tries, the focus on chapters has already resulted in twenty-eight issues
constituting a manageable number as outlined in Table 8.1.
In sum, the overview is not a reflection of country specific HRM nor
does it mirror what HRM does in practice – the organisational reality of
working under HRM regimes (Croker 2012). Instead, the book remains
to a substantial degree a study of HRM textbooks. Based on these
qualifications, the following overarching conclusion can, nevertheless,
be outlined. There is a core set of subjects that all HRM textbooks
include. It indicates that HRM in all Anglo-Saxon countries have come
to an overarching agreement on what HRM is, at least in terms of text-
books used to teach HRM. These are issues that, more or less, define
HRM today. Secondly, while HRM consists of eight core subjects, it also
reaches beyond that by including a number of HRM-related issues and
it is also able to adjust its teaching to country specific demands.
Thirdly, while achieving this and on some rare occasions, HRM
remains accommodating to engage with relatively distant subjects such
as ‘contextualising HR: critical thinking’, as an example. Fourthly, the
seven stages of morality have been useful to evaluate the levels of
morality found in textbooks. They provide an ordering framework for
morality that reaches far beyond the traditional triage on morality
found in standard books on management ethics, namely, virtue ethics,
Kantian ethics, and utilitarianism.
The model’s ascendancy also shows HRM’s strengths and limitations
(Klikauer 2012). One of HRM’s strengths is that it has left behind the
management of people via punishment even though its ‘dark history’
that started in Satanic Mills has rarely been highlighted, let alone in
HRM textbooks. Perhaps the dictum of ‘those who cannot remember
the past are condemned to repeat it’769 still haunts HRM’s daily use of
disciplinary action, the three strike rule, and the often rather repressive
character of HRM.770 Today’s HRM has an overwhelming focus on
incentives and rewards following behaviourism’s ‘animal-equals-
human’ ideology (Lemov 2006). The second issue is HRM’s clear focus
on organisational values and the successful linking of human values to
them following the ideology of Managerialism (Klikauer 2013). The
third issue lies in HRM’s conversion of community values, state regula-
tions, and existing legalities into organisational objectives. This is
reflected in HRM’s adherence to the third level of organisational com-
pliance and law-&-order.
While these are HRM’s accomplishments, there are, nevertheless,
also some problematic areas for HRM. Like general management, HRM
is not a democratic institution, thereby closing off most of the fifth
level of morality and everything what lies beyond that, namely univer-
salism and environmental ethics. If one takes democracy out of the
equation, several textbook subjects remain. These carry connotations
to ‘justice and welfare within a wider community’ even though the
latter part – a wider community – remains not only problematic but
almost unreachable for HRM due to its strict company focus. Finally,
HRM is not able to enter stages 6 and 7 of morality. It is neither dedi-
cated to universalism – defending everyone’s right to justice and
welfare, universally applied – nor is HRM able to ‘respecting the
cosmos as an integral whole in an openness extending well beyond
humanity’. Despite the rhetoric of sustainability and corporate social
responsibility, HRM has not made significant movements into the

direction of environmental ethics. Overall, however, HRM textbooks
are a reflection of HRM’s organisational focus and thereby limited to
the moral capabilities of HRM.
Assessing HRM’s overall level of morality
The prime interest of HRM morality (stages 1–2), society’s morality

(3–5), and moral philosophy (6–7) can be observed in Kant’s famous
distinction between ‘what is’ and ‘what ought to be’. If this is applied
to HRM, HRM’s morality occupies only a little corner on the plateau of
what today is considered ‘human morality’ (Glover 2012; MacKinnon
2012). In other words, the foundations of society are reflective of stages
3 to 5 and moral philosophy’s true home, prime interest, and current
debates on ethics can be found in stages 6 and 7. Society’s moral foun-
dations are not based on punishment regimes. Equally, they are not
found in selfishness and moral egoism. Instead, they are based on
cohesive and natural groups (stage 3): social, ethnical, political, etc.;
based on law and order (moral stage 4), and on democracy and the pro-
motion of justice and welfare within a wider community (moral stage
5). All of this might be described as the current stage of societal moral-
ity. It is reflective of Kant’s ‘what is’ in today’s societies rather than of
‘what ought to be’ because the morality of stages 3 to 5 is factually in
existence in most advanced societies.
The decisive switch from Kant’s ‘what is’ to ‘what ought to be’ occurs
at the borderline between democracy and defending rights (stage 5)
and the universal human rights and welfare for all human beings on
earth (stage 6) which represent the unfulfilled promises of modernity
as several key aspects of modernity remain unfinished. This describes
what German philosopher Jürgen Habermas called ‘The Unfinished
Project of Modernity’.771 Since modernity has not reached its conclu-
sion in a Kantian understanding, it remains an unfinished project.
Kant’s ‘Kingdom of Ends’, universal ethics, universal human rights and
welfare are what Kant called something that ‘ought to be’. Only a
worldwide and global accomplishment of these demands would con-
clude the project of modernity in human terms.772 In the model out-
lined above this demands still one more step, the move from stage 6
(Kant’s universalism) to stage 7 (environmental ethics). Kant’s ethical
demands would have to be applied to land, plants, animals, and the
environment. But the moral project of modernity (Kant) remains in
the far distance for HRM. The distances between HRM’s morality (1–2),
society’s morality (3–5), and moral philosophy (6–7) is shown in Figure

8.2.773
Figure 8.2 depicts HRM’s morality in relation to two adjacent issues
that are strongly related to it: society’s morality and moral philo-
sophy’s universalism.774 Buffered by the morality of the societal sphere
(stages 3–5), HRM’s morality (stage 1–2) remains substantially discon-
nected from universalism and Kantian ethics (6), as well as from the
highest stage of environmental ethics (7). When measured against
Kant’s universal ethics and Habermas’ ‘Unfinished Project of
Modernity’, HRM’s distance becomes even more visible. Despite the
invented and somewhat illusionary but always fostered self-belief of
HRM’s ‘Servants of Power’ (Baritz 1960) and the ideology of
Managerialism, HRM is not an institution that enhances the move
towards Kantian morality and his project of modernity (Kant 1784). Its
morality remains too far below that of Kantian ethics and even below
that of current moral standards as practised by society (3–5).
6 3
4 2
2 1
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Explanation: 1 = HRM morality; 2 = society’s morality; 3 = moral philosophy’s universalism
Figure 8.2 Seven HRM moralities in society and moral philosophy

Whatever HRM’s ‘Servants of Power’ (Baritz 1960) advocate on the

modernising elements of HRM, its morality ends even before demo-
cracy. Democracy remains the foundation of all modern societies.
Modern societies are democratic societies (5) while HRM remains a
thoroughly undemocratic institution (1–2). Quite apart from high level
moral demands such as democracy, HRM’s problems with morality
already start at stage 3 because HRM does not represent a cohesive
group that develops its own self-governing moral rules. Instead, it
divides organisations and sustains them through disconnected and
dysfunctional hierarchies ranging from top-management to middle-
and lower-management overseen by HRM. All this is engineered and
sustained by HRM with a near total exclusion of non-managerial staff
framed as ‘others’, subordinates, and underlings. In short, HRM rejects
democracy (5), fails to establish a social order (4) and prevents work-
places from being governed by cohesive groups (3). It fosters the divi-
sion between HRM and employees as the essence of its existence. HRM
has no internal, commonly developed and accepted moral rules (3),
only those unilaterally invented by HRM itself and forced onto others.
This, together with HRM’s alignment to managerial profit-motives
defines HRM morality as being locked into stages 1 and 2, however less
into stage 1 (punishment) but more in 2 (rewarding people). In fact,
this allows HRM to utilise selfish character trades of human beings
through sophisticated psychological techniques learned from behav-
iourism’s ‘animal-equals-human’ ideology. It also allows HRM to skil-
fully link individual selfishness – the ethics of egocentrism and moral
egoism – to the pretended overall and unchangeable goal of all soci-
eties, namely, profit-maximisation at personal, organisational, and
societal level. In other words, HRM can be considered not only a trans-
mitter of managerial orders inside an organisation but also a transmit-
ter of the ideology of Managerialism (KIikauer 2013) in fostering a
culture based on individual greed, individual competition, and
selfishness. On the one hand, this locks HRM firmly at a very low level
of morality while on the other hand, it disallows HRM any advance-
ment beyond stage 3. In a final step, what has been shown in
Figure 8.2 is depicted in greater detail in Figure 8.3 below.
Figure 8.3 shows three largely separated areas of moral concern based
on Figure 8.2 shown above. It starts with the organisational concern
enshrined in economic business imperatives that HRM links to indi-
vidual work through performance management, performance related pay,
and balanced scorecards.775 In historical terms, through its predecessors
of factory overseers and personnel management, HRM’s classical con-
Areas of Predominant Moral Concerns
HRM Ethics Social & Political Ethics Ethical Philosophy
1 2 4 3 4 5 6 7
Economic-organisational Imperatives Social-Political Imperatives Moral Imperatives
Kant: “what is” Kant: “what is” Kant: “what ought to be”
advancing levels of morality advancing levels of morality advancing levels of morality
Figure 8.3 HRM’s morality and areas of prime concerns
cerns had been the establishment of a factory regime that domesticated

peasants by processing them into labourers. HRM’s predominant
concern during the 17th and 18th century was the use of force – some-
times in all its brutality – to establish a factory system, first in Europe,
then in other countries. As the domestication of labour progressed and
became more ‘scientific’ under Taylor’s ‘worker-equals-gorilla/ox’ ideo-
logy enshrined in his ‘(Un-)Scientific Management’, it turned HRM/
personnel management into a crypto-scientific enterprise. Abhorred
and contradictory to society’s ethical standards, rejected by reformers,
and fought against by trade unions and Labour parties, over time HRM
was forced to move harsh factory regimes towards more sophisticated
methods for the domestication of labour. In the wake of this, 17th to
19th century’s labourers were now called employees (20th century) and
human resources/human capital (21st century). HRM’s initial switch
from McGregor’s theory X to theory Y (1960 & 2006) was furthered by
the invention of sophisticated HRM methods and behavioural
modification – read: manipulation – techniques.776 These are expres-
sions of Kant’s ‘what is’ rather than ‘what ought to be’ because they are
in factual existence in most companies and corporations (Figure 8.3,
bottom).
This development was paralleled by an increased diversification of
managerial tasks and the invention of Managerialism as HRM’s prime
ideology (Klikauer 2013). With that, personnel management’s and later
HRM’s concern shifted from factory-regimes and punishment-methods
towards its present task, namely the creation of profits linked to the indi-
vidual performance of employees (stage 2). This demanded the develop-
ment of an ideology based on self-interest, selfishness, self-centredness,
and egoism on the part of HRM which has been extended into the area
of employees. Today, the core of HRM’s ideology is not directed towards
punishing (1), virtue ethics, or inter-group human relations (3) but
towards general management’s real bottom line. The driving force
behind HRM remains shareholder-value and its usefulness to general
management in achieving this. Hence, stage 2 remains the classical
home of HRM morality.777
The invented managerial imperatives of selfishness and egoism that
became known as ‘Me, Myself, and I’ and ‘The Age of Me-First’ rarely
include virtue ethics as outlined in classical Greek philosophy and
modern virtue ethics. The moral stage 3 remains unachievable for HRM
(Figure 8.3). HRM is simply not based on virtue ethics, Aristotelian, or
Adorno’s philosophy. Instead, it remains an agency that operates
within the tight parameters of the economic business system of capital-
ism driven by self-interest. Apart from lobbying activities conducted by
large corporations, PR-firms, and employer federations, HRM is not
predominantly concerned with law and order which build the essence
of stage 4. Instead, it tends to invent its own micro-cosmos of crypto-
legalities in the form of HR policies, rules, and internal corporate regu-
lations. Equally, HRM’s internal affairs are not based on democratic
decision-making processes. Rather than engaging into democratic law-
making, HRM engages in supporting an organisational regime designed
for profit-making whilst often viewing society’s laws and regulations as
a hindrance to profit-making – e.g. ‘minimum wage regulations
increase the cost of production’.778 Therefore, there is a sharp dividing
line between the area of HRM morality and the area of social and polit-
ical morality that starts with stage 3 (virtue ethics) and concludes with
stages 4 and 5 (Figure 8.3).
The further one moves away from HRM’s prime self-concern of perfor-
mance management and reward management in the interest of general
management’s drive for shareholder-value i.e. profit-maximisation, the
less likely it is that HRM engages with higher stages of morality. Inside
the realm of social and political concerns, HRM is neither engaged with
laws nor with democracy and the general welfare of society. It uses
human beings purely as human capital inside a process geared towards:
• the extraction of surplus-value (Marx),

• profit-maximisation (liberal),
• shareholder-value (management)
• organisational goals and outcomes (Managerialism), and
• human resources’ performance (HRM).
To HRM, the inherent value of society does not rest in its capacity to
create moral values, moral laws, moral democracy, having an open
debate, social welfare, moral universal values, as well as a responsible and
moral treatment of animals and the environment but in society’s supply
of skilled labour to be processed by HRM. In short, the social and polit-
ical imperatives of stages 3 to 5 create, if anything, an impediment to
HRM. They are not of prime concern and prime value to HRM.
Finally, HRM’s moral behaviour experiences the greatest distance from
moral philosophy when it comes to the latter’s true home as manifested
in stages 6 and 7. Firstly, HRM’s prime concern is not to be a moral insti-
tution but an institution that can contribute to general management’s
real bottom line in the form of compliant, obedient, and selfish human
resources (Jones 2011); secondly, HRM is also not primarily concerned
with universal human rights and Kantian universal moral philosophy;
thirdly and finally, HRM’s most important objective is not to exist in
harmony with the cosmos, nor is it to be found in environmental ethics,
land rights, or animal welfare. In sum, HRM is not primarily concerned
with moral imperatives because it operates under general management’s
imperatives of profit-maximisation. Its morality is neither found in social-
political imperatives representing the middle-layer nor in moral philo-
sophy, the highest layer (Figure 8.3). In other words, for HRM such moral
imperatives are distant. The middle layer represents externalities to the
managerial process at best and a hindrance to HRM at worst.
Aligned to management/HRM’s push for deregulation is
Managerialism’s ideological push for deregulation providing an overall
ideological orientation that seeks to convert societies into support-
engines for Managerialism. In addition to HRM’s highly problematic
relationship to state regulation and democracy that define stage 5,
HRM has also buffered itself against potential moral demands from
stages 6 and 7 by using social, political, and organisational imperatives
as a barrier. This prevents moral demands from infiltrating the domain
of HRM. HRM’s sphere simply views moral issues as aspects to be dealt
with by society – not by HRM itself. By ideologically segregating itself
from societal moral demands, HRM seeks to artificially isolate itself. It
seeks to block out philosophical ethics by protecting HRM via social
(3), legal (4), and political issues (5). In that way, HRM can safely locate
ethics far beyond the general realm of its operation (2). Once HRM has
isolated itself from moral philosophy (6 & 7), it only has to deal with
organisational issues and can reduce essential issues of universalism
and humanity (6) as well as environmental ethics (7) to impracticalities
that exist quite distant from, if not independent of HRM.779
As a third and perhaps most essential conclusion, the following can

be noted. Once an agency’s behaviours and actions affect others,
morality is involved. Hence, HRM is inexorably linked to morality and
therefore to moral philosophy. Ever since Fayol’s (1916) key elements
of management, HRM operates within his six key activities of ‘forecast-
ing, planning, organizing, commanding, coordinating, and control-
ling’ geared towards profit-maximisation. HRM applies these to the
human side of the enterprise:
1. HRM forecasts the demand of labour through, for example, numer-

ical flexibility dividing employees into core and periphery workers
with the latter suffering from precarious forms of employment;
2. Fayol’s ‘planning’ is termed resource planning and HR planning in
HRM terminology;
3. HRM is most directly involved in Fayol’s ‘organising’ of human
resources;
4. HRM’s commanding position is most directly visible in HRM’s
power of disciplinary action;
5. Fayol’s ‘coordinating’ is a twofold task for HRM because it coor-
dinates human resources through, for example, performance man-
agement but also coordinates the human side of the enterprise with
general management; and finally,
6. Fayol’s ‘controlling’ is enshrined in HRM’s control over recruitment
and selection, interviews, performance management, the invention
of KPIs and HR policies, the setting up of job evaluations, job
descriptions, workplace design, etc.
All of these six points involve human beings and morality. HRM fore-
casts and predicts external market developments and internal and
organisational behaviours of human resources. For HRM, organisa-
tional behaviour and organisational psychology are key areas of
concern. HRM’s planning of manpower, human resources, and a
demand for employees, called HRD (Human Resource Development)
carries moral demands. Equally, HRM’s ability to organise human
beings (job descriptions, work tasks, etc.) and its commanding preroga-
tive as well as coordinating others in a hierarchical way also involves
morality. Finally, HRM controls others most directly through wages,
working time, working conditions. It affects human resources through
HRM’s managerially constructed working environment.
If one accepts American philosopher Searle’s division between ‘brute’
and ‘socially constructed’ facts (1996), i.e. facts that exist independent
of us – the sunrise – versus socially or organisationally created facts, i.e.

facts that people have produced such as recruitment and selection, per-
formance management, and of course HRM, then HRM falls into
Searle’s second category. HRM only exists because it depends on us,
because people have invented management, invented personnel man-
agement, and converted it into HRM. HRM is not a brute fact as it does
not exist independent of us but rather ‘because’ of us. Once set up,
HRM sustains its own existence primarily in two ways: firstly, it acts
upon others based on an invented ‘managerial prerogative’ and sec-
ondly, it needs others to ‘go with the flow’ (Smith 2010), to accept
HRM, to be affirmative to HRM, and to recognise HRM. In that, it
depends on others and their recognition. The moral concept of recog-
nition is highly relevant to moral philosophy.780 Inside moral philo-
sophy’s theory of recognition, it is the duality of HRM’s ability to
enforce recognition onto others and the recognition it receives from
others that sustains its existence. Precisely because of this duality, HRM
as a ‘socially constructed reality’ can never escape from morality and
from moral philosophy. Consequently, its morality can be assessed
through the seven stages of morality.
Secondly, virtually everything ever written on morality and moral
philosophy can be categorised into the seven stages. And it has been
found that all seven stages relate to moral philosophy in one way or
the other and are underpinned by moral philosophy. In short, there is
a dialectical, descriptive, and prescriptive relationship between each of
the seven stages and different moral philosophies. Overall however,
these seven stages and their different forms of moral philosophy can be
applied to HRM without restrictions, qualifications, and reservations.
As a result of this project, stark discrepancies between HRM and moral
philosophy have become visible. One of the clearest problems for HRM
is the contradiction between the essence of moral philosophy (human
life) and the essence of HRM (top-down management of human
resources under performance management).781 As a result, HRM’s
enclave has become visible (Figure 8.3). Its self-assigned place of being
focused on business organisations orients HRM towards managing
people for profit gains. It necessarily disconnects itself from the essence
of moral philosophy in respect to human and environmental ethics
which form a more or less complete body of today’s moral philosophy.
Essentially, moral philosophy’s prime focus is not restricted to organ-
isational borders and its prime motivation is neither performance
management nor recruitment and selection. As a consequence, HRM
and moral philosophy are alien to one another. For example, what
moral philosophy sees as essential for a moral human existence –

virtue ethics, the happiness principle, the Kingdom of Ends, universal-
ism, and a good and clean natural environmental – are simply
externalities to HRM’s key operational needs. Virtually every writer on
HRM has outlined key functions of HRM but none mentions moral
philosophy. This may be so because no key moral philosophy is sup-
portive of HRM’s eight key areas: i) Industrial and employment rela-
tions, unions, and collective bargaining; ii) human resource
development, learning and training; iii) performance management;
iv) reward management, benefits, and remuneration; v) human
resource planning; vi) occupational health and safety; vii) recruitment
and selection; and viii) work and job design. In other words, HRM
lacks a distinctive consciousness of itself as a moral actor and as being
connected to a moral society and a moral universe. It lacks a distinctive
concept of moral human beings and its place in humanity.
The main difference between moral philosophy and HRM appears to
be in the following: instead of focusing on human needs, HRM focuses
on organisational needs. For moral philosophy it is the other way
around. Once stripped down to its bare essence, HRM’s shortcomings
become highly transparent. Despite all attempts by ‘The Servants of
Power’ (Baritz 1960) and their writings on HRM, the essence of HRM
positions HRM inside stages 1 and more so in stage 2. In an organisa-
tional world of zero-sum every attempt to go beyond selfishness,
rewarding, and what HRM calls moral philosophy (stage 2) comes at a
cost to HRM. Only when focusing on the morality of stage 2, HRM
realises its full potentialities. In the final analysis, HRM morality oscil-
lates between organisational obedience (1) and rewards (2).
As a fourth and final conclusion, HRM can never be a moral actor
enhancing virtue ethics (3) because virtues conflict with HRM’s organ-
isational tasks. Such a focus would shift HRM’s centre of attention
towards a non-productive and costly area: virtues (3). HRM can also
never be an actor who enhances law and order (4) because labour law,
for example, impairs its scope of operation and activities hence HRM’s
anti-union focus and its push for deregulation. Following on from that,
the acceptance of ‘social order’ (4) that might replace HRM’s organisa-
tional order would hinder HRM’s eight key activities and would
damage its need for hierarchy, asymmetrical power relations, and the
organisational division into superiors (HRM) and subordinates
(employees, human resources, underlings, and subordinates).
HRM can never allow those who are ruled by HRM’s organisational
rule to engage in rule-making. It has to negate democracy (5) in all its
forms ranging from industrial to workplace democracy. Once HRM

took on the moral demands of democracy and social welfare (5), it
would cease to be HRM. As a result the term ‘democratic HRM’ is a tau-
tology. It simply does not and can never exist – neither in reality nor
in textbooks. HRM’s existence would most obviously end when it
adopted the morality of stages 6 and 7. If HRM were to move from
being a ‘Kingdom of Means’ towards becoming a ‘Kingdom of Ends’
and from treating people as human beings rather than human
resources, it would end HRM’s existence. Finally, the icing on the cake
would come through the adoption of environmental ethics (7). This
would be the final nail in the coffin of HRM. HRM can never live in
harmony with nature because it is part of an economic structure that
has as its core the exploitation not only of human but also of natural
resources. On the other hand however, the adaptation of the moral
demands of those higher stages would establish HRM as a truly moral
actor.
Since moral philosophy and HRM are opposing ideas, the task of
Managerialism and its ‘Servants of Power’ is to negate this, to make it
disappear, to non-highlight these contradictions, to make HRM appear
moral, to eclipse contradictions between profits and morality and
between human beings and human resources, to eliminate moral
philosophy through focusing on the PR-exercise of corporate social
responsibility, to invent stakeholder theories, corporate sustainability,
and whatever ideological tool might serve the purpose of covering up
the fact that HRM has been, is, and always will be a fundamentally
unethical project. Finally, moral philosophy and HRM remain contra-
dictory forces that can never be reconciled. Both represent an unsolv-
able dilemma to one another. However, for HRM the answer to the
dilemma of ‘profit-vs.-morality’ is very simple. When HRM has to
choose between ‘profits or morality’, the former wins every time. Then
as today, the guiding principle still is:782
With adequate profit, capital is very bold.

A certain 10 per cent will ensure its employment anywhere;
20 per cent certain will produce eagerness;
50 per cent, positive audacity;
100 per cent will make it ready to trample on all human laws;
300 per cent, and there is not a crime at which it will scruple,
nor a risk it will not run, even to the chance of its owner being hanged.
If turbulence and strife will bring a profit, it will freely encourage both.
Smuggling and the slave-trade have amply proved all that is here stated.
Ultimately however, HRM and people inside and outside of HRM

might still possess concepts capable of bridging the gap between HRM’s
destructive and unethical present and a post-HRM future. This gap is to
be bridged by those forces seeking to unify human self-actualisation
with an ethical life and environmental sustainability. This may hold
many environmental, ethical, and humanitarian promises still
unfulfilled by the presence of HRM. In this negation rests the hope for
an extra-organisational and organisational life – not just existence –
beyond the current moral confinements of HRM. A post-HRM project
remains loyal to those who – without hope – have given, and continue
to give, their life to the great refusal set against organisational domina-
tion as engineered by HRM. This is no longer a hopeless enterprise
because…
it is only for the sake of those without hope that hope is given to us.
Notes
1 Similarly, this book does not follow a common trend in business and
management ethics that simply adds ‘morality’ to management (Klikauer
2010:2) or, in worst cases, seeks to adjust moral philosophy to the ideo-
logical demands of management and business (e.g. Altman’s ‘what Kant
cannot contribute to business ethics’ (2007), i.e. Kant is framed as a
philosopher that can/cannot contribute to business ethics rather than
‘can business and/or business ethics measure up to Kantian moral philo-
sophy’. These may appear as rather finely tuned nuances but nonetheless,
they are highly relevant for the prevailing ideology of management, busi-
ness, and, above all, Managerialism (Klikauer 2013).
2 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Kohlberg; Klikauer (2012:232); Carlin &
Strong (1995:388); Maclagan (2007:49, 52f.); Lan et al. (2010:184);
Velasquez (2012:38–40); Copoeru (2012:40); Schwind et al. (2013:28f.);
Hodgson (2013:116); Vigilant et al. (2013:205); Standwick & Standwick
(2014:116). This also applies to the well-rehearsed critique on Kohlberg
(e.g. Gilligan 1982; cf. Kjonstad & Willmott 1995:459; see also Reed’s
counterpoint to Gilligan in his book Following Kohlberg, 1997:221ff. and
‘Kohlberg’s Response to Gilligan’ also published in Reed’s book,
1997:246ff.). For a good overview see: Kakkori & Huttunen (2010) and a
good application: Diefenbach (2013:111–119).
3 MacLagan (2007:7) notes ‘many managers (and other people) seem to
assume that the regulation of employees’ moral behaviour at work is both
essential and justifiable…they are primarily concerned with mainlining
control’. Dale (2012:23); Bauman & Donskis (2013); Hodgson
(2013:129ff.).
4 Singer (1994); Zigon (2008); Krebs (2011).
5 Orwell (1945); Svallfors (2006).
6 http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-
manifesto/ch02.htm; Piven (2012); Berlin (2012a & 2012b).
7 Marx and Engels (1848); Sayer (2010); Weil et al. (2009:27ff.).
8 MacIntyre (1983); Legge (1998); Guest (1999); Crouch (2012).
9 Wood (1972:250 & 257); Klikauer (2010:88–125); Ferrarin (2011).
10 The same goes for today’s managerial regimes. ‘Despite all the rhetoric
about flat, lean, and virtual organisations and about family-based, team-
based, and network-based modes of organising, most organisations still
function on the basis of hierarchical principles and mechanisms.
Hierarchy is still the backbone and central nervous system of our organi-
sations – even the post-modern ones’ (Diefenbach 2013:184).
11 Klikauer (2010:88); http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/metaethics/. Perhaps
one possible separation between ‘morality’ and ‘ethics’ can be found in a
journal called ‘Ethical theory and Moral Practice’ (springer.com), i.e.
ethics is linked to theory as presented by moral philosophy while morality
refers to the practice of moral conduct and the moral behaviour of people.
235
236 Notes
12 Austrian (2008); Modgil (2012); Gibbs (2013); Snarey (2013); Standwick &
Standwick (2014:116); Kramar et al. (2014:539).
13 Klikauer (2010:126–169); Klikauer (2012); Garz (2009); Lan et al.
(2010:184); Modgil (2012); Lumpkin & Stoll (2013); Rowe (2013); Wren
(2013); Skirstad et al. (2013) Cushman et al. (2013).
14 Wright (1994); Boxall (1996); Dickenson et al. (1996); Storey (1996);
Trezise (1996); Strauss (2001); Wells & Schminke (2001); Weaver &
Trevion (2001); Fisher & Shirole (2001); Barratt (2002); Fisher & Southey
(2005); Kacmar (2007); Quatro et al. (2007); Gilmore & Williams (2007);
Barcia et al. (2009); Verbeek (2011); Thompson (2011); Jones et al. (2013);
Klikauer 2014.
15 Kacmar (2007:76); Jones et al. (2013); Wren (2013); Schwind et al.
(2013:28ff).
16 Radkau (2013); Velasquez (2012:241ff.) and especially Reed’s ‘Stage 7’ as out-
lined in Reed’s book Following Kohlberg (1997:84ff.); cf. Parry et al. (2013).
17 Price & D’aunno (1983); Beardwell & Claydon (2011:26); Jackson et al.
(2012:297); Schwind et al. (2013:261).
18 Jackson et al. (2012:34); Kramar et al. (2011:308); Macky (2009:13f., 110 &
342); Grobler et al. (2011:563 & 570); Schwind et al. (2013:11); Beardwell
& Claydon (2011:12); Gunnigle et al. (2011:54, 64, 71); Nel et al.
(2012:15).
19 Jackson et al. (2012:549–551); Kramar et al. (2011:258f.); Macky (2009:7);
Schwind et al. (2013:132); Beardwell & Claydon (2011:43–45); Gunnigle
et al. (2011:83, 211–232, 264); Nel et al. (2012:104, 169, 368); Grobler
et al. (2011:15f.).
20 Jackson et al. (2012:80); Schwind et al. (2013:34); Beardwell & Claydon
(2011:432); Macky (2009:231); Gunnigle et al. (2011:344); Nel et al.
(2012:47); Grobler et al. (2011:515).
21 For someone conditioned in HRM’s linear thinking – good ‘perfor-
mance→outcomes’ or ‘good recruitment & selection→good candidates’ or
‘positive satisfaction→good performance’, dialectical (+/–) thinking is highly
challenging when the ‘safe’ world of HRM-linearity is left behind and
replaced by a thinking that contrasts positives with negatives.
22 Kohlberg (1973:636f.); Linstead et al. (2009:385–393); Jones et al. (2013).
23 According to Reed (1997:81), these stages (except for Kohlberg’s illusive
7th stage) are summed up as: the naïve moral realism of stage 1, the rela-
tivism of interests and claims of stage 2 (cf. Moser & Carson 2001; Levy
2002), the interpersonal norms and perspectives of stage 3, the social
norms and perspectives of stage 4, the universal principles of stage 5, and
the explicit formulation of a criterion of reversibility of stage 6. Kohlberg
himself saw these stages as a universal model. They apply to every form of
management, in every country, under every condition (Bauman 1993:8).
24 However, one can exclude this stage because of its irrelevance to the
morality of management. It indicates an early infant stage arguing that
newborns cannot develop moral understanding because of insufficient
self-determination and self-reflection based on limited and restricted
interactions with the outside world. In the words of Socrates ‘an unexam-
ined life is not worth living’ (cf. Quinn 1953:214). Kohlberg et al.
Notes 237
(1983:17) define moral judgement as ‘(a) prescriptive: a categorical obliga-

tion to act, and (b) universalisable: a point of view which any human
being could or should adapt in reaction to a moral dilemma’ (cf. Locke
1980:104).
25 KZ stands for the German word Konzentrationslager (concentration camp).
While KZ represents the worst punishment regime, punishing has a long
tradition with its roots in religion (cf. Goldman 1979). According to
Singer (1985), ‘those who obey the moral law will be rewarded by an eter-
nality of bliss while everyone else roasts in hell’. According to Gomberg
(1997:57), ‘they [Hobbes and Locke] train the young to obey and to inter-
nalise norms of obedience in forming their identities’ (cf. Levi 1959; Gert
2010).
26 Mead (1930 & 1934); Habermas (1997).
27 Crusoe is no more than a romantic, conservative – if not racist – ideology
which in reality never existed. The author, Daniel Defoe himself has
damaged the conservative Robinson Crusoe fantasy of a single, indepen-
dent, and lone island man surviving on his own because even Mr Crusoe
‘used’ someone to survive – a ‘native’ (sic!) appropriately called Friday, a
working day. Hence, even Mr Crusoe had company and experienced ‘the
other’. Robinson Crusoe (1719) is no more than a romantic, conservative –
if not racist – idea (cf. Solomon 2004:1028). On Hegel’s ‘The Other’, Krebs
(2008:165) noted, ‘at first we judge others; we then begin to judge our-
selves as we think others judge us; finally we judge ourselves as an impar-
tial, disinterested third party might’ (cf. Reid & Yanarella 1977:522;
Gomberg 1997:44f.; Krebs 2008). According to Fromm (1949:23), ‘man is
not a blank sheet of paper on which [HRM] can write its text’ (cf. Dalton
1959:253; Sayer 2008:21).
28 Kohlberg’s stages are based on rationally created forms of organisations
which establish patterns of thought (Dugatkin 1997:3). Krebs (2008:164)
noted ‘moral judgments are viewed by most theorists as products of moral
beliefs. Dual-processing theories have shown that people may derive
beliefs in two ways: by processing information quickly, automatically, and
mindlessly and by processing information in a more considered and con-
trolled manner’.
29 Cf. Darwin (1871:474); Kropotkin (1902); Allee (1931 & 1938); Axelrod &
Hamilton (1981); Lovejoy (1981); Singer (1985); Ridley (1996); Dugatkin
(1997); Gomberg (1997:45); Sober (1998); Mysterud (2000:583); Gintis
et al. (2003); Sachs et al. (2004); McCloskey (2006:439); Krebs (2008);
Tomasello (2009).
30 Some have credited McGregor with launching the field of organisational
behaviour (Kreitner 2009:43). Theory X assumes that most people must be
coerced and threatened with punishment before they will work. Coercion
is seen as a thing that must be used, when someone is forced by some
agent, so that he is not able to do the contrary (Wertheimer 1987).
Aquinas claims that ‘the notion of law contains two things: first, that it is
a rule of human acts; secondly, that it has coercive power’. Coercion
becomes a legal tool that works as a hindrance to freedom; cf. Nozick’s
(1969) ‘coercee’; Zimmerman (1981 & 2002); cf. McGregor (1988–1989).
238 Notes
Kreitner (2009:44); cf. Ellerman (2001); Bobic & Davis (2003); Arnold
(2005:311); Arnold & Randal (2010:268–274); Aamodt (2010:443). Nearly
every textbook on management and organisational behaviour mentions
McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y. In 2009 ‘Theory X and Theory Y’
received 7.8 million hits on the Google internet search site.
31 Jackson et al. (2012:410f.); Beardwell & Claydon (2011:506); Schwind
et al. (2013:333).
32 Gibbs (2003:46f.) called all subsequent stages after stage 4: ‘beyond peer’
(cf. Kohlberg 1985:409; Dugatkin 1997:14ff.; Reed 1997:37ff.). This carries
connotations to mutualism where cooperative acts benefit one person or
more (Dugatkin 1997:31ff.; Rawls 1980:528). Krebs (2008:154f.) outlines
five types of cooperation: mutualism, concrete reciprocity, cooperation
with cooperators, indirect reciprocity, and long-term social investment
(cf. deWaal 1996). ‘In fact we know from both Kapauku and Hawaii of the
practice of killing those, even kings, who refuse to share’ (Gomberg
1997:50); ‘most humans are emotionally compelled to impose “altruistic
punishment” on others who act selfishly’ (Miller 2007:111); cf. ‘free-rider-
problem’ (Bowles & Gintis 2002; Tomasello 2009:77, 82f.).
33 Connor (1995); Beardwell & Claydon (2011:669); Stone (2014:454).
34 Axelrod (1984); Nowak & Highfield (2011); Klikauer (2012b).
35 Jackson et al. (2012:72ff., 82, 153f., 365f.); Kramar et al. (2011:87ff.);
Macky (2009:192, 347, 388); Schwind et al. (2013:102); Beardwell &
Claydon (2011:631f.); Gunnigle et al. (2011:271f.); Nel et al. (2012:52);
Grobler et al. (2011:195).
36 Reed (1997:9); cf. Levitt (1958:47) emphasised in the Harvard Business
Review ‘welfare and society are not the corporation’s business. Its business
is making money, not sweet music’. Making money means that ‘their
starting salaries are four times the poverty threshold for four-person fam-
ilies’ (Crittenden 1984). Top-managers take this without moral concerns’.
37 Kohlberg (1973:635) saw this stage – together with Rawls (cf. Nagel 1973;
Gomberg 1997:59f.), Locke, Rousseau, and Kant – as ‘the highest level of
abstraction’ (cf. Clark & Gintis 1978; Punzo 1996:20; Gibbs 2003:46f.;
Schaefer 2007) because well defined moral imperatives (Kant) have been
applied universally. Kohlberg believed there are ten universal moral values
that ‘are common to all human societies’ (Wood 1972:246; Reimer et al.
1983:84; Reed 1997:130ff; Gibbs 1977).
38 Schwind et al. (2013:174); Velasquez (2012:215).
39 Sidgwick (1874 & 1889) regarded an egoist [stage 2] ‘as someone who
expresses no concern of the point of view of the universe’ (stage 6). One
might also see economic gain (stage 2) and social acceptance (stage 3) as
prime drivers for moral action. Most philosophers believe that egoism is
not acceptable, i.e. I should secure my own interest without regard for the
effect on others’ (Gomberg 1994:538); cf. Sikula (1996:6, 140); Rachels
(2003:63–90); Graham (2004:17ff.); Lapsley (2006:52); McCloskey
(2006:36).
40 In McMahon’s words (1981:247), ‘a firm is morally required to benefit the
community in which it operates – or society at large – in ways that go
beyond the provision of jobs, goods, and services as part of the firm’s
normal (profit-seeking) operations’ (cf. Phillips et al. 2003:493). It also
Notes 239
means to go beyond Carr’s statement (1968:152), ‘all sensible business-

men prefer to be truthful, but they seldom feel inclined to tell the
“whole” truth’. This applies to businessmen previously known as ‘Robber
Barons’ (Silk & Vogel 1976:11) a term successfully deleted from public dis-
course by corporate mass media. Stage 5 means telling the whole truth,
not a selected, modified, and manipulated version of it. But Carr
(1968:153) concludes, ‘if a man has become prosperous in business, he
has sometimes departed from the strict truth’. As Hampden-Turner
(1970:217) noted in his chapter on ‘Corporate Radicalism’, ‘people often
stumble over the truth but they pick themselves up and hurry along as if
nothing had happened’ (cf. Beardwell & Claydon 2011:532–535).
41 Jackson et al. (2012:6f.); Kramar et al. (2011: 547f.); Beardwell & Claydon
(2011: 596f.)
42 Guest (1990); Keenoy (1990); Peltonen & Vaara (2012); Jansses & Steyaert
(2012).
43 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainability; Klikauer (2008); Shearman
(1990); DesJardins (2013:74ff.).
44 Kaplan & Norton (1992, 1993, 2004); Biazzo & Garengo (2011); Modell
(2012); Schwind et al. (2013:319); Jackson et al. (2012:336); Kramar et al.
(2011:38–39, 525–526, 642); Beardwell & Claydon (2011:70ff.); Macky
(2009:421); Nel et al. (2012:108 & 417); Stone’s ‘Managing Human
Resources’ (2013:20f.) even manages to reduce ethics to two pages. One
page contains two figures and 1/2 of the other page is dedicated to whistle-
blowing. Just one paragraph is on ethics containing no less than five ques-
tion marks and three sentences on ethics.
45 None of the seven textbooks used to evaluate HRM’s overall morality
mentions the term ‘moral philosophy’ (Jackson et al. 2012; Kramar et al.
2011; Beardwell & Claydon 2011; Macky 2009; Gunnigle et al. 2011; Nel
et al.: 2012; Grobler et al. 2011).
46 Of these, standard HRM textbooks relay mostly the often rehearsed triage
of (1) virtue ethics (Aristotle), (2) Kantian ethics, and (3) utilitarianism
with the occasional excursion into Rawlsian justice ethics and a few
others.
47 Dickens (1853); Hart (1993); Armstrong (2000 & 2012); Gunderson
(2001); Donkin (2010); Thornthwaite (2012); Fass (2013).
48 Hart (1993) noted ‘treating people as a resource is fundamentally exploita-
tive and dehumanising’.
49 Hegel’s Phenomenology (1807); Kojève (1947); Bolton & Houlian (2008).
50 Boggs (2012); Rothkopf (2012); Klikauer (2013).
51 Schwind et al. (2013:15); Kramar et al. (2011:558); Beardwell & Claydon
(2011:57); Macky (2009:158).
52 ASS (1998); Bunting (2004); Farmer (2003); Bauman (2005); Shipler
(2005); Ross (2009); Sheth (2010); Thompson (2010); Alexander (2011);
Ehrenreich (2011); Kalleberg (2011); Fields (2012); Pittenger (2012).
53 Dickens (1853); Thompson (1963); Hobsbawm (1964); Klikauer (2013).
54 Jackson et al. (2012:34–65); Kramar et al. (2011:26–45); Macky
(2009:26–28); Schwind et al. (2013:24); Beardwell & Claydon (2011:32);
Gunnigle et al. (2011:46); Nel et al. (2012:472–476); Grobler et al.
(2011:657).
240 Notes
55 Jackson et al. (2012:489–499); Kramar et al. (2011:108ff.); Macky

(2009:380f.); Nel et al. (2012:81); Grobler et al. (2011:468–471).
56 Jackson et al. (2012:520); Kramar et al. (2011:152); Beardwell & Claydon
(2011:431); Macky (2009:121); Gunnigle et al. (2011:267–270, 327f.); Nel
et al. (2012:56); Grobler et al. (2011:497–500 & 508–521); cf. Reed’s ‘col-
lectivism vs. individualism’ (1997:191ff.).
57 Castro (2002); Ampuja (2012); Phillipson (2013); Klikauer (2013).
58 Pereboom (2004); O’Connor (2010); Goh (2012); Lemos (2013).
59 Kramar et al. (2011:197,414); Schwind et al. (2013:243); Jackson et al.
(2012:299 & 333–335); Beardwell & Claydon (2011:467,505); Macky
(2009:319); Gunnigle et al. (2011:4f.); Nel et al. (2012:287); Grobler et al.
(2011:308–312); Herzberg (1966 & 2011); Leslie et al. (2012); Nel et al.
(2012:11).
60 Kramar et al. (2011: 414); Macky (2009:340f.); Grobler et al. (2011:361);
on organisational misbehaviour: Ackroyd & Thompson (1999); Barnes &
Taksa (2012); Karlsson (2012); Kirchhoff & Karlsson (2013); Stone
(2014:370f.).
61 The Servants of Power (Baritz 1960); Skinner’s reference is quoted from
Kohn (1999:19); cf. Kohn (1999:24–6); Lemov (2006); Klikauer
(2007:76–96). One of the early ‘Servants of Power’ knew this already:
Harvard Business School’s Fritz Roethlinsberger noted in his book
‘Management and Morale’ (1943:180), ‘modern psychopathology has con-
tributed a great deal to the subject of control’ (cf. Karlins & Andrews 1972)
and Karlins & Andrews (1972:6) noted ‘…most forms of scientific behav-
iour control are intrinsically evil because they deprive man of his
“freedom”’.
62 Ewen et al. (1966); Macky (2009:343f.); Kramar et al. (2011:197);
Beardwell & Claydon (2011:505); Nel et al. (2012:293ff.).
63 Jackson et al. (2012:127f., 299); Kramar et al. (2011:352–357); Schwind et
al. (2013:302); Macky (2009:325); Gunnigle et al. (2011:200); Nel et al.
(2012:380f.); Grobler et al. (2011:361).
64 Macky (2009:262, 265, 271); Parmenter (2010); Jackson et al. (2012:21);
Schwind et al. (2013:35).
65 Schwind et al. (2013:307ff.); Jackson et al. (2012:257–259, 341f.); Kramar
et al. (2011:167ff., 220–227, 341f.); Beardwell & Claydon (2011:464f.);
Macky (2009:261f.); Gunnigle et al. (2011:192); Nel et al. (2012:405f.);
66 Taylor (1911); Fayol (1916); Marglin (1974); Magretta (2012); Klikauer
(2007:143–159; 2010; 2012:22f.); McGregor (1960 & 2006); Sydow et al.
(2009).
67 Marcuse (1966); Legge (1998:15 & 22).
68 Schrijvers (2004); Gabriel (2012); Croker (2012).
69 Wright (1994:228–232); Strauss (2001).
70 Perlmutter (1997); Harding (2003); Graham et al. (2008); Stambaugh
(2010); Jobrack (2011).
71 Jackall (1988 & 2006); Schwartz (1990); Harding (2003); Schrijvers (2004);
Watson (2010); Legge (2005); Thompson (2007); Collings & Wood (2009);
Keenoy (2009); Samuel (2010); Rowley & Jackson (2011); Boxall & Purcell
(2011); Mello (2011); Klikauer (2011a); Fones-Wolf (2013).
Notes 241
72 Jackson et al. (2012:86–88); Kramar et al. (2011:56); Beardwell & Claydon

(2011:21–23); Gunnigle et al. (2011:49); Nel et al. (2012:51).
73 Dessler (2011); Swailes (2013).
74 See also the 5th edition (Kramar, R., Bartram, T. & DeCieri, H. (eds) 2014.
Human Resource Management in Australia – Strategy, People, Performance
(5th ed.), Sydney: McGrath-Hill) that includes changes in page numbers
and cases but remains [overall] the same but an updated book.
75 In the incident of South Africa, a second textbook was also used: Nel, P. S.,
Werner, A., Poisat, P., Sono, T., du Plessis, A. & Ngalo O. 2012. Human
Resources Management (in South Africa, 8th ed.), Cape Town: Oxford
University Press of South Africa.
76 Storey (2007); Anthony et al. (2006); De Cieri & Kramer (2005);
Torrington et al. (2005); Linstead et al. (2010); Kramar et al. (2011);
Hatcher (2002); Johnson (2007); Pinnington (2007).
77 Winstanley & Woodall (2000); Jack et al. (2012); Islam (2012).
78 Klikauer (2010 & 2012); Griseri (2013).
79 Trezise (1996:87); Wells & Schminke (2001:136); Weaver & Trevino
(2001:124); O’Leary-Kelly & Bowes-Sperry (2001:77); Quatro et al.
(2007:433); Verbeek (2011:1945); Moyer (2012:213); Klikauer (2012).
80 However ‘Human Resource Management can never be ethical’ and ‘ethical
Human Resource Management is an oxymoron’ (Wilcox 2012:88).
81 Kjonstad & Willmott (1995:452f.); Kakkori & Huttunen (2010:18–20);
Wong (2013).
82 Kohlberg (1987:22); Brunsson (1985); Werhane (2013).
83 This is not to be understood in Plato’s sense who advocated that the
highest pleasure, in fact, comes from intellectual speculation. A somewhat
opposite view is presented by Sade’s pursuit of pleasure even when this
was evil and criminal (1787).
84 Taylor (1911); cf. Klikauer (2007:153); Klikauer (2013); Polák (2013).
85 Reducing humans to numbers on a balance sheet (balanced scorecard)
dehumanises humans. This is not dissimilar to the use of people and their
dehumanisation by tattooing a number on their forearm in order to be
used in a Nazi SS-Industry programme called Menschenmaterial (human
material/resource). Stage 1 might not represent the physicality of such a
punishment regime and employees are surely allowed to leave – at certain
times – but HRM still relies on rudiments of punishing systems – fear –
and the creation of distance between itself and employees (Chamberlain
1973:4; Kaplan & Norton 1992 & 1993; Weiss & Finn 2005; McCloskey
2006:2; Thompson 2007; Bolton & Houlihan 2008; Klikauer 2008:53, 163,
211; Sayer 2008:22; Muhr et al. 2010; Kothari 2010).
86 Jackson et al. (2012:419–421); Kramar et al. (2011:510; 2014:532).
87 Cf. Schwartz (1990); in short, selfish managers routinely violate moral
requirements when it is to their advantage to do so (McMahon 1981:251).
One example is the banker’s paradox – the tendency for banks to be least
likely to lend people money who need it most (Krebs 2008:155).
88 Cf. Singer (1985); even Darwin (1871) suggested that animals feel good or
satisfied when they behave in ways that are consistent with their social
instincts and that they feel bad when they do not (Krebs 2008:158; Nowak
& Highfield 2011). McMahon (1981:252) emphasised that while
242 Notes
self-interest is to a certain extent at odds with morality, it appears to con-

tradict the foundations of business [and] Adam Smith claims that indi-
viduals who follow only their own gain are led by an invisible hand to
promote the good of society. In other words, capitalist societies had to
come up with an ideology to close the non-closable gap between indi-
vidual selfishness as the sole motor of economic action (Adam Smith 1759)
on the one hand and the pretence that this favours the common good.
The mysterious conversion of selfishness into a moral good is hidden
behind the myth of an invisible hand (Smith 1776; Henriques 2007:21).
Its invention provided an ideal ideological cover for the unsustainable
contradiction between individual wealth and public welfare under capital-
ism (Smith 1776; Evensky 2005). On this, the godfather of liberal capital-
ism published two books separating morality from business (Sen 2001;
Young 2003).
(2011:107).
90 Brenner & Molander (1977); Weber (1991:298); Punch (1996); Minkes &
Minkes (2008); Croal (2009); Klikauer (2010); www.transparency.org.
91 Kohlberg (1973:642) also emphasised that since Kant formalists have
argued that rational moral judgements must be reversible, consistent, and
universalisable. The keystone of [this] logic is reversibility (1973:641;
cf. 2003:16f.).
92 As the famous definition of power, according to Dahl (1957), has it.
93 This assumes that, despite all propaganda by Managerialism, it is not
‘normal’ for human beings to sit eight hours a day, five days per week,
and for thirty years in front of a computer on a desk or to screw the left
front-wheel to a car (cf. Simon 1947; Dalton 1959; Whyte 1961; cf. Jones
2010). Rather than being reflective of, it alienates human life (Hegel).
94 This is what in less sociological terms has been called ‘the institutional
context or system of constraints’ (Wilcox 2012:86); Islam (2012:37).
(2011:9, 11); Macky (2009:162 & 241).
96 Trivers (1985:388) suggested that a sense of fairness has evolved in the
human species as the standard against which to measure the behaviour of
other people, so as to guard against cheating in reciprocal relationships
(cf. fairness as inequity-aversion, Fehr & Schmidt 1999:819; cf. Rawls
1980:532; Jennings & Kohlberg 1983:48; Heathwood et al. 2010).
97 Stage 6 (Locke 1980) contains democracy and democratic processes that
cannot be reduced to recognising obligations to society, as Sridhar &
Camburn (1993:732) have claimed. One cannot delete parts of Kohlberg
to make it fit to the Moral Development of Corporations (Sridhar &
Camburn’s title). Deleting democracy to make Kohlberg fit into the anti-
democratic orbit of corporations exposes one to the charge of being a
Servant of Power (Baritz 1960).
98 Klikauer (2008); Romani & Szkudlarek (2014).
99 Moral philosophy distinguishes between inherent or intrinsic value and
extrinsic value. The former denotes that an intrinsic value is said to be the
value that a thing has in-itself (Kant), or for its own sake, as such, or in its
own right. An almost complete listing of intrinsic values was outlined by
Notes 243
American moral philosopher William Frankena (1908–1994). It includes:

life, consciousness, and activity; health and strength; pleasures and satis-
factions of all or certain kinds; happiness, beatitude, contentment, etc.;
truth; knowledge and true opinions of various kinds, understanding,
wisdom; beauty, harmony, proportion in objects contemplated; aesthetic
experience; morally good dispositions or virtues; mutual affection, love,
friendship, cooperation; just distribution of goods and evils; harmony and
proportion in one’s own life; power and experiences of achievement; self-
expression; freedom; peace, security; adventure and novelty; and good
reputation, honour, esteem (Frankena 1973). Extrinsic values, on the
other hand, are good not for their own sake but for the sake of something
else to which they are related in some way. In short, HRM is all about
extrinsic values and not about intrinsic ones as enshrined in the external
value of shareholder-value i.e. profit-maximisation, performance manage-
ment, competitive advantages, etc. What HRM does is – in theory – good
for someone else (shareholder-value i.e. profit-maximisation) and not for
the self (e.g. management; cf. Djelic & Vranceanu 2009).
100 Klikauer (2007); Schecter (2010).
101 Marcuse (1964); Klikauer (2007:47, 135, 143–159).
102 On the irrationality of rationality, German philosopher Herbert Marcuse
(1898–1979) wrote (1968:207), in the unfolding of capitalist rationality,
irrationality becomes reason: reason as frantic development of productiv-
ity, conquest of nature, enlargement of the mass of good (and their access-
ibility of broad strata of the population); it is irrational because higher
productivity, domination of nature, and social wealth become destructive
forces (cf. Feyerabend 1981; Bowman 1982; Brunsson 1985; Langley 1989;
Nozick 1993; Habermas 1997; Heath 2003; Gilbert 2005; Cooke 2006).
103 Baritz (1960); Brief (2000); Sison (2008).
104 McCloskey (2006:1–2 & Banerjee 2008:1541). Missing from McCloskey’s
list is Hugo Boss, the former maker of SS-uniforms and the brand clothes
paraded today on any High Street in any city (wikipedia.org/wiki/
Nazi_chic & Hugo Boss Acknowledges Link to Nazi Regime, in: New York
Times, 15th August 1997, p. B01).
105 Carr (1968:144); Lucas (2003:25). On this, Macintyre (1983:352) noted,
anyone’s gain is somebody’s loss and usually somebody else’s loss;
anyone’s benefit is somebody’s cost and usually somebody else’s cost. All
this is made to appear rational from within business and HRM, but ‘what
is irrational if measured from without the system is rational within the
system’ (MacIntyre 1970:61).
106 Smith (1776); cf. Fromm (1949:141).
107 Inkson (2008:277) noted that HRM encourages a ‘depersonalised and
dehumanised view of employment relationship’.
108 Habermas (1997); Klikauer (2008); Dahlberg (2014).
(2011:43); Gunnigle et al. (2011:42); Nel et al. (2012:210); Grobler et al.
(2011:143).
110 In the philosophy of ethics, there are two basic versions of moral orienta-
tions: one version does not examine moral motives when an HR action is
taken. Instead it only examines outcomes and consequences of HRM’s
244 Notes
actions. If the outcome of HRM’s action – disregarding its motives, inten-

tions, and purpose – produces an ethically good result, then such an
action is deemed morally good. This is the philosophical idea of conse-
quentialism. The opposite of consequentialism is, for example, Kantian
morality. Kant focuses our attention on moral motives. For Kant an act
can only be considered morally good if the intentions are good. In
Kantian ethics, HRM cannot claim to have acted morally when its inten-
tions are not directed towards something morally good. In short, one
favours outcomes while the other favours intentions and motives
(cf. Brennan & Lo 2010).
111 Taylor (1911); Klikauer (2007:143–159); Fayol (1916); Kreitner (2009:13f.);
cf. stage model in: Kohlberg (1985:491ff.).
112 Kohlberg (1985:421) noted, because the ‘authoritarian’ is insecure about
the effectiveness of his own internal moral control, he exaggerates the
value and power of external authority and projects his own uncontrolled
or ‘immoral’ impulses upon ‘evil’ members of various out-groups. This
includes a strong belief in social and religious authorities, adherence to
conventional rules, punitive attitudes towards criminals, and deviants,
belief in the prevalence of evil in the world, and the denial of unconven-
tional inner feelings. It is quite likely that the chief opponent of author-
itarianism is an internalised superego which is integrated with the ego.
113 Kohlberg (1985:491) uses the term heteronomous to describe a subordina-
tion or subjection to law; political subjection of a community or state as
opposed to autonomy (Metaph.); and as a term applied by Kant to those
laws which are imposed on us from without, or the violence done to us by
our passions, wants, or desires.
114 Simultaneously, HRM’s ‘justification for discipline’ (Selekman 1959:68)
also changes.
115 Kohlberg (1985:392f. & 492; Nunner-Winkler 1984). Erdynast (1990:251)
defines justice based on Rawls. Rawls (1980) defines the sense of justice as
‘the capacity to understand, to apply and normally to be moved by an
effective desire to act from (and not merely in accordance with) the prin-
ciples of justice as the fair terms of social cooperation’ (cf. Wood 1972;
Nagel 1973).
116 Kohlberg (1985:417) noted, ‘not ratting’ on a friend tended to be justified
in the same external terms (retaliation, being ridiculed, and so on) as con-
formity to more conventional norms (cf. Bowles & Gintis’ ‘homo recipro-
cans’ undertaking peer punishment, 2002); Jennings & Kohlberg
(1983:35).
117 Ten (2013); Macky (2009:387).
118 Rawls (1972). According to Locke (1980:104), utilitarians…adopt the good
of the whole as the ultimate moral arbiter, taking precedence over justice
and respect for persons (cf. Macintyre 1983:355f.).
119 For consequentialism hypothetical ‘if-then’ constructions are the basics of
ethics. For instance, ‘if’ an outcome of a managerial act is moral, ‘then’
such an act is moral.
120 A good example is Kant’s categorical imperative: act in such a way that
you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of
another, always at the same time as an end and never simply as a means.
Notes 245
Immorality is the treatment of others as a means. Morality is the treat-

ment of others as an end in-itself. This is what Kant meant by his
Kingdom of Ends (Fromm 1949:27; cf. Korsgaard 1996) as the final and
universal destination of every human being. Kantian ethics differs funda-
mentally from consequentialism. In Kantian ethics it is the intentions and
motives that make HRM moral, not an accidental outcome. In Kantian
ethics, HRM acts morally when it had the moral intention (cf. Callinicos’
chapter on ‘Justice & Universality’ in his book ‘Resources of Critique’
(2006:217–242).
121 One might outline four forms of justice: distributive, commutative, cor-
rective, and procedural. On Contract Theory or contractualism, Gomberg
(1997:49) noted the difference between Hobbesian Contractualism and
Rawls’ Contractualism; cf. Rawls on Kantian Constructivism (1980).
122 According to Singer (1985), social life, even for animals, requires con-
straints on behaviour. This is achieved through an inter-group morality
developed by a group for a group. For evolutionary biologists it became
clear that cheaters do worse than cooperators and that lions, for example,
have two choices: hunt cooperatively or do not hunt at all (cf. Kohlberg
1964:386; Kohlberg et al. 1983:42; Simon 1990; Dugatkin 1997:31f.;
Tomasello 2009).
123 Gibbs (2003:37f.) describes this as tit-for-tat morality, vengeance in all its
brutality; pragmatic or instrumental, crude, short-term, and sometimes
brutal morality; destructive revenge and blood revenge (p.45);
cf. Chagnon (1988); Mysterud (2000:585); Sachs et al. (2004:139).
124 Hobbes (1651); Nietzsche (1886); Deleuze (1983); Clark (2010); Metzger
(2011).
125 Cf. Beardwell & Claydon (2011:621); Nel et al. (2012:556); Grobler et al.
(2011:580).
126 According to Singer (1985), like humans, social animals may behave in ways
that benefit other members of the group at some cost or risk to themselves.
In other words, morality starts with cooperation and inner-group relations,
not competition (cf. Dugatkin 1997:viii; Kropotkin 1902). When HRM
establishes a moral code that benefits others – non-managerial staff – even
at a risk to HRM itself, it establishes morality. If it does the reverse –
benefiting HRM while offloading risks onto others – it fails morally. Gibbs
(2003:49) calls stage 1+2 the immature stages.
127 Under virtue ethics (Greek arête and Roman virtus), morality is not
regarded as a matter of conformity to a law but an ethical inner desire to
be morally good. Such individuals carry a bag of virtues (Sichel 1976:61)
including: personal honour, being loved, temperance, piety, courage,
justice, wisdom, and self-aggrandisement (Socrates), honesty, rectitude,
charity, faithfulness, non-violence, modesty, courage, temperance, liberal-
ity, magnificence, high-mindedness, gentleness, truthfulness, wittiness,
shared friendship, and justice (Aristotle, cf. Kohlberg et al. 1983:18;
Derrida 1997); simplicity and sincerity (Lao-Tzu); prudence, justice,
restraint or temperance, courage or fortitude (Aquinas 1265–1274); love,
charity, harmony, and generosity (Descartes), benevolence, generosity,
sympathy, and gratitude (Shaftesbury) and purity of heart, patriotism,
fidelity, obedience, courage, and sympathy. Darwin (1871) thought that
246 Notes
sympathy is integral to evolution (in: Krebs 2008:156–158; Tomasello

2009:53), humanity, justice, generosity, and public spirit (Adam Smith,
according to Sen 2001:200), nobleness, dignity, decency, and courtesy
(Hume), while falsehood, egoism, cruelty, adultery, theft, rank, luxury,
and glamour (Lao-Tzu), hedonism & individual greed (Brenner &
Molander 1977:63), nepotism, favouritism, and arbitrariness (Henry
2001:267), narrow-mindedness, greed, avarice, selfishness, myopia, and
egoism (Sikula 1996:18; cf. Rand 1965; Solomon 2004:1025), hypocrisy
and inconsistencies (Brunsson 2002; cf. Heller 1989:39), conformity,
vengefulness, a desire for status ranks with the desire for wealth and
power, aggressiveness, domineering, narcissism, and lack in empathy are
considered vices (Miller 2002:106) to be avoided; morality prohibits
actions such as killing, causing pain, deceiving, and breaking promises but
requires charitable actions, promoting people living together in peace and
harmony, not causing harm to others, and helping them; generosity,
kindness, honesty, courage, social sensitivity, political idealism, intellec-
tual integrity, empathy to children, respectfulness to parents, and loyalty
to friends (Miller 2002:104) and emotional responsiveness to the needs of
others, lovingness, affection, fondness, commitment, forgivingness, trust,
and perspective-taking, niceness, agreeableness, non-violence, honesty,
and heroism (Miller 2002:109); truthfulness, justice, honesty, benevo-
lence, purity, and gratitude (Price & Reid); honesty, responsibility, loyalty,
courage, and friendliness (Kohlberg 1964:390); cooperation, altruism, gen-
erosity, sympathy, kindness, and selflessness (Ridley 1996:38), fidelity,
reparation, gratitude, and self-improvement (Ross); loyalty, fairness,
integrity, and courtesy, knowledge, aesthetic experience, friendship, prac-
tical reasonableness, and religion (Finnis) in line with European
Christendom of faith, hope, charity, love, kindness, equality, humility,
and conscience (quoted from Miller 2002:104); injury of living things is to
be avoided; while wrongdoing harms the soul (Socrates, in: Arrington
1998:7; cf. Lovejoy 1981:345; Erdynast 1990:252; Gomberg 1997:45).
128 Today, evolutionary science, anthropology, and evolutionary ethics have
proven that the survival of the fittest is pure nonsense (cf. Krebs’
‘Morality: An Evolutionary Account’, 2008); Tomasello 2009).
Nevertheless, it is an important ideology for economists and business
(Murphy 1993:149ff.). Hence The Servants of Power (Baritz 1960) and cor-
porate mass media keep the myth alive. Quinn (1953:99) who often sat in
Alfred Sloan’s GM office where he educated them, wrote survival of the
fittest was Mr Sloan’s law.
129 According to Solomon (2004:1021), Aristotle is famous largely as an
enemy of business. He declared trading for profit as wholly devoid of
virtue. Aristotle despised the financial community…he called those who
engaged in commerce ‘parasites’.
130 The opposite of moral rules and their adherence occurs when HRM adopts
what Brunsson (2002) called the Organisation of Hypocrisy because
hypocrisy is the assumption or postulation of moral standards to which
one’s behaviour does not conform (2002:xiii). When hypocrisy reigns,
there is still a causal relation between talk, decisions, and actions, but the
causality is the reverse. Talk or decisions pointing in one direction reduce
Notes 247
the likelihood of the corresponding action actually occurring, while

actions in the particular direction reduce the likelihood of any cor-
responding talk or decisions taking place. Talk and decisions pointing in
one direction do not encourage actions in the same direction; rather, they
compensate for actions in the opposite direction, just as action in one
direction compensates for talk and decisions in a different one (Brunsson
2002:xiv). Hypocrisy makes it possible for people to talk and make deci-
sions about high values, even if they do not act in accordance with such
values themselves (Brunsson 2002:xvii).
131 Virtue ethics continued during feudalism with Catholic ethics such as
Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), Blaise Pascal’s ‘Wager’ (1623–1662),
Baruch Benedict de Spinoza (1632–1677), and Claude Adrien Helvétius
(1715–1771). This tradition was followed by Shaftesbury, Leibniz, Butler,
and even Marquis de Sade’s ‘Misfortunes of Virtue’ (1787) and can be seen
as an expression of virtue ethics. While Kant also wrote on human
dignity, his ethics is generally not associated with virtue ethics.
132 Hegel (1803/4, 1807, 1821, 1830); cf. Marx (1843); Sterrett (1892); Watson
(1894); Marcuse (1940 & 1941); Kojève (1947); Taylor (1975); Gross
(1976); Gadamer (1976); Rockmore (1981 & 1992); Ritter (1982); Singer
(1983); Cook (1984); Min (1986); Smith (1987); Honneth∨ ∨
& Gaines (1988);
Wood (1990); Luhmann (1991); Adorno (1993); Z iz ek (1993); Kedourie
(1995); Althusser (1997); Gomberg (1997:46); Pinkard (2000); Baynes
(2002); Belmonte (2002); Deranty (2005); Fox (2005); Grumley (2005);
James (2007); Schaefer (2007); Speight (2008); Klikauer (2010:88–125).
133 This also happens when the social role of a conception of justice is to
enable all members of society to make mutually acceptable to one another
their shared institutions and basic arrangements, by citing what is pub-
licly recognised as sufficient reason, as identified by that conception
(Rawls 1980:517). Rawls’ concept of justice is part of a shared arrangement
that is publicly recognised. Both go beyond the acceptance of justice as a
given that defines stage 4. Rawls’ (1980:536) well-ordered society is a
closed system; there are no significant relations to other societies
(cf. Jackson et al. 2012:77f.; Kramar et al. 2011:553; and Beardwell &
Claydon’s 2011:204–205), ‘justice and business sense’.
134 Some of David Hume’s writings (1711–1776), Jeremy Bentham
(1748–1832), John Stuart Mill (1806–1873), Henry Sidgwick (1838–1900),
G. E. Moore (1873–1958), Richard Mervyn Hare (1919–2002), and more
recently Peter Singer.
135 Locke (1980:105) noted, stage 6’s moral reasoning is universal only in the
sense that it involves treating all men alike, according everyone the same
respect and value, regardless of status or situation.
136 Cf. Kant’s ‘we have no duties to animals’ (1785), in: Shafer-Landau
(2007:395–396). In The Moral Status of Animals, Gruen (2003), noted:
‘Though Kant believed that animals were mere things, it appears he did
not genuinely believe we could dispose of them any way we wanted. In
the Lectures on Ethics he makes it clear that we have indirect duties to
animals, duties that are not toward them, but in regard to them insofar as
our treatment of them can affect our duties to persons. If a man shoots his
dog because the animal is no longer capable of service, he does not fail in
248 Notes
his duty to the dog, for the dog cannot judge, but his act is inhuman and
damages in himself that humanity which it is his duty to show towards
mankind. If he is not to stifle his human feelings, he must practice kind-
ness towards animals, for he who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in
his dealings with men’ (Kant 1780).
137 Praxis is the process by which a theory, lesson, or skill is enacted, prac-
ticed, embodied, or realised. ‘Praxis’ may also refer to the act of engaging,
applying, exercising, realising, or practicing ideas. This has been a recur-
rent topic in the field of philosophy, discussed in the writings of Plato,
Aristotle, St. Augustine, Immanuel Kant, Søren Kierkegaard, Karl Marx,
Martin Heidegger, Hannah Arendt, Paulo Freire, and many others. It has
meaning in the political, educational, and spiritual realms (Bernstein
1983).
138 See also: Hobbes’ ‘Leviathan’ (1651) and his ‘egoistic violent person-
owner’ (Kakkori & Huttunen 2010:5); Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness’ (1899);
Kafka’s ‘In the Penal Colony’ (1919) and ‘The Trial’ (1925); Huxley’s
‘Brave New World’ (1932); Koestler’s ‘Darkness at Noon’ (1940); Orwell’s
‘Animal Farm’ (1945) & ‘Nineteen Eighty-four’ (1948).
139 Nadelhoffer (2013); Elias (2013).
140 Wiltermuth & Flynn (2013); Werhane (2013); DeCenzo et al.
(2013:105–112); Heavey et al. (2013:146); Nankervis et al. (2014:384–390).
141 Being treated by HRM as a mere human resource and as an underling can
lead to psychological illnesses such as ‘“depression”…typified by sadness,
gloominess, despondency and a sense of helplessness associated with inac-
tivity, lack of initiative and decreased interest in work’ (Stone 2013:547).
These are the outcomes of HRM’s job designs and performance manage-
ment as well as its fostering of hierarchies. Often employees remain inac-
tive until being told by a supervisor or manager. HRM systematically
smothers workers’ initiatives while its regimes foster a ‘decreased interest
in work’ as the classical Taylorist and hierarchical approach divides man-
agement from non-managerial staff (Marchington & Wilkinson 2012;
Wilkinson et al. 2013).
142 McGregor (1960 & 2006); Stone (2014:441). One of the worst examples of
punishment under capitalist-managerial regimes has been the use of slave
labour by companies such as IG Farben and others during the German
Nazi-regime. After a long and profitable existence ‘even in post-Nazi
Germany’ (www.ariva.de/quote/profile.m?secu=1044), IG Farben eventu-
ally deregistered from the German stock exchange [Der letzte Vorhang
fällt für die IG Farben – Nun scheint sich auch das letzte Kapitel des ehe-
maligen Chemieriesen IG Farben zu schließen. Die Insolvenzverwalterin
möchte das Unternehmen mit dunkler Vergangenheit von der Börse
nehmen, German Newspaper ‘Handelsblatt’ 17th August 2011]. IG Farben
became a symbol of corporate inhumanity as described by Wiesen
(2011:67); ‘behind the scene the IG management debated different ideas
about how much punishment would be effective and profitable and how
to replenish the supply of prisoners who had lied while at work or had
been killed in the gas chambers’.
143 The link between poverty, punishment, and prison is not an issue of past
centuries (Reiman & Leighton 2013).
Notes 249
144 Dickens (1853); Engels (1892); Thompson (1963 & 1967); Hobsbawm
(1968); Simon (1993); Keenoy (1999); Dubofsky & Culles (2010); Aubenas
(2011); Vallas (2011).
145 As quoted by Neimark & Tinker (1987:671) ‘a system of social discipline,
control and appropriation [is the] fundamental organising principle of
management science’.
146 ‘From Nietzsche came a belief in will, strength, and power’ (Glover
2012:317 & 343) later idealised in Triumph of the Will:
wikipedia.org/wiki/Triumph_of_the_Will (Sontag 1975). HRM’s immoral
behaviour carries connotations of ‘displacement of responsibility’.
According to Bandura et al. (1996:365) ‘under displacement of responsibil-
ity’, HRM views its action as springing from organisational pressures or
dictates of management rather than as something for which an HR-
manager is personally responsible. Hence, HRM is willing to behave in a
way it normally repudiates in the event that a legitimate authority such as
management accepts responsibility for the effects of HRM’s actions.
147 Butler (1997). This is a highly Nietzschean notion because ‘men of prey
[are] still in possession of an unbroken strength of will and lust for power’
(quote in: Glover 2012:12; cf. Altemeyer 1981).
148 As Glover (2012:2) noted ‘no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so
artfully, so artistically cruel’. The ‘strike-back’ impulse has been explained
by Waller (2013:68f).
149 It is interesting to observe that virtually all HRM textbooks discuss, for
example, ‘discrimination’ but ‘never’ as a self-reflective issue on how HRM
itself engages in discriminatory behaviour given its power over employees
(Hunter 2006). Perhaps the fact of a substantial body of anti-discrimina-
tion legislation signifies the hidden problem of HRM (Nankervis et al.
2014:74). Cf. Sievers & Mersky (2006); Caponecchia & Wyatt (2011);
Cushen & Thompson (2012); Velasquez (2012:345); Gilbert
(2012:159–188); Stone (2013:134, 151, 592); Bastian et al. (2013).
150 Nietzsche ‘rejected sympathy for the weak in favour of willingness to
trample on them’ (Glover 2012:11). On Machiavelli see: James (2013).
151 Thomas Hobbes’ philosophy, for example, denotes ‘continual fear, and
danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish,
and short. His solution was that everyone should submit to an absolute
ruler, who would have the power to set penalties sufficiently severe to
enforce social rules’ (Glover 2012:20).
152 Nietzsche saw this as a ‘constant struggle for survival, in which the strong
would win and the weak would go under’ (Glover 2012:15).
153 Clegg et al. (2006:143); Glover (2012:337). As Marcuse (1966a:134) noted
‘as a matter of fact we know it to be the fact – that people who were the
master torturers in the Hitler concentration camps were often quite happy
doing their job’ (cf. Lifton 1986; Staub 1989; Kelman & Hamilton 1989;
Darley 1992:204; Goldhagen 1996; Baumeister 1997; Waller 2007).
154 Zimbardo (2008) emphasises that ‘humans cannot be defined as “good” or
“evil” because we have the ability to act as both especially at the hand of
the situation. According to Zimbardo, good people can be induced,
seduced, and initiated into behaving in evil ways. They can also be led to
act in irrational, stupid, self-destructive, antisocial, and mindless ways
250 Notes
when they are immersed in “total situations” that impact human nature
in ways that challenge our sense of the stability and consistency of indi-
vidual personality, of character, and of morality’ (wikipedia.org).
155 Chomsky (1959); Trusty (1971); Latour & Woolgar (1979); Lemov (2006);
Crosthwaite (2013:95).
156 Skinner (1983); quoted from Kohn (1999:19); Kelman (1965); Scott
(1997:12); Lemov (2006); Roethlinsberger (1943:6). Karlins & Andrews
(1972:5); Bauman’s (2006:3). The key idea is that obedience to HRM’s
hierarchies ‘is in people’s heads (or their hearts and minds) and that they
therefore behave in ways that conform to hierarchical notions – even
when they deviate from social expectations of dominance and obedience’
(Diefenbach 2013:6).
157 Kramar et al. (2011:467f.); Kramar et al. (2014:337ff); Macky (2009: 340f.);
Calhoon (1969:211).
158 Cf. Chomsky (1959, 1971); Beder (2000:93ff.); Baum (2005); Marin & Pear
(2007). On this, Skinner (1983) noted, what a fascinating thing! Total
control of a living organism (quoted from Kohn 1999:19). The underlying
assumption [of behaviourism], according to one critic, seems to be that
‘the semi-starved rat in the box, with virtually nothing to do but press on
a lever for food, captures the essence of virtually all human behaviour
(Kohn 1999:24 & 26).
159 Herzberg et al. (1959); Herzberg (1966 & 2011); Ewen et al. (1966); Kramar
et al. (2011:187); Kramar et al. (2014:491); Schwind et al. (2013:552);
Beardwell & Claydon (2011:505); Nel et al. (2012:293ff.).
160 For this sort of punishment, HRM has invented a range of ways of firing
employees (Nel et al. 2012:224); Gilbert (2012:134ff.). These range from
‘constructive dismissal’ (Stone 2013:143; Beardwell & Claydon 2011:398,
413, 414, 421, 422) when HRM deems them unfit to perform; ‘unfair’ dis-
missal (Kramar et al. 2011:101 & 152; Beardwell & Claydon 2011:414); to
‘fair’ dismissal (Beardwell & Claydon 2011:411) when HRM considers
firing a worker as fair; ‘wrongful’ dismissal (Beardwell & Claydon
2011:411); and summary dismissals (Macky 2008:293; Stone 2013:143).
On ‘organisational privilege’, see: Gantman (2005).
161 As Selekman (1959:76) noted ‘a boss governs from any length of time by
treats of punishment’.
162 Cf. Hart (1968). But HRM denies such radical freedom for employees by
asphyxiating them inside structural constrains such as employment con-
tracts, performance management, corporate policies, the managerial pre-
rogative, and the like. Hence, individuals who are forced to be wholly the
agents of others [managers for example] cannot be viewed as, or held
responsible for their actions…responsibility is not possible (logically) for
non-autonomous creatures’ (Lippke 1995:34). In the hands of HRM
human beings become human resources and perhaps even non-
autonomous creatures – at least to some extent.
163 As Diefenbach (2013:77) noted, ‘incentives and punishment systems are
meant to steer people’s behaviour. Moreover, they are meant to signal to
people that they can influence the situation they are in to their favour with
their own behaviour; if people adapt and behave properly, they can reduce
(some of) the disadvantages and increase (some of) the advantages’.
Notes 251
164 Wahba & Bridwell (1976). ‘But the much rehearsed hierarchy of needs
also relies on false needs’. ‘False needs are those which are superimposed
upon the individual by particular social interest’ (MacIntyre, A. 1970:71)
such as a raft of HRM invented and/or fostered but largely external and
fictitious needs for career, status symbols, monetary rewards, etc. Essers
(2012:345) noted ‘do we not often see in dominant Maslow-based HR-
ideology that the “right” to self-actualisation and learning is surrepti-
tiously turned into a “duty”, a “forced choice of freedom” that reasonably
be refused and thus renders employees collectively vulnerable to the
Robespierian extortion tactics of performance appraisals and culture man-
agement models’.
165 Berger & Luckmann (1967); Searle (1996).
166 Cf. Arnold (2005:313ff.; Arnold & Randal 2010:312ff.); Aamodt (2010:334
& 337). While Maslow’s hierarchical theory was regarded as an improve-
ment over previous theories of personality and motivation (punishment),
it had its detractors (Wahba & Bridgewell 1976).
167 To quote Poole’s Unspeak (2006:66): ‘The template of ‘natural resources’
must, further, be to blame for the modern barbarism of the corporate term
‘human resources’. To call human beings ‘resources’, firstly, is to deny
their existence as individuals, since any one person will not spring up
again once worn out; people are ‘resources’ only insofar as they are
thought of as a breeding population, like rabbits or chickens. ‘Human
resources’, first recorded in 1961, eventually succeeded the term ‘man-
power’ in business parlance; the effect was merely to replace a crude
sexism with a more generalised rhetorical violence. People considered as
‘human resources’ are mere instruments of a higher will. Compare the
Nazi vocabulary of ‘human material’ [Menschenmaterial] and ‘liquidation’
[liquidieren], recasting murder as the realisation of profit; if ‘natural
resources’ evinces merely as blithe disregard for the environment, ‘human
resources’ contains an echo of totalitarian Unspeak’.
168 According to Bandura et al. (1996:365), ‘people behave much more
aggressive when assaulting a person is given a sanitised label than when it
is called aggression’. In other words, HRM behaves much more aggressive
when it is given a sanitised label such as ‘letting you go’ for firing, ‘dis-
ciplinary action’ for punishment, etc.
169 ‘From the outside, business can look like “a seemingly mindless game of
chance at which any donkey could win provided only that he be ruth-
less”’ (Peter Drucker quoted in: Magretta 2012:1). The ruthlessness of the
managerial orbit in which HR-‘Management’ takes part is, not only in
Schrijvers (2004) but even more so in Nietzsche’s words, defined by ‘strug-
gle, egoism, dominance…and the majority [of employees] have no right
to existence, people that are failures, hardness, the festival of cruelty, the
replacement of compassion for the weak by destruction…Nietzsche’s self-
creation pushes aside people who get in the way…egoism and ruthlessness
[are] admired by Nietzsche’ (Glover 2012:17) and by HRM.
170 Kramar et al. (2011:558); Gunnigle et al. (2011:12–14). Some elements of
‘hard’ HRM carry connotations to Nietzsche’s toughness and hardness in
what he called ‘self-creation’. In other words, the self-creation of HRM
demands hardness: ‘self-creation requires hardness: in man there is
252 Notes
matter, fragment, excess…hardness of a hammer…a certain self-possessed

cruelty which knows how to wield a knife with certainty and deftness
even when the heart bleeds. They will be harder (and perhaps not always
only against themselves) than humane men might wish…it requires rejec-
tion of pity as something unmanly…a rejection of unmanly compassion,
supports the domination, even the cruel domination, of others…so see
someone suffer does one good, to make others suffer even more’
(Nietzsche quoted in: Glover 2012:16).
171 Wiesen (2011); Gilroy (1993); Velasquez (2012:64).
172 Goldman (1906); Marcuse (1941 & 1966); Fromm (1960); Adorno et al.
(1964); Bauman (1989); Bowles & Gintis (1976, 1981, 2001); Freire (1970
& 2000).
173 Adorno et al. (1964); Kohn (1999); Macky (2009:344).
174 Connellan (1978); Lemov (2006); Chriss (2012). Corporate or HRM set-
tings exercise ‘situational pressures: orders from the higher authority, con-
formity to pressure, foot-in-the-door processes, pluralistic ignorance, and
diffusion of responsibility’ (Batson et al. 1999:525). In other words, HRM
regimes operative inside companies are not settings in which ‘moral indi-
viduals are motivated to act in accord with moral principles as an ultimate
goal, displaying moral integrity’ (Batson et al. 1999:525).
175 It is HRM’s ‘disciplining of subjectivity into a to-be-controlled object’
(Johnsen & Gudmand-Høyer 2010:333).
176 This reflects an HRM sustained ‘division between those who command
and those who are compelled to obey’ (Mueller 2012). Furthermore, as
Rist (2012:52) noted, HRM ‘creates deviants by making the rules [HR-
policies] who in fraction constitute deviance, and by applying those rules
to particular groups [human resources] and labelling them [who violate
HR-policies] as outsiders’.
177 Jackson et al. (2012:404–411); Kramar et al. (2011:173f.); Beardwell &
Claydon (2011:90); Macky (2009:199); Gunnigle et al. (2011:148–165);
Nel et al. (2012:130 & 150); Grobler et al. (2011:140).
178 DeCenzo et al. (2013:105–107) hides the fact that HRM’s totalitarianism
found its being in the exclusiveness of being a self-appointed legislator,
accuser, and executioner, in their ‘factors to consider when punishing’
(cf. Marcuse 1969:126; Heller 1989:15; Cheliotis 2006).
179 Fromm (1949:11); Chomsky (1971:33); Apel (1980:180ff.).
180 Foucault’s ‘Discipline and Punish’, 1995; cf. Klikauer (2007:102).
181 Reich (1946); Arendt (1951, 1958 & 1994); Israel (1971); Bauman (1989);
Todorov (1996); Chiaburu et al. (2013).
182 ABC (2005); Babiak & Hare (2006); James (2013); Pardue et al. (2013); Park
(2013).
183 Concurrent with turning humans into objects of power goes the fostering
of mechanisms that disallow these objects of power to ever realise what
they are made into. Adorno (1944:22) has commented on this. He wrote,
part of the mechanism of domination is that one is forbidden to recognise
the suffering that domination produces, and there is a straight line con-
necting the evangelical lecture on the joy of life to the construction of
slaughter-houses for human beings so far off in Poland, that everyone in
Notes 253
one’s own ethnic group can convince themselves they don’t hear the
screams of pain (cf. Marcuse 1969:107; Baillargeon 2007; Callinicos 2006).
184 As Max Weber (1924) noted in his ‘Economy and Society’: HRM, at least
at an organisational level, may well be ‘the most rationally known means
of exercising authority over human beings’ (quoted from Cheliotis
2006:398).
185 ‘The most obvious source of crimes of obedience are military, paramil-
itary, and social-control hierarchies, in which soldiers, security agents,
and police take on role obligations that explicitly include the use of force.
These hierarchies are the classic ones from which the term “chain of
command” is borrowed’ (Darley 1992:121). In other words, ‘the most
obvious source of crimes of obedience are corporate control hierarchies, in
which managers and workers are forced to take on role obligations that
can include the use of force and coercion. These organisational hierarchies
are the classic form of “chain of command”’.
186 The HR structure of every company depicts an Egyptian pyramid. The
pyramidal structure is designed to generate and secure authority.
Ideologically, HRM’s idea of promotions as a pathway to the top engineers
no more than an illusion for the vast majority of those who make things
(Aristotle). Numerically, the pyramidal structure of corporations acts
against HRM’s ideology of promotions. The idea of promotions is no more
than a false hope. It is part of the arsenal of HR weapons. A careerist ori-
entation is very helpful because it makes people want to appear ‘pro-
motable’, cooperative, helpful, showing upward appeal, and signal
competitiveness. Senior HRM only needs to foster the illusion of success,
promotion, loyalty, compliance, and coalition-building and collusion is
virtually guaranteed.
187 Ingham (2013:97); Copeland & Labuski (2013).
188 Sievers & Mersky (2006); Velasquez (2012:63); Robbins (2012);
MacKinnon (2013:163ff.). In an almost classical form of ideology, HRM
calls managerial mobbing and bullying ‘workplace bullying’ (Nankervis
et al. 2014:528). The term ‘workplace’ is introduced to shift connotations
towards work and workers and away from management and HRM itself.
Hence HRM does not talk about HR-bullying and management bullying to
protect management and its ‘petty-tyrants’ (James 2013).
189 Arendt’s ‘The Banality of Evil’ (1994; cf. Fromm 1949:8f., Todorov 1996;
McCalley 2002:5 & 12; Zimbardo 2004; Klikauer 2008:164; Klikauer
2007:144; Jurkiewicz 2012; Elias 2013). According to Zimbardo (2004:22)
evil can be seen as ‘intentionally behaving, or causing others to act, in
ways that demean, dehumanise, harm, destroy, or kill innocent people’:
firstly, HRM operates intentionally; secondly, while HRM surely does not
intentionally kill people [apart from being part of a management team
that causes the death of thousands in, for example, the asbestos and
tobacco industries (Benson & Kirsch 2010; Benson 2012), the outsourcing
of production to sweatshops (Australian retailers Rivers, Coles, Target,
Kmart linked to Bangladesh factory worker abuse (ABC 24th June 2013),
Joshi & Pande 2014, etc.], HRM nevertheless demeans and dehumanises
others simply through reducing human beings to mere human resources
254 Notes
and forcing them into ‘doing things they otherwise would not do’ even
when this includes ‘harm to others’ through HRM’s performance manage-
ment system while simultaneously creating MADD.
190 Kramar et al. (2011:446); Beardwell & Claydon (2011:580); Macky
(2009:12); Schwind et al. (2013:78).
191 Macky (2009:330); Gunnigle et al. (2011:85); Schwind et al. (2013:73).
192 McMahon (1989); Fritzsche & Becker (1984:166). Already the Godfather of
management’s organisation theory Chester Barnard (1938:149) noted the
application of ‘coercion, as a way to generate behavioural changes by
means of fear to a sanction’ (as quoted by Gantman 2005:70).
193 Paauwe et al. (2013a:68); Schwind et al. (2013:33); Werhane (2013).
194 Clegg et al. (2006:149); Maclagan (2007:54); Bastian et al. (2013).
195 As the focus on Milgram’s work is on the moral implications of his obedi-
ence studies, research details on laboratory experimentations can be
gained from his original work (1963, 1973, 1974, 1992) and from works
such as Adorno et al. (1964); Hampden-Turner (1970:132–134); Damico
(1982); Alfonso (1982); Kelman & Hamilton (1989); Blass (1991, 1992,
1999, 2002); Tumanov (2007); Massey (2009).
196 Blass (1991:398); Milgram’s experiments have been popularised in ‘We do
as we are told – Milgram’s 37’ by rock musician Peter Gabriel on his 1986
album, the British play ‘The Dogs of Pavlov’, and featured in the French
film ‘I...comme Icare’ (1979) starring Yves Montand (cf. Badhwar 2009).
197 Overall, punishment and obedience to authority are associated with what
Zimbardo (2004:21) calls ‘the situationist perspective’ that ‘propels external
determinations of behaviour to the foreground, well beyond the status as
mere extenuating background circumstance’. Since HRM is determined to
invent, create, and maintain such ‘determinations’ (e.g. HR policies on dis-
ciplinary action), it seeks to place emphasis on the opposite (e.g. the indi-
vidual) in order to ideologically divert attention away from itself, namely
HRM. Bandura et al. (1996:371) noted ‘psychological theorising and research
tend to emphasise how easy it is to bring out the worst in people through
dehumanisation and other self-exonerative means’. See also: Jackson et al.
(2012:404–411); Kramar et al. (2011:173f.); Beardwell & Claydon (2011:90);
Macky (2009:199); Gunnigle et al. (2011:148–165); Nel et al. (2012:130 &
150); Grobler et al. (2011:140). The same ideology can be found – just more
strongly – in business ethics (DeCremer & Tenbrunsel 2012).
198 Perhaps even more problematic is that next to a generally low standing of
HRM inside managerial hierarchies combined with the fact that ‘manage-
ment scholars have questioned the legitimacy of HRM’ (Johnsen &
Gudmand-Høyer 2010:333), HRM’s own insecurity might lead to over-
playing its disciplinary powers in order to give the appearance of being ‘in
control’ and thereby stabilising HRM’s insecure existence.
199 Clegg et al. (2006:143ff.) calls these institutions ‘total institutions’.
200 According to Dahl (1957), power has four properties attached to it:
(a) base as the base of power expressed in resources, opportunities, acts,
objects, etc. that can be exploited in order to affect the behaviour of
others; (b) means or instruments such as threats or promises; (c) amount
of an actor’s power expressed in probability statements such as ‘9 out of
10’; and (d) scope that consists of responses that an actor receives during
Notes 255
the application of power. Power can be seen as machinery in which every-

one is caught, those who exercise power just as much as those over whom
it is exercised. Power resides not simply in relations of cause and effect (as
Dahl suggests), but in structured relations of autonomy and dependence
that are an endemic feature of working life. Power’s communicative aspect
emphasises: power is defined in terms of the ability of individuals or
groups to control and shape dominant interpretation at work.
201 In On Violence (1970), Arendt quoted Sartre’s Jouvenel: a man feels
himself more of a man when he is imposing himself and making others
the instrument of his will…and Clausewitz: war is an act of violence to
compel the opponent to do as we wish. The source of power is the power
of man over man…to command and to be obeyed: without that, there is
no power… (Arendt 1970:37; Jay 1967:13; Badhwar 2009:261; Robbins
2012; MacKinnon 2013:217).
202 Beardwell & Claydon (2011:432); Nel et al. (2012:47).
203 Weber (1924); Jay (1967:177).
204 Milgram noted, ‘it has been reliably established that from 1933–1945 mil-
lions of innocent persons were systematically slaughtered on command.
Gas chambers were built, death camps were guarded, and daily quotas of
corpses were produced with the same efficiency as the manufacture of
appliances’ (quoted from Blass 1992:288; cf. Glover 1977). On this,
McCally’s (2002:21) notes, ‘…the use of strong position power is appropri-
ate and productive’.
205 Stone (2013:25). This is what Foucault calls the ‘new power/knowledge
regime…to discipline character or the soul’ (Fraser 1985:174).
206 Jackson et al. (2012:186); Kramar et al. (2011:261f.); Beardwell & Claydon
(2011:169); Macky (2009:190f.); Gunnigle et al. (2011:119); Nel et al.
(2012:160); Grobler et al. (2011:178).
207 ‘Browning (1992) makes it clear that there was no special selection of the
SS men, only that they were as “ordinary” as could be imagined – until
they were put into a situation in which they had “official” permission,
even encouragement, to act sadistically and brutishly against those arbi-
trarily labelled as “the enemy”’ (Zimbrado 2004:35). In other words, for
the assistants of ‘Organisational Evil’ (Jurkiewicz 2012), HRM does not run
a recruitment and selection process that selects monsters. It needs ordi-
nary people that, as Milgram has shown, can be made into monsters
through all the trimmings HRM can muster (cf. Baumeister 1997).
208 McGregor (1960 & 2006); Kaplan & Norton (1992, 1993, 2004); Klikauer
(2007:183ff.).
209 Habermas (1997); Schwind et al. (2013:348–406).
210 Haworth (2012); Jurkiewicz (2012).
211 This carries connotations to Adorno et al.’s (1964) ‘authoritarian personal-
ity’, typified by rigidity of thought and behaviour, an emphasis on power
and will rather than imagination and gentleness, superstitious thinking,
rigid adherence to conventional values and aggression towards those who
violate them. A central feature is a submissive, uncritical attitude towards
authority…punishment for breaking rules played a big role. Neither emo-
tional warmth nor reasoning about moral principles figured much in the
accounts’ (Glover 2012:330).
256 Notes
212 Arnold (2005); Arnold & Randal (2010); Aamodt (2010:307f.; 2013).
213 Blass (2002:70 & 72); Blass (1991:406) reports that Milgram’s subjects were
volunteers (just as in the SS) and that a binding factor is needed. It estab-
lishes an authoritarian relationship between subject and experimenter,
between the Jews and the SS-men, and between HRM and subordinates.
214 Milgram found ‘there were no male-female differences in obedience’ (Blass
1991:406). According to Badhwar (2009:281), ‘Milgram himself focuses on
the lack of autonomy as the central problem, calling the all-too-common
propensity to surrender our autonomy when we become part of an organ-
isation a “fatal flaw nature has designed into us” – “flaw”’, because ‘in the
long run [it] gives our species only a modest chance of survival’.
215 A hierarchical ‘division of labour made evasion of personal responsibility
easier’ (Glover 2012:350).
216 Glover (2012:333); Klikauer (2012:72–80).
217 Blass (1999:958); Marcuse (1964).
218 Blass (1999:959); Werhane (2013:86).
219 Arendt (1994); Adorno et al. (1964); Milgram (1974); Bauman (1989).
220 In the words of Lippke (1995:34), ‘individuals who are forced to be wholly
the agents of others cannot be viewed as, or held responsible for their
actions…responsibility is not possible (logically) for non-autonomous
creatures’ while ‘autonomous cruelty or injustice is worse than hetero-
gonous cruelty or injustice’ (Lippke 1995:35; cf. Goldhagen 1996).
221 Bauman (2000:25); cf. Bernstein (2006:36).
222 Thompson & Smith (2010); Donado & Wa¨lde (2012).
223 Hence, HRM has an ideological need for the ‘justification of discipline’
(Selekman 1959:68ff.).
(2011:187); Nel et al. (2012:348); Grobler et al. (2011:16–18).
225 Group-pressure also works well when HRM functions as a team where HR
managers ‘behave more cruelly’ under HRM’s ‘group responsibility than
when they hold themselves personally accountable for their actions’
(Bandura et al. 1996:365).
226 This is not to say that HRM operates like the SS. It does not and has never
done so. But the common element between both is the way in which
morality is placed away from the individual.
227 Blass (1992:305). It is also not uncommon for HRM that ‘victims get
blamed for bringing suffering on themselves’. HRM’s ‘self-exoneration is
also achievable by viewing [HRM’s] harmful conduct as forced by com-
pelling circumstances [e.g. market forces, general management, etc.]
rather than as a [HR-manager’s] personal decision’ (Bandura et al.
1996:366).
228 Milgram noted on ‘the inverse ratio of readiness to cruelty and proximity
to its victims. It is difficult to harm a person we touch. It is somewhat
easier to inflict pain upon a person we only see at a distance. It is still
easier in the case of a person we only hear. It is quite easy to be cruel
towards a person we neither see nor hear’ (Hampden-Turner 1970:126;
Bauman 1989:155; 2000:27; Blass 1991:400 & 407; Katz 2006). And such
managerial techniques enable distancing (Clegg et al.’s 2006:163).
Notes 257
229 ‘The most extreme forms of distancing: the suggestion that some people
are not even human [e.g. human resources]…the milder, implicit version
of this is to withdraw from them the normal distinguishing marks of
respect for other humans. It strips away the protection of human status’
(Glover 2012:338 & 408f.).
230 Moral disengagement operates with four mechanisms: (a) re-construing
possible reprehensible conduct (by means of moral justification, palliative
comparison, and euphemistic labelling); (b) displacing and diffusing
responsibility; (c) minimising, ignoring, and misconstruing detrimental
consequences; and (d) dehumanising and blaming victims (Batson et al.
1999:536): a) HRM justifies its conduct for the greater good of the
company calling ‘firing people’ ‘let go’; b) HRM operates a hierarchy dif-
fusing responsibility between, for example, HRM and line management;
c) by calling mass-dismissal corporate restructuring; and d) by labelling
human beings ‘human resources’.
231 Moral exclusion is when certain people – employees – are excluded from
moral treatment (Batson et al. 1999:525).
232 Lafferty (2013:180); Klikauer (2012:2); Welby (2012). In addition there is
also a straight forward call for corporate leaders including HRM-leaders to
be Machiavellian business leaders. They ‘must accept the heavy duty of
forgetting his own personal feelings, his habitual kindness, in order to
enter into another sphere of action’. This is a reflection of what Bandura
et al. call ‘moral disengagement’ (Bandura et al. 1996).
233 The list is, of course, an incomplete list of examples used by HRM to allow
itself to be morally disengaged. The list has been adopted from Bandura
et al. (1996:374).
234 In some cases these are used as ‘retrospective rationalisation when
justification is fitted to previous unethical acts by HRM. But in
“justification of what [HRM] has done, [HRM] is led to do more and to do
worse”’ (Darley 1992:208).
235 According to the French philosopher Rousseau, it is the inability of ‘an
innate repugnance to see his fellow suffer’ (Kakkori & Huttunen 2010:6).
236 These are only a few key elements of an HR-hierarchy ranging from the
top level of an HR-director down to sectional HR functions that include
those HRM elements directed downwards to section leaders, supervisors,
and line managers.
237 HRM uses a range of instruments to deflect ‘blame’ away such as ‘vilifying
the recipients of HRM’s maltreatment’; ill-treatment of employees ‘is
justified in the name of protecting honour and reputation’ of a company;
HRM’s use of ‘sanitised labels’ for those assaulted; HRM ‘obscures personal
agencies by defusing moral responsibility through hierarchy for example;
and “victims are blamed for bringing suffering on themselves”’ (Bandura
et al. 1996:364–366).
238 ‘A familiar…figure is the quiet, boring, dutiful official’ (Glover 2012:349;
Browning (1992).
(2011:107); Macky (2009:35, 66, 330); Gunnigle et al. (2011:71); Nel et al.
(2012:215 & 306); Grobler et al. (2011:637f.).
258 Notes
(2011:338 & 351–353); Macky (2009:312); Gunnigle et al. (2011:50ff.); Nel
et al. (2012:312; Grobler et al. (2011:620 & 633f.); Werhane (2013:164);
Calhoon’s (1969:205) Machiavellian leader who ‘controls subordinates
[and is] conniving, manipulative, and cold-blooded’.
241 Tyler & Boeckmann (1997); DeCenzo et al. (2013:109); Stone (2013:143).
242 Bauman (1989:151ff.); cf. Baillargeon (2007:210ff.); Levi (1959); Haas
(1988:385); Reed (1997:7); Levy & Szander (2004:145); Bernstein (2006).
243 Bauman’s thesis that the Holocaust was an application of modern HR
techniques indicates that it was not the work of evil and insane monsters.
This is not designed to relieve Germans and German Nazis from their col-
lective guilt. Bauman explains – he does not excuse (cf. Bauman 1990;
cf. Katz 2006).
244 Weizenbaum (1976:251ff.); Rahim (2010).
245 Bauman (1989:9); Agamben (2000); Katz (2006); Glover (2012:398) notes
‘how the technology of killing, combined with the robotic obedience of
human functionaries, could be put to ends of unparalleled inhumanity’;
cf. Schweppenhäuser (1993); Clegg et al. (2006:156) ‘Auschwitz was an
extension of the value rationality of the modern factory system’…[that
included]…‘the manager’s production charts’ just like HRM head count,
resource planning, and resource allocation charts.
246 Levi (1959 & 1988); Glover (2012:406) notes ‘the thought at Auschwitz
and other places, “never again”, is more compelling than any abstract
ethical principle’.
247 Bauman (1989:122); Bernstein (2006:35); Katz (2006); Clegg et al.
(2006:164); Clegg et al. (2012).
248 This has been skilfully linked to – not Darwin’s – but Spencer’s ‘survival of
the fittest’ ideology (Miesing & Preble 1985:466; Klikauer 2012:265).
249 Bauman (1989:142–144); cf. Rummel (1994).
250 As horrific as these have been in the overall development of humanity
since the last 2.4 million years, these can be seen as anomalies of modern-
ity because ‘before the emergence of state societies, the probability that
one could die at the hand of another human being was 15%. With the
advent of state societies, however, the rate of violent death has been
declining significantly. Accordingly, violent deaths of state societies
amount to “only” 3 percent’ (Park 2013:4; cf. en.wikipedia.org’s
Intentional Homicide Rate).
251 Schwind et al. (2013:94); Jackson et al. (2012:61); Nel et al. (2012:50–53).
252 For any SS man who ran a concentration camp failure to comply with
authority often meant no more than being moved to another division or
being placed at the Eastern Front. In most cases, failure to carry out orders
for mass-killing did not mean facing the firing squad.
253 www.google.com/images + ‘Abu Ghraib photos’ show hundreds of photos.
Most are too horrible to be depicted here (cf. Clegg et al. 2006:175; Waller
2007; Wright 2007; Doris & Murphy 2007; Rodin 2010; Carlson & Weber
2012; Errachidi & Slovo 2013).
254 An example which he uses is that of Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi official
who conducted the logistics behind the Holocaust. Mumford collectively
refers to people willing to carry out placidly the extreme goals of these
Notes 259
mega-machines as ‘Eichmanns’. Cf. Levi (1959); Milgram (1973:75);

Arendt (1994); Todorov (1996); Levy & Szander (2004:151f.); Bernstein
(2006).
255 Badhwar (2009:286); Clegg et al. (2006:159); Katz (2006); Doris (2002);
Milgram (1974:88); McGregor (1960 & 2006); Goldhagen (1996).
256 Beardwell & Claydon (2011:145); Meer & Ringdal (2009); Tangian (2011).
257 Neither Milgram (1974) nor MacIntyre (1983) nor Bauman (1989), nor
this chapter is saying that HRM equals the SS or that HRM’s actions
equate to the Holocaust. But the fundamental principles that underlie
obedience to authority and punishment regimes are to be found in both
institutions.
258 Kramar et al. (2011:153); Beardwell & Claydon (2011:388); Macky
(2009:120); Gunnigle et al. (2011:356f.); Nel et al. (2012:41–43).
259 See the movie ‘Avatar’ (produced in 2009), wikipedia.org/Avatar);
Brockovich (2011); Brueckner & Ross (2011).
260 MacKinnon (2013:23ff.). One of the masterminds of egoism has been
Nietzsche who ‘believed that egoism is essential to the noble soul, and he
defines “egoism” as the faith that other beings have to be subordinated to’
(Glover 2012:15). HRM terms human beings as subordinates.
261 As depicted by Gordon Gekko in Oliver Stone’s movie ‘Wall Street’
(Kakkori & Huttunen 2010:3).
262 One of the core names associated with personal benefits, rewards, and
selfishness is Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli (1469–1527) who was an
Italian political writer and is considered to be one of the main founders of
modern political science. He was a diplomat, political philosopher, musi-
cian, playwright and a civil servant of the Florentine Republic. He is con-
sidered a political theorist rather than a moral philosopher (cf. Jay 1967).
But even Machiavelli thought that ‘a prince must learn how not to be good’
(Tomasello 2009:3) assuming that humans are good by nature and hence
must learn to be evil. One of the great debates in Western philosophy is
whether humans are born cooperative and helpful and society later cor-
rupts them (e.g. Rousseau; cf. Hodgson 2013:45), or whether they are born
selfish and unhelpful and society teaches them to be better (e.g. Hobbes;
Dawkins 1989). Most of moral philosophy agrees that the first rather than
the latter is the case (even Machiavelli); cf. Axelrod (1984 & 1984a).
263 Gauthier (2012); Ansell-Pearson (2012). For HR-managers this means that
‘many superiors do not care (so much) about the system but more about
their positions and opportunities within the system – with good reason: if
they had not put their personal and career interest first and everything
else second, (including the organisation they work for), most [HR-] man-
agers would not have reached their positions (and will not make future
progress)’ (Diefenbach 2013:150).
264 ‘Thrasymachus’ idea of what is just or right reflects the interest of the
strong who impose their will onto others. Callicles, in the “Gorgias”,
argues the “Nietzschean” case: the strong are naturally dominant like
lions, but the rest of us try to tame them with the charms and spells of
moral dogma’ (Glover 2012:18).
265 Already Selekman (1959:77) noted to the cynic version of HRM ‘man is
basically and always selfish, self-aggrandising, and exploitative of his
260 Notes
fellow man’. This might constitute what psychoanalysis calls ‘projection’

(Heimann & Klein 2013).
266 On this, Rousseau noted ‘egocentrism is merely a sentiment that is rela-
tive, artificial and born in society, which moves each individual to value
himself more than anyone else, which inspires in men [sic!] all the evils
they cause one another’ (Kakkori & Huttunen 2010:6).
267 Hodgson (2013:11) emphasises that the champion of neo-liberalism and
individualism, Adam Smith, writes ‘self-love’, this ‘self-deceit, this fatal
weakness of mankind, is the source of half the disorder of human life’;
Stein (2013).
268 Schwind et al. (2013:345–406); Jackson et al. (2012:405–407); Kramar
et al. (2011:463); Beardwell & Claydon (2011:491–502 & 525–527); Macky
(2009:341); Gunnigle et al. (2011:166–188); Nel et al. (2012:237); Grobler
et al. (2011:16, 242f., 401f. & 434); DeCenzo et al. (2013:278–282);
Nankervis et al. (2014:429); cf. chapter V on ‘compensation’ in: Mondy
(2014) & chapter IV on ‘compensation and total rewards’ in Dressler
(2014).
269 Schwind et al. (2013:383); Jackson et al. (2012:18, 438, 480); Kramar et al.
(2011:607f.); Beardwell & Claydon (2011:498–500); Macky (2009:345);
Nel et al. (2012:166).
270 A near perfect example of how the moral philosophy of selfishness trans-
lates into HRM realities has been delivered by American educational
expert Alfie Kohn who noted in his book ‘Punished by Rewards – The
Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praises, and other Bribes
(Kohn 1999:120): If pop behaviourism were a religion, American man-
agers would have to be described as fundamentalists. It is difficult to over-
state the extent to which they, and the people who advise them, believe
in the redemptive power of rewards (Maier 2005; Schultz & Schultz
2010:139).
271 Schwind et al. (2013:407–517); Jackson et al. (2012:527); Kramar et al.
(2011:185–201); Beardwell & Claydon (2011:555); Macky (2009:291–294);
Nel et al. (2012:129); Grobler et al. (2011:523–525); Paauwe et al.
(2013:1ff.); Stone (2013:306).
272 Aamodt (2010:331–337); Ewen et al. (1966); Herzberg (1966 & 2011);
Herzberg et al. (1959); Latham (2011); Skidelsky & Skidelsky (2012);
Kanfer et al. (2012); Paauwe et al. (2013); Stone (2013:434 & 453); ‘indi-
vidual performance-related reward plans’ (Nankervis et al. 2014:458ff.).
273 Dawkins (1989); Nowak & Highfield (2011); Klikauer (2012b); Tudge
(2013).
274 Hodgson (2013:4–5) notes ‘morality is a profoundly social phenom-
enon…morality helps make us human…by focusing on self-interested
agents, economics [and management studies] has become largely an
amoral science’. Fleming & Cederström (2012:5) noted ‘the reason we
work is to spend money [in a] repetitive loop of work and consumption
[that] takes us nowhere’.
275 This negates Greek virtue ethics, Kant, Hegel, Rawls, and utilitarianism. In
its severest version, selfishness and extreme individualism is the very
expression of what has been called ‘the free rider problem’. Free riders are
those who consume more than their fair share of a public resource, or
Notes 261
shoulder less than a fair share of the costs of its production. The name
‘free rider’ comes from a common textbook example: someone using
public transport without paying the fare (cf. Cornes & Sandler 1986).
Tomasello (2009: XIII & 52f.).
276 Silk and Vogle (1976:222) quoted a manager who said, ‘we all use the
jackal technique of HRM selection – hold the red meat over the pack and
see who can jump the highest’ (cf. Skidelsky & Skidelsky 2012).
277 ‘Deals based on self-interested calculation are at the heart of the contrac-
tarian theory’ (Glover 2012:28; plato.stanford.edu/entries/contractualism;
Miesing & Preble 1985:466).
278 Klikauer (2007 & 2008); Moynihan & Pandey (2010); Elbashir et al.
(2011); Dulipovici & Robey (2013).
279 E.g. virtue ethics, utilitarianism, Kant, Hegel, and Rawls’ ethics of justice.
280 It is the extreme opposite of ‘the free individual [who] is determined by
nothing but himself’ (MacIntyre 1970:17; cf. Kearns 2013).
(2011:352); Macky (2009:313); Nel et al. (2012:343); Grobler et al.
(2011:620); Calhoon (1969); Clarke (2013). The Machiavellian HR-
manager is often an ‘egoistic leader or a modern careerist defined by
hypocrisy’ (Diefenbach 2013:159); cf. Cunha et al. (2013).
282 Almost perfectly expressed by the ‘one who employs aggressive, manipu-
lative, exploiting, and devious moves in order to achieve personal and
organisational objectives’ (Miesing & Preble 1985:467).
283 Holland et al. (2012); Jackson et al. (2012:200, 520, 548–553); Stanger
(2009); Kramar et al. (2011:155); Beardwell & Claydon (2011:450);
Gunnigle et al. (2011:270–289); Nel et al. (2012:55); Grobler et al.
(2011:481–491).
284 The ability to bargain for oneself reflects Gare’s concept of ‘The Triumph
of the Airheads and the Retreat from Commonsense’ (2006). One does not
need technical expertise but a Machiavellian character.
285 McGregor’s Theory Y (1960 & 2006; Hart 1988). This would be a return to
Kohlberg’s stage 1 which is always a more preferable option for HRM than
moving upwards on the scale of morality (cf. McGregor’s Theory-X;
Bramel & Friend 1981:869 & 870).
286 Paauwe et al. (2013); Kordela (2013:13ff.).
287 Hart (1993:32) noted that ‘HRM is firmly aligned with the classical eco-
nomic view that people are not different from any other factor of produc-
tion and should be managed to maximise their utility’.
288 Jackson et al. (2012:478); Kramar et al. (2011:283); Schwind et al.
(2013:68).
289 Skidelsky & Skidelsky (2012); Hodgson (2013:17) notes ‘the first principle
of economics [and management studies] is that every agent is actuated
only by self-interest’. In other words, Managerialism’s assumption of a
‘homo economicus of maximising individual profits [suggests that] stealing
maximises the profit and minimises the cost’ (Sørensen 2002:164;
Crosthwaite 2013:95). Economics calls its homo economicus also ‘method-
ological individualism’ (Hodgson 2013:29ff.) claiming ‘there is no substra-
tum of society other than the actions of individuals’ (Hodgson 2013:33;
cf. Schumpeter’s ‘Der methodologische Individualismus’, 1908). ‘Homo
262 Notes
Economicus is really a robot’ (Crosthwaite 2013:95). This is underpinned

by behaviourism (Hodgson 2013:35) and the myth of Robinson Crusoe
(Hodgson 2013:37) despite Managerialism’s own prime ideology that
‘price mechanisms involve social interaction and structures, and social
phenomena that cannot be reduced entirely to individuals alone’
(Hodgson 2013:37; cf. Friedman 1970; Miesing & Preble 1985:467).
290 Canepari-Labib (2005:105) on Robinson Crusoe (cf. Solomon, R. C.
2004:1028); on homo economicus, Shermer (2007:xviii) noted ‘I am
writing against homo economicus, which holds that “Economic Man” has
unbounded rationality, self-interest, and free will, and that we are selfish,
self-maximising, and efficient in our decisions and choice’ (cf. Klikauer
2012b).
291 Wiltermuth & Flynn (2013); Werhane (2013); Beardwell & Claydon
(2011:621); Macky (2009:291–294); Schwind et al. (2013:128).
292 Barnes & Taksa (2012); DeCenzo et al. (2013:261f.).
293 Ackroyd & Thompson (1999); Karlsson (2012); Diefenbach
(2013a:174–185).
294 Rowntree (1921); Aiely (2009); McGregor (1960 & 2006).
295 Nowak & Highfield (2011); Klikauer (2012b); Glover (2012:19); Hodgson
(2013:57).
296 Hicks (2013); Gupta & Shaw (2014).
297 Skinner (1953); Styron (1979); Zimmerman (1981); Kramar et al.
(2011:39).
298 Inkson (2008); cf. Kearns (2013).
299 It is not uncommon to find business ethicists affirming to capitalism and
corporations. An example is ‘Werhane declaring her allegiance to a...free
enterprise system…pre-empting discussions on such a system’ (Lippke
1995:12). Business ethics writer deGeorge delivers ‘defenses of American
capitalism’ (Lippke 1995:20). Alone for the year 2013 Google.scholar lists
well above 5,000 articles on the ‘prisoner dilemma’.
300 Stone (2013:8); Kramar et al. (2011:630). Hart (1993:33) noted ‘even from an
economic perspective, it is questionable whether HRM is either desirable or
whether it is producing any substantive contribution to business profitabil-
ity’. A study ‘found that there was no significant correlation between those
companies displaying strong HRM techniques and those with successful
financial performance. The failure to link HRM and profitability must surely
represent a fairly damning indictment of a movement whose claim to fame
is that it delivers improvement in bottom-line performance’.
301 DeCenzo et al. (2013:370); plato.stanford.edu/entries/contractualism.
302 A common function that HRM tends to outsource, for example, is that of
recruitment and selection. It is outsourced to external HR agencies so that
corporate HRM does not appear to be too close to all the usual trimmings
of favouritism, nepotism, and ‘corruption including fraud, bribery, graft
and the payment of secret commissions and kickbacks’ (Stone 2013:632;
cf. Haigh 2012; Butler & Callahan 2014). While HRM textbooks generally
do not mention the ‘CEO-to-Worker’ wage gap, they are however eager to
camouflage this fact under, for example, ‘executive incentives’ (Nankervis
et al. 2014:474). An Australian HRM textbook like Nankervis et al. (2014)
does not mention that ‘the average total remuneration of a chief exec-
Notes 263
utive of a top 50 company listed on the Australian Securities Exchange in

2010 is $6.4 million – or almost 100 times that of the average worker’
(http://www.actu.org.au/Issues/ExecutivePayWatch/default.aspx).
303 This is in almost complete contradiction to everything we know from
evolutionary science and evolutionary ethics (Kropotkin 1902; Axelrod
1984, 1984a, 1997; Axelrod & Hamilton 1981; Trivers 1985; Skyrms 1996;
Sober 1998; Mysterud 2000; Gintis et al. 2003; Sachs et al. 2004; Baum
2005; Krebs 2008; Krebs & Denton 2005 & 2006; Hodgson 2013:103ff.;
McGovern 2013; Joshi & Pande 2014).
304 Dale (2012:13); Offe & Wiesenthal (1980); Zimmerman (1981 & 2002);
Cazes & Verick (2013); Stone (2013:79 & 212).
305 Cohen (1983); Reiman (1987); Gini & Sullivan (1987); Grand & Tåhlin
(2013); Wolff & Zacharias (2013).
306 Islam (2012:41) notes ‘as routinised measurements become dislocated
from the living human experience from where they are drawn, recogni-
tion theory suggests they have harmful consequences for personal
dignity’. Performance management is such a ‘routine measurement’ while
the moral philosophy of utilitarianism strongly advocates the ‘no harm’
principle which HRM violates.
307 Jackson et al. (2012:408); cf. Paauwe (2009).
308 Whitfield et al. (2012); Schwind et al. (2013:33); Beardwell & Claydon
(2011:555); Gunnigle et al. (2011:58–63); Stone (2013:685).
309 Jackson et al. (2012:11–13, 190, 271); Kramar et al. (2011:26–44, 78–80,
239–248, 308); Beardwell & Claydon (2011:20, 48f., 122, 582f., 666f.);
Macky (2009:13f. 27, 31–34); Gunnigle et al. (2011:36, 46, 50–53, 68–69,
73–77); Nel et al. (2012:546).
310 Campbell et al. (2012); Jackson et al. (2012:11); Kramar et al. (2011:308);
Beardwell & Claydon (2011:12f.); Macky (2009:13f.); Gunnigle et al.
(2011:68f., 73–77); Dutta (2012:1); Nel et al. (2012:546).
311 Schwind et al. (2013:523); Jackson et al. (2012:26); Kramar et al.
(2011:368); Palacios-Marqués & Devece-Carañana (2013).
312 Eckl (2013:387) calls these beati possidents, ‘the lucky owners and winners
on the marketplace’ (cf. www.catholicculture.org).
313 Berger & Luckmann (1967); Searle (1996); Kivisto (2013).
314 Guest & King (2004); Thompson (2011).
315 Drucker (1967); Ulrich & Smallwood (2007); Holbeche (2012); Kramar
et al. (2014:218).
316 Dahl (1957); Blau (1964); Lukes (2005); Buchanan & Badham (2008);
Alexander (2011); Weiskopf & Munro (2012). Meanwhile in HRM text-
books the term ‘power’ features as HRM’s ‘Lack of Power’ (Jackson et al.
2012:532); or as the power of HRM’s enemies (‘The Power of Public Sector
Unions’, Jackson et al. 2012:554); or neutral ‘powering the careers of the
next generation’ (Kramar et al. 2011); or as ‘empowerment progress’ (Nel
et al. 2012:108).
317 DeWinne & Sels (2013:174, 183, 189ff.). This results in the fact ‘that a
human agency is treated in an “instrumental” fashion’ (Islam 2012:38).
(2011:276f.); Gunnigle et al. (2011:126); DeCenzo et al. (2013:168); see
also: cf. Lippke (1995:58–68).
264 Notes
319 Schwind et al. (2013:230); Dries & Pepermans (2012).

320 Stone (2013:5 & 365; cf. Fulmer & Ployhart 2014); Wilcox (2012:85) notes
‘except when the CEO turns up and says, “We’re gonna sack you in a
month. Then people become important”’. Islam (2012:40) notes on
human capital ‘there is nothing particular about human capital: it is just a
capital asset like any other asset that is to be used more or less specialised
to specific uses and/or users’. Inkson (2008:272) wrote in the ‘hard HRM
(soft-HRM in disguise) model, “there is no pretence that labour has any-
thing other than commodity status”’.
321 DeCenzo et al. (2013:15); Ehnert et al. (2014). The idea of ‘downsizing-
rightsizing-suicising’ indicates that an overemphasis on downsizing – also
labelled rightsizing – can lead to organisational suicide (cf. Godard 2014).
322 Jobrack (2011). When HRM mentions its own history, it is highly ideolo-
gical, glossing over the worst excesses of early factory overseers: ‘The
history of personnel management begins around the end of the
19th century, when welfare officers (sometimes called “welfare secretaries”)
came into being. They were women and concerned only with the protec-
tion of women and girls. Their creation was a reaction to the harshness of
industrial conditions, coupled with pressures arising from the extension
of the franchise, the influence of trade unions and the labour movement,
and the campaigning of enlightened employers, often Quakers, for
what was called “industrial betterment”’ (http://www.cipd.co.uk/hr-
resources/factsheets/history-hr-cipd.aspx#link_0).
323 Newell & Shackleton (1993); Macky (2009:236–240); Gunnigle et al.
(2011:125, 129, 255).
324 Meshoulam & Baird (1987); Schwind et al. (2013:14).
325 Rosenfeld (1995); DeCenzo et al. (2013:171).
326 Jackson et al. (2012:303); Gunnigle et al. (2011:314); Schwind et al.
(2013:19).
327 Kramar et al. (2011:558); Gunnigle et al. (2011:12–14).
328 Jackson et al. (2012:537–548); Schwind et al. (2013:97); Kramar et al.
(2011:256–271); Macky (2009:413f.).
329 Horkheimer & Adorno (1947:12) emphasised: ‘as immovably, they insist
on the very ideology that enslaves them’. This is the ideology of
Managerialism which includes the idea that to ‘manipulate workers with
incentives is to treat them like children’ (Kohn 1999:25), only exchanging
Brownie Points and starting with wages, bonuses, rewards, and benefits.
Kohn (1993:46; cf. Aamodt 2010:458; Hicks 2013) also noted that ‘rewards
usually improve performance only at extremely simple – indeed, mindless
– tasks, and even then they improve only quantitative performance’.
330 Park (2013:3); cf. Hodgson (2013:29); Despite HRM’s ideology of indi-
vidualism, HRM has no concept of the ‘Moral Personhood’ (Kittay 2005)
but converts human beings into human resources. HRM remains func-
tional to management without an engagement of moral philosophy. In
HRM there is no ‘membership of a moral community of individuals
deserving equal respect and dignity’ (Kittay 2005:100) nor is there a moral
sense of ‘given care and responding appropriately to care, empathy, and
fellow feeling; a sense of what is harmonious and loving; and a capacity
for kindness and appreciation of those who are kind’ (Kittay 2005:122).
Notes 265
From HRM’s perspective a human resource represents ‘the other [who] is

viewed as less important or worthy, dehumanised, if not despised as infe-
rior [and] regarded as inferior’ (Kittay 2005:117).
331 ‘In any organisation, there are “vertical” pressures from superiors such as
supervisors, line-managers, management, and HR-managers to obey
organisational orders enshrined in HR policies but there are also “horizon-
tal” pressures to conform with members of an organisational group’. The
real quote read: ‘in Nazi Germany, there were “vertical” pressures from
superiors to obey terrible orders. There were also “horizontal” pressures to
conform to members of the group’ (Glover 2012:333).
332 See some of Immanuel Kant’s (1724–1804) writings and John Stuart Mill
(1806–1873), Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund, Adorno (1903–1969),
Emmanuel Levinas (1906–1995), and Alasdair MacIntyre.
333 Sisson (1993); Martell & Carroll (1995); Nel et al. (2012:470); Schwind
et al. (2013:4, 41, 58, 128, 162, 175f.).
334 Durie (2013:34) notes ‘in many big companies the HR department is
known as human remains, the place you are sent to when your job has
been scrapped and the boss doesn’t want to tell you directly’; cf. Smith &
Tomikoski (2012).
335 Stone (2013:384); Gilbert (2012:112ff.).
336 Gunnigle et al. (2011:58–63 & 157–165); cf. Boxall’s (2013:47ff.) ‘Building
Highly-Performing Work Systems’; Fusch & Gillespie (2013).
337 Aristotle would see the endless pursuit of profits as: they ‘live on an
endless treadmill of desire that never reaches a final goal and they remain
ever empty’ (Arrington 1998:66; Murphy 1993:149ff.; Slote 2010).
338 The contemporary virtue theorist Alasdair MacIntyre (1983) has argued
that ‘the figure of the manager, as a contemporary character, is incapable
of virtues in a genuinely Aristotelian sense’ (Jones et al. 2005:66;
cf. Murphy 1993; Doris 2002). For philosopher Descartes (1596–1650),
virtue is a supreme good because ‘it is the only good, among all those we
can possess, which depends entirely on our free will’. For HRM, the
supreme good is not virtue but the allocation of human resources. HRM is
submerged in general management operating on market forces while the
‘free will’ of subordinates is entirely unwarranted and comprehensively
suppressed. For Descartes, ‘virtue is the target at which we ought to aim’.
HRM’s aim (called organisational goals) deliberately excludes virtues
(Beadle & Moore 2006).
339 Stone (2013:252); Jackson et al. (2012:564 & 569); Kramar et al.
(2011:323); Beardwell & Claydon (2011:183 & 543); Gunnigle et al.
(2011:101).
340 HRM meanwhile does not seem to ‘cultivate curiosity and human
strength [but] a quest for economic payoff’ (Bix & Edis 2013:172).
341 Arnsperger (2008); Palan (2013).
342 In the words of Horkheimer and Adorno’s seminal book ‘Dialectic of
Enlightenment’ (1947), modern mass consumption is based on the ideo-
logy that ‘something is provided for all so that none may escape…con-
sumers appear as statistics on research organisation charts, and are divided
by income groups into red, green and blue areas; the technique that is
used for any type of propaganda’ (cf. Walsh & Lynch 2008).
266 Notes
343 In ‘The Laws’, Plato argued ‘citizens shouldn’t have anything to do with
money’ (Walsh & Lynch 2008).
344 Gunnigle et al. (2011:47–49); Nel et al. (2012:347).
345 Jackson et al. (2012: 16–171 & 27); Kramar et al. (2011:479f. &
2014:325f.). On ‘behavioural cause-and-effect models’ (Jackson et al.
2012:127) favoured by HRM, Crosthwaite (2013:95) noted that such an
HRM ‘view of the person, as it now stands, is that the person is a pure
stimulus-response machine. The preferences are given; the relative prices
are given. The person is completely reactive. We might say that the
person’s behaviour is perfectly predetermined or predestined…homo eco-
nomicus is really a robot’.
(2011:348); Beardwell & Claydon (2011:137–140); Nel et al. (2012:459);
347 Harding (2011). The dehumanising re-labelling of human beings as
human resources also avoids the following: ‘it is difficult to hurt others
who are humanised…[and HR-mangers would] refuse to behave cruelly,
even under high instigation to do so, if [HR-managers were to] act under
personalised responsibilities and recipients were humanised’ (Bandura
et al. 1996:371).
348 This is so even though HRM seeks to frame employees as amoral because
they ‘permit their behaviour to be guided by a decision reached by
another, irrespective of his own judgment as to the merits of that deci-
sion’ (Islam 2012:37).
349 Aristotle (often described as the quintessential Greek philosopher though
he was Macedonian) believed that slaves and women are defective reason-
ers and could not possess full virtues. In ancient Greece it was permissible
to own slaves and women should be sequestered; (cf. Marcuse 1941). ‘The
Greek philosophers never really raised the problem of slavery’ (Midgley
1994:378).
350 Perlmutter (1997); Harding (2003); Jobrack (2011).
351 Macky (2009:270); Schwind et al. (2013:19); Nel et al. (2012:370).
352 Schwind et al. (2013:173); Kramar et al. (2011:413); Beardwell & Claydon
(2011:224–226); Nel et al. (2012:31, 119–121 & 152–155); Grobler et al.
(2011:358).
353 Ethics’ core question of ‘what shall I do?’ leads to the wrong path because
the ‘I’ indicates individuality whereas ethics is a social project (from
Aristotle to Adorno), not a project of the individual (ethical egoism, etc.).
Without Hegel’s ‘Other’ ethics would not exist. Historically, not the indi-
vidual but the community (tribes, groups, collectives, etc.) created human
history and ethics. Marcuse (1941) noted that ‘the community comes
first’. Ethics has always been an issue for human communities who ini-
tially developed codes of conduct on how to live together. History is not
individual but universal consciousness. Perhaps, this is best represented in
the consciousness of a primitive group with all individuality submerged in
the community. Feelings, sensations, and concepts are not properties of
individuals but are shared among all. The common – not the particular –
defines consciousness and ethics.
Notes 267
354 On ideology, French philosopher Althusser (1918–1990) noted ‘ideology is

as such an organic part of every social totality’. The ideology of HRM has
been made an organic part of organisational totality (Fromm
1949:164–167; Kohn 1993:26).
355 Meanwhile for HRM, the character trait of being good is less irrelevant
than, for example, a character trait that makes a human resource employ-
able, i.e. ‘its’(!) employability as in ‘having marketable skills – skills that
are attractive to an employer’ (Stone 2013:403; Jackson et al. 2012:10;
Beardwell & Claydon 2011:248).
356 Meanwhile HRM and Managerialism (2013) have other ideas about social
relationships. As Fleming & Cederström (2012:7) note, ‘what makes capi-
talism different today is that its influence reaches far beyond the
office…Today, however, capital seeks to exploit our very sociality in all
spheres of life. When we all become “human capital” we not only have a
job, or perform a job. We are the job’. In other words, while virtue ethics
relies on social relationships for moral conduct, capitalism, HRM, and
Managerialism pervert and exploit these social relationships for its ends.
Islam (2012:40) notes on human capital ‘there is nothing particular about
human capital: it is just a capital asset like any other which is to be more
or less specialised to specific uses and/or users’ (cf. dePablos & Tennyson
2014; Bhattacharya et al. 2014).
357 Hodgson (2013:107) notes, ‘let us try to teach generosity and
altruism…we, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish
replicators’. The very opposite has been shown by Ward (2010).
(2011:162–180); Groysberg (2012); Savitz (2013).
359 Jackson et al. (2012:204); Macky (2009:69); Nel et al. (2012:163).
360 Ward (2010); Clarke (2013); on the professionalism of HRM, see: Alvesson
(2013:153ff.); see: Stone (2014:397) on ‘career planning and development’.
361 They are the very opposites of Kant’s imperative – ‘act in such a way that
you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any
other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as
an end’. It sees everyone as a ‘means’ – nobody as an end in-themselves
(Kant).
362 Paternalistically, HRM frames ‘its’ human resources often as ‘my people’
because it can never accept individuals as res nullius, people ‘that belong
to no one’ (Eckl 2013:394) because individuals have to belong to HRM
(cf. Fritzsche & Becker 1984:166).
363 Schwind et al. (2013:81); Kramar et al. (2011:498f.); Beardwell & Claydon
(2011:185); Nel et al. (2012:255).
364 It is Plato who analysed the virtue of ‘pure pleasure’ (Levinas 1961).
365 Even though HRM has no use for friendships based on pleasure and
virtues, this is not to say that individual HR managers do not have
friends. They do. But what is at stake here is the essence of HRM and not
the behaviour of an individual manager.
366 Kothari (2010); DeCenzo et al. (2013:291ff.). Overall however, ‘in assum-
ing that top-layer staff produces much more value than everyone else, cor-
porations now focus on recruiting, retaining, and disproportionately
268 Notes
rewarding that elite, while all others wind up in “a reverse bidding war as
companies try to reduce the cost of knowledge”’ (Bix & Edis 2013:172;
cf. Lippke 1995:58–68).
(2011:297, 324–326, 330f.); Beardwell & Claydon (2011:91, 148, 149–154);
Macky (2009:91, 97–99, 208); Gunnigle et al. (2011:89f.); Paauwe et al.
(2013); Boxall (2013:47f.).
368 A list of Aristotelian virtues is presented in: Arrington (1998:76).
369 Aristotle lived in a society based on the surplus value of slaves. Today’s
society lives on the surplus value of labour. Those who govern the
process of surplus-extraction were called slave-owners. Today, these
overseers are called HR Managers (for employees, see Schumann
2006:119ff.). They are still strictly segregated from HRM as a managerial
group perhaps because ‘the presence of others diffuses the sense of per-
sonal responsibility of any individual’ (Zimbardo 2004:42). Hence, HR-
managers seek to remain undisturbed by ‘others’, such as, for example,
trade unions.
370 Offe & Wiesenthal (1980); cf. Zimmerman (1981).
371 Perhaps not all too surprising is the fact that among all organisational behav-
iour, organisational change, organisational culture, organisational members,
organisational practice, organisational action, organisational strategy, organ-
isational knowledge, organisational learning, organisational commitment,
organisational performance, organisational development, organisational
structure, and on and on and on, a term called ‘organisational happiness’ is
totally absent from HRM’s vocabulary and thinking.
372 There is OB-organisational behaviour, OS-organisational studies, OT-
organisational theory, OD-organisational development and so on but no
OH (organisational happiness).
373 Marsden & Townley (1996); Klikauer (2007:138).
374 HRM contradicts even utilitarian virtues. Mill (1861) noted ‘the multiplica-
tion of happiness is, according to the utilitarian ethics, the object of virtue’.
HRM’s project is not ‘the multiplication of happiness’ but ‘the multiplication
of organisational performance’. For the foremost philosopher on justice,
John Rawls (1921–2002), ‘justice is the first virtue of social institutions’
(Heller 1989:65 & 79). On that basis, the ‘social institution’ of HRM would
need to produce justice, including wage justice. There is still no wage
justice, for example, between men’s and women’s earnings while under a
Marxian understanding ‘wage justice’ remains a tautology.
375 Aristotle’s ‘Nicomachean Ethics’ www.efm.bris.ac.uk/het/aristotle/
ethics.pdf
376 Axelrod & Hamilton (1981); Krebs (2011); Hodgson (2013:111) notes
‘Michael Tomasello (2009) provides evidence that children as young as
two years have dispositions to cooperate and help others’.
377 Much to the discomfort (wikipedia.org/wiki/Survival_of_the_fittest) of
‘the survival of the fittest’ ideologists, Charles Darwin himself noted on
the evolution of morality ‘there can be no doubt that a tribe including
many members who, from possessing in a high degree the spirit of patrio-
tism, obedience, courage, and sympathy, were always ready to give aid to
each other and to sacrifice themselves for the common good, would be
Notes 269
victorious over most other tribes; and this would be natural selection,
Charles Darwin (1871)’ (Hodgson 2013:99).
378 Harris (1982); Hart (1993); Selekman (1959:ix) noted ‘General Electric
Vice-President, Lemuel R. Boulware’s principle [was] “management knows
best what should be done for its employees”’.
379 Chriss (2012); Glover (2012:362) noted that ‘people have a disposition to
believe what they are told, especially when they are told by someone in
authority’.
380 Interestingly, DeCenzo et al. (2013, 11th edition of ‘Fundamentals of
HRM’) does not even mention KPIs any longer. Perhaps the ‘brand-name
“KPI”’ has been damaged beyond repair.
381 Kramar et al. (2011:200 & 512); Beardwell & Claydon (2011:135 & 245);
Macky (2009:425f.); Nel et al. (2012:518).
382 Greek philosophy saw only men as relevant. But even in antiquity some
suspected that there is no difference between men and women.
383 Jackson et al. (2012:60, 129, 438); Kramar et al. (2011:12); Beardwell &
Claydon (2011:32, 62f., 338f.); Macky (2009:350 & 354); Gunnigle et al.
(2011:46); Nel et al. (2012:371f.); Grobler et al. (2011:141).
384 Through what HRM calls ‘fitting in’ and management calls organisational
culture, a culture of mindless compliance is fostered through the deliber-
ate elimination of any ‘unwarranted’ influence. ‘Milgram found that
obedience was maximised when subjects first observed peers behaving
obediently; it was dramatically reduced when peers rebelled’ (Zimbardo
2004:27). Almost all ‘rebellious’ elements – trade unions – have been elim-
inated. This fosters mindless and unethical obedience to HRM’s manager-
ial regimes.
385 Jackson et al. (2012:329 & 423); Kramar et al. (2011:368f. & 375–378);
Beardwell & Claydon (2011:467); Macky (2009:258, 263, 282–286);
Gunnigle et al. (2011:189–210); Nel et al. (2012:396, 411, 459); Grobler
et al. (2011:326).
386 Hidden behind HRM’s ideology of promotion and promote-ability lurks
the hard mathematical fact that the pyramid-structure of any company
works steeply against promotion. In addition, there are class ceilings, old-
boys networks, organisational culture, etc. (Stone 2013:230; cf. Gilbert
2012:102).
387 Jackson et al. (2012:24–27, 59f., 87, 411, 489, 492); Kramar et al.
(2011:108ff.); Macky (2009:380–402); Nel et al. (2012:42, 45, 81, 225, 265,
277, 280ff.); Grobler et al. (2011:468–471); Almond (2013); Stone
(2013:532).
388 Gare (2006); Samuel (2010); Winston et al. (2013).
389 Schwind et al. (2013:20, 30, 39, 62); Jackson et al. (2012:181); Kramar et
al. (2011:188); Beardwell & Claydon (2011:168, 290); Macky (2009:171);
Gunnigle et al. (2011:113f.); Nel et al. (2012:140); Grobler et al.
(2011:165–169); Stone (2013:186) cf. ‘merit pay’ (DeCenzo et al. 2013:287;
Stone 2013:453).
390 In addition, ‘systems of group-based social hierarchy are not maintained
simply by the oppressive activities of dominants or the passive compli-
ance of subordinates, but rather by the coordinated and collaborative
activities of both dominants and subordinates’ (Diefenbach 2013:78).
270 Notes
391 For example chapter VI on HRD in Mondy (2014) & chapter III on train-
ing and HRM in Dressler (2014).
(2011:411–415); Beardwell & Claydon (2011:310–325); Macky (2009:311);
Nankervis et al. (2014:287); cf. Sambrook & Willmott (2014); Ford (2014);
McGraw (2014).
393 Buchanan (2008); Bastian et al. (2013); James (2013).
394 Beardwell & Claydon (2011:238–240); Macky (2009:10); Gunnigle et al.
(2011:260ff.).
395 ‘Hume’s recognition that self-esteem must be tempered by benevolence is
reflected in Aristotle’s argument that the development and preservation of
proper self-love requires friendships in which persons come to care for
others for others’ own sakes’ (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-
character/).
396 Herzog (2012:598); Stone (2013:437); Fleming & Cederström (2012:13)
note ‘most of us still have a boss above us giving orders. But we have also
partially internalised this “boss function”’ (cf. Diefenbach & Sillince 2012)
when one or all three of Darley’s (1992:208) three modes of social
influences are set to work on employees by HRM: ‘compliance’ with HR
policies; ‘identification’ with corporate mission statements and corporate
culture; and ‘internalisation’ leading to mutations such as the
‘Organisation Men’ (Whyte 1961).
397 Arendt (1951 & 1994); Glover (2012:357) noted, ‘Eduard Wirths, one of
the leading Nazi doctors in Auschwitz, wrote to his wife in 1945, “I can
say that I have always done my duty and have never done anything con-
trary to what was expected of me”’.
398 Kelman (1965); Kramar et al. (2011:414, 467f.); Macky (2009:340f.); Schwind
et al. (2013:296); Grobler et al. (2011:361); Stone’s ‘modelling’ (2013:370)
carries connotations to human beings as clay or some kind of ‘play dough’,
i.e. a raw mass of humans to be modelled into any shape HRM wants.
399 Entering work meanwhile has been described by Fleming & Cederström
(2012:4) as ‘entering the workforce is like entering the grave…from then
on, nothing happens and you have to pretend to be interested in your
work’.
400 Whyte (1961); Argyris (1964); Kramar et al. (2011:420f.); Macky
(2009:316f.); Nel et al. (2012:208f.); Jackson et al. (2012:228); Kramar
et al. (2011:420ff.); Macky (2009:317); Grobler et al. (2011:227); Stone
(2013:380); Nankervis et al. (2014:291).
401 Performance management, reward management, extrinsic rewards, and
compensation are key features and the measure of all things in HRM. On
this, the Catholic philosopher Aquinas’ bible has been very clear: Jesus
Christ threw the moneylenders out of the temple. Similarly, taking inter-
est (usury) is prohibited in Islam. Buddhism warns that if you harm
another person when doing business you will inevitably bring harm to
yourself. Many commandments issued by religions such as Christianity,
Islam, and Buddhism are negated by HRM. The money-code is the core
part of HRM’s operation in the form of reward management. In short,
HRM’s focus on reward management negates Christian, Islamic, and
Buddhist value ethics. Hence HRM cannot be virtuous in a Christian,
Islamic, or Buddhist understanding of ethics.
Notes 271
402 Peperzak (2013); Wilcox (2012:86); Sitton (1987:87); Stone (2014:764).

403 HRM assists general management in portraying ‘others’ – competitive cor-
porations, trade unions (in almost all HRM textbooks), environmental
groups, state regulators, etc. – as enemies (Keen 1986).
404 See also: Socrates (469–399BC) and German philosopher Adorno
(1903–1969).
405 Watson (2010); Jackson et al. (2012:242, 246–249, 284f., 508); Kramar
et al. (2011:301–393, 435–441); Beardwell & Claydon (2011:154, 176f.,
179); Macky (2009:24 & 318); Gunnigle et al. (2011:126 & 201f.); Nel
et al. (2012:372); Grobler et al. (2011:319); Gilbert (2012:89); cf. Smith &
Tomikoski (2012); see also: Cohen (1983 & 1985).
406 In ‘A Moral Philosophy of Management’, Selekman (1959:77) notes ‘to the
cynic, man is basically and always selfish, self-aggrandised, and exploita-
tive of his fellow man’.
407 Kant’s ‘Critique of Moral Judgement’ (Kant 1790); Heavey et al. (2013).
408 Bolton & Houlian (2008); Gama et al. (2012:97) note, ‘the term human
resources may result in encouraging a depersonalised and dehumanised
view of the employment relationship’. The problem here is twofold: it is
not a ‘may’ but a certainty as HRM is designed to be a depersonalising and
dehumanising affair; and it is not only geared towards the employment
relationship but towards human beings in general.
409 Jackson et al. (2012:550, 531f. & 545–546); Beardwell & Claydon
(2011:437); Gunnigle et al. (2011:5, 270, 274, 341–344); Nel et al.
(2012:60); Grobler et al. (2011:496, 516); Dundon et al. (2010); Brown &
Warren (2011); Vernon & Brewster (2013).
410 Cf. Nietzsche’s ‘herd mentality’ (Banerjee 1992; Klikauer 2012:62);
Selekman’s (1959:28) ‘will to power’.
411 Quoted from Campbell, J. et al. (2005:78); Jackson et al. (2012:22–24,
100f.); Beardwell & Claydon (2011:421f.); Nel et al. (2012:108–110 & 519);
Munter (2013:175) noted on ethics codes, ‘that their purpose is to ensure
obedience and conformity…the codes are written in hierarchical language
that indicates tight control…the codes [have] authoritarian tone…[and
they are] instruments of domination’.
412 Macky (2009:162); cf. Paauwe et al. (2013a); Mostafa & Gould-Williams
(2014).
413 Klikauer (2012:87 & 180). What is equally unnatural but purely ideolo-
gical is the fostering of a corporate esprit de corps (Davies 2006:47). This
enhances the likelihood of the following: HRM ‘has little reason to be
troubled by guilt or to feel any need to make amends for inhuman
conduct if [HRM] re-construes itself as serving worthy [company] pur-
poses’ (Bandura et al. 1966:366).
414 Schwind et al. (2013:307ff.); Jackson et al. (2012: 257–259, 341f.); Kramar
et al. (2011:167ff., 220–227, 341f.); Beardwell & Claydon (2011:464f.);
Macky (2009:261f.); Gunnigle et al. (2011:192); Nel et al. (2012:405f.);
(2011:555f.); Macky (2009:112–116); Gunnigle et al. (2011:338–344); Nel
et al. (2012:274–276 & 349).
416 Jackson et al. (2012:56); Beardwell & Claydon (2011:107); Macky
(2009:65, 193, 330); Gunnigle et al. (2011:71); Nel et al. (2012:215);
272 Notes
Grobler et al. (2011:637); DeCenzo et al. (2013:198f.); Stone (2013:39).

Fleming & Cederström (2012:6) note ‘in a new culture of work that
demands every fibre of your organism to always be switched on, the
enemy of production is what human resources managers like to call pre-
senteeism: being present only in body with every other part of you being
far, far away (on a beach, making love, setting a building on fire, etc.)’.
417 The unconscious revolt against HRM’s systemic and ‘structural violence’
(Farmer 1996 & 2004; Sklair 2013) that often finds its expression in bully-
ing, mopping, etc. is suppressed through a raft of HRM instruments as
outlined in almost every HRM textbook that takes an – albeit hidden –
‘blame the victim’ approach (Lee & Brotheridge 2013). Those who rebel
against HRM’s system of structural violence are blamed for their inability
to suffer in silence.
418 While ideologically everything that points into the direction of the
worker-vs.-management contradictions is eliminated, at shopfloors those
who HRM perceives as not fitting in – the misfits– are also eliminated.
This can, for example, occur through witch-hunts when HRM ‘focuses on
marginalised people who look or act differently from ordinary people’
(Zimbardo 2004:23; cf. Barstow 1994). This carries connotations to Malleus
Maleficarum, the handbook of the German Inquisitors from the Roman
Catholic Church (Bandura et al. 1996).
419 Kelman (1965); Ackroyd & Thompson (1999).
420 For Adorno Mündigkeit also entails the ability of ‘not co-operating with a
bad life even though this might lead to frustration, isolation, alienation,
and despair’ because cooperation with a bad life will not create a ‘good life
of fulfilment and happiness’ (cf. Bastian et al. 2013).
421 ‘The morality of people (human resources) is overwhelmed by an organ-
isational culture making people to believe, to obey, and to conform to HR-
policies. In addition, the organisational belief system was effective in
making people internalise them. Not only were people afraid of HRM’s
sanctioning regime (disciplinary action): many also thought disobedience
of managerial orders would be wrong…people were to be transformed
from job applicants to human resources and organisational members.
There was to be a new organisational identity, rooted in an outlook
actively hostile to the responses which constitute non-performance’. The
real quote reads: ‘the moral resources were overwhelmed by pressure to
believe, to obey and to conform. In addition, the Nazi belief system was
effective in making people internalise them. Not only were people afraid:
many also thought disobedience would be wrong…people were to be
transformed. There was to be a new Nazi identity, rooted in an outlook
actively hostile to the responses which constitute our humanity’ (Glover
2012:327; cf. human resource effectiveness index – HREI, Nankervis et al.
2014:557).
422 As Hampden-Turner (1970:127) noted, the axiom of Albert Camus ‘I rebel,
therefore we exist’.
423 Whyte (1961); Argyris (1964); Jackson et al. (2012:207); Schwind et al.
(2013:189); Kramar et al. (2011:531); Macky (2009:162 & 241); Gunnigle
et al. (2011:54f.); Gilbert (2012:134ff.); Peccei et al. (2013:37–45); Bastian
et al. (2013). HRM is so obsessed with fitting in that it even has invented a
Notes 273
‘fit between the fits’ (Paauwe et al. 2013a:72–77; Nankervis et al.

2014:229).
424 Jackson et al. (2012:19, 76 & 160); Schwind et al. (2013:39); Kramar et al.
(2011:187f.); Gunnigle et al. (2011:26); Grobler et al. (2011:589).
425 Schrijvers (2004:11).
426 According to Wrong (1994:5), ‘order consists of predictability, of human
conduct on the basis of common and stable expectations’. This is crucial
for HRM because it depends on the ‘predictability’ of human resources’
organisational behaviour and an ability to operate with a ‘stable expecta-
tion’ of subordinates’ conduct. HRM also depends on an organisational
‘order, regularity, and predictability’ of human resources.
427 On law and order, German philosopher Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979)
noted, ‘law and order are always and everywhere the law and order which
protect the established hierarchy; it is nonsensical to invoke the absolute
authority of this law and this order against those who suffer from it and
struggle against it – not for personal advantage and revenge, but for their
share of humanity’ (Marcuse 1969:130); McMahon (1989); Peter & Hull
(1969 & 2009); Baillargeon (2013).
428 Schwind et al. (2013:17); Jackson et al. (2012:78, 90, 549); Kramar et al.
(2011:553 & 593); Kramar et al. (2014:71 & 126); Beardwell & Claydon
(2011:432); Macky (2009:117, 121, 123f., 291–294); Gunnigle et al.
(2011:30 & 328); Nel et al. (2012:129 & 233); Grobler et al. (2011:18);
Stone (2014:121ff.).
429 Rawls (2001:99f.); cf. Rawls (2009); MacKinnon (2013:150f.).
430 The suggestion of a legal philosophy called ‘legal positivism’ that ‘law and
order’ have an intrinsic value apart from moral ends is a fallacy. Positive
law is man-made by a given political community, society, or nation-state.
‘Natural law’ (lex naturalis) posits that laws are set by nature and that
therefore have validity everywhere (cf. Rothbard 1982:1–26); Latour
(2009); Dworkin’s ‘Constitutionalism’ (1978, 1985, 1986, 1996, 2002);
cf. Howard Zinn’s Disobedience and Democracy – Nine Fallacies on Law and
Order (1968); on legal positivism see: Kelsen (1928, 1945, 1967); Fromm
(1949:9); Marcuse (1969:95); Raz (1979 & 2003); Waldron (1993); Wrong
(1994:1); Latour (2009); Gardner (2010); Rawls’ concept of a ‘Social and
Moral Order’ as outlined in his ‘Justice as Fairness’ (2001:8ff.).
431 Much in line with that is the fact that ‘protecting the “kings” peace was one
of the earliest building blocks of the common law’ (Douzinas 2013:131).
Following that, the domineering role of HRM and reason for HR-policies is
the protection of HRM, the company, and general management.
432 For Wrong (1994:11) ‘the problem of order is the problem of how indi-
vidual units…are arranged in non-random social patterns’. Wrong has
described the precise problems for HRM which are: firstly, to convert
people into individual human resources; secondly, the need to arrange
those resources and treat them as objects of power (Bauman 1989); and
thirdly, these resources need to be made to follow an organisational
pattern to achieve organisational outcomes. This, almost inevitably
creates ‘the entrenched viciousness of organisational life’ (Storey 2007:2).
433 Cf. Drucker (1951); Habermas (1985, 1996, 1997); Deetz (1992) Klikauer
(2008 & 2010).
274 Notes
434 Blumberg (1968); Scott (1997:21ff.); Casey (2012).

435 Kant’s self-determination and self-legislation (cf. Reath 2013; Moyar
2013:592).
436 On authority, legal positivist writer Raz (1979:34) noted, ‘it is in the
nature of authority that it requires submission even when one thinks that
what is required is against reason. Therefore, submission to authority is
irrational. Since authority sometimes requires action against one’s own
judgement, it requires abandoning one’s moral autonomy’.
Organisational authority is a near perfect example of this (cf. Gellner
1987:310; Fromm 1949:8f.). On authority, Hampden-Turner (1970:124)
emphasised, ‘those of us who needlessly accept the commands of author-
ity cannot yet claim to be civilised men’.
437 Jackson et al. (2012:57); Schwind et al. (2013:29); Gunnigle et al.
(2011:314); DeCenzo et al. (2013:120).
438 Beardwell & Claydon (2011:432); Schwind et al. (2013:65); Nel et al.
(2012:47–50).
439 This is, of course, considering the difference between legal theory and
legal reality as well as the rejection of the naïve idea that people shape
laws as outlined, for example, in legal positivism (Reiman & Leighton
2013; Raz 1979).
440 Heavey et al. (2013:147). Thomas Hobbes’ philosophy, for example,
denotes, ‘continuation of fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of
man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. His solution was that every-
one should submit to an absolute ruler, who would have the power to set
penalties sufficiently severe to enforce social rules’ (Glover 2012:20). This
appears like an ideal for HRM (Klikauer 2010:180–192). It also carries con-
notations to Adorno et al.’s (1964) ‘authoritarian personality [where] pun-
ishment for breaking rules played a big role. Neither emotional warmth
nor reasoning about moral principles figured much in the accounts’
(Glover 2012:330).
441 Giddens (1984:22) noted, ‘most rules imply…the production and repro-
duction of social practices’. There is a ‘structuring quality of rules’
(Giddens 1984:23).
442 Hegel (1807); Honneth (1995); Williams (1998); Anderson (2009); Hoy
(2009).
443 HRM calls this ‘behaviour modification’ (Arnold 2005; Arnold & Randal
2010:240f.; Aamodt 2010:307f.).
444 Beardwell & Claydon (2011:543 & 545); Grobler et al. (2011:18); Schwind
et al. (2013:209 & 243); Jackson et al. (2012:296); Nel et al. (2012:382);
Gunnigle et al. (2011:121).
445 For that HRM ‘strives to maintain a certain level of deviance within [an
organisation] as deviance is functional to clarifying…boundaries, provid-
ing scapegoats, clearing out-groups [e.g. trade union members]…to further
in-groups’ and the managerial esprit de corps.
446 Schmidtke (2007); Schwind et al. (2013:227, 239, 245); Sørensen (2002).
447 Giddens (1984:20) noted, ‘after all, the word “regulative” already implies
rule: its dictionary definition is controlled by rules’. Fromm (1949:155)
noted that ‘the authority as lawgiver [i.e. HRM] makes its subjects
[.i.e. subordinates] feel guilty for their many and unavoidable trans-
Notes 275
gressions…the dependence of irrational authority results in a weakening

of will in the dependent person and, at the same time, whatever tends to
paralyse the will makes for an increase in dependence. Thus a vicious
circle is formed’.
448 Anseel et al. (2009); Spencer (2012); Nel et al. (2012:69–71 & 222–224);
Schwind et al. (2013:156); Kramar et al. (2011:101); Kramar et al.
(2014:103); Beardwell & Claydon (2011:398, 413f., 421f., 414); Macky
(2009:239f.); Gunnigle et al. (2011:369–371); Grobler et al. (2011:480);
cf. Selekman’s ‘demotion’ (1959:68).
449 HRM’s term ‘will be deducted’ is always formulated in the passive to make
the active part – HRM – disappear (Klikauer 2007 & 2008).
450 In the relationship of crime and business things are different. Nader
(1967:7–8) noted, the report quotes Professor Sanford Kadish: ‘It is poss-
ible to reason convincingly that the harm done by violations of
many…regulatory laws [on business] is of a magnitude that dwarfs in
significance the lower class property offences. The hard mode to human
health and safety by business crime should dispel the distinguishing char-
acteristic of “white-collar crime”’ (cf. Pardue et al. 2013).
451 Such as Plato, Aristotle, Claude Henri de Rouvroy comte de Saint-Simon,
Rousseau, Burke, Hume, ∨Mill, Popper, Hegel, Rawls, Adorno, Marcuse,
∨
Bauman, Habermas, and Z iz ek to name a few.
452 Dalton (1959:244); Schrijvers (2004); Storey (2007:2); Croker (2012).
453 Macintyre (1983:354f.); Sen (2009); Heller (1989:5 & 68); Velasquez
(2012:105); Peccei et al. (2013:26f. & 32–37). Even the much acclaimed
champion of neo-liberal deregulation, Adam ‘Smith also insists on the
vital importance of a system of justice based on moral principles’
(Hodgson 2013:12) – not based on what is good for HRM or the company.
This contrasts HRM’s ideological quest to deregulate as found, for
example, in: ‘Australian Working Conditions Are Too Strict’ (Stone
2014:763).
454 Burkemper et al. (2013); Pereira (2013); Taylor (2013); Burke (2012);
Aulino et al. (2013); Bowles (2012); Williams & Arrigo (2004); Fogel
(2000); Rothbard (1974).
455 The issue of justice is perhaps almost as old as philosophy. ‘Socrates has
meant in saying that virtue is the mark to which one should look in
living, all actions, one’s own…directed to the end that justice…shall be
present in one who is the blessed’ (Vlastos 1991:13). But HRM appears to
represent the exact opposite of Socrates’ moral philosophy.
456 Free Will is a term used by moral philosophy for a particular sort of capacity
of rational agents to choose a course of action from among various alterna-
tives. There is (a) freedom of action and (b) freedom of will (cf. Zimmerman
1981). David Hume described it as ‘the power of acting or of not acting,
according to the determination of the will’, while Wolf (1990) noted that
‘an agent acts freely only if he had the ability to choose the true and the
good’. The philosophy of a ‘free will’ also relates to the ‘external manipula-
tion problem’ (Mele 1995) while Fischer (1994 & 1998) distinguished two
sorts of controls over one’s actions: guidance and regulative control.
457 Constitutionality has been associated with Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron
de La Brède et de Montesquieu (1689–1755) or simply Montesquieu (1752),
276 Notes
John Locke (1632–1704), and John Austin (1832); for ‘legal positivism’,
see: Kelsen (1928, 1945, 1967); Hart (1958 & 1961); Campbell (1996).
Interestingly, many constitutions include a bill of rights but none an
Economic Bill of Rights (cf. Quinn 1953:2).
458 As Selekman (1959:75) put it, ‘authority gives management the sanctions
to direct men’…‘a boss governs for any length of time by threats of pun-
ishment’ (Selekman 1959:76).
459 In ordinary society, policemen cannot make the law, arrest someone, and
be the judge, even if in each case it was a different policeman; it would
still violate the separation of power.
460 Cf. Locke, J. 1690. Two Treatises of Government (10th ed.), Project Gutenberg.
http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/trgov10h.htm.
461 This is ‘the free individual [who] is determined by nothing but himself’
(MacIntyre 1970:17); cf. Allison et al. (2010); Geiger (2007); Beiner &
William (1993); Fleischacker (1999); Flikschuh (2000).
462 This right is very much in line with the general philosophical concept of
right, namely that ‘right is the demand not to be treated as an object or as
a nobody’ (Douzinas 2013:85). But it is exactly what HRM violates when
converting human beings into human resources/objects and when people
are treated as ‘nobodies’ with ID-numbers, barcodes exposed to head-
counts, downsizing, and outsourcing (cf. Muñoz-Bullón & Sánchez-Bueno
2014).
463 Kant uses Rousseau’s terms when discussing free will: ‘will of all, public
will, and general will’. Rousseau’s theory of freedom denotes that indi-
vidual freedom is achieved through participation in the process whereby
one’s community exercises collective control over its own affairs in accor-
dance with the ‘general will’. MacCallum (1967) defined the basic concept
of freedom as a subject, or agent, free from certain constraints or prevent-
ing conditions to do or become certain things. Freedom is therefore a
triadic relation – that is, a relation between three things: an agent, certain
preventing conditions, and certain doings or becoming an agent
(cf. Marglin 1974; Rothbard 1982:215; Heller 1989:84f.; Zimmermann
1981); see also Kant’s ‘Rechtslehre’ (Pogge 1997).
464 Berlin (1969); Eckl (2013:397). HRM tends to view this as ‘that which is
not forbidden is permissible’ (Carlin & Strong (1995:388), e.g. only these
forms of discrimination are non-permissible that are explicitly made
illegal.
465 For Raz (1979:212) the rule of law means literally what it says: the rule of the
law. Taken in its broadest sense, it means that people should obey the law
and be ruled by it. In the realm of HRM, it means that subordinates should
be ruled by HR policies, should obey them, and should be ruled by them.
Hence, ‘if the law is to be obeyed it must be capable of guiding the behaviour
of its subjects’ (Raz 1979:214). This is exactly why HRM has invented HR
policies, rules, and procedures. They guide the behaviour of subordinates in
total absence of what Kant called self-determination and Hegel termed self-
actualisation (cf. Heller 1989:107; Sayer 2008:35; Hoy 2009).
466 Cf. Hegel (1803/4, 1807, 1821, 1830); Durkheim (1983:33); Klikauer
(2010:105–127).
Notes 277
467 In companies and in HRM regimes, there is no legislature, no executive,

and no judiciary (plato.stanford.edu/entries/montesquieu/#4). Structures
that do not include these provisions are commonly called dictatorships.
468 Dworkin (1978, 1985, 1986, 1996).
469 Israeli philosopher Ido Geiger (2007) noted, the state seeks to justify itself
through the order it has imposed on nature, but that nature, as non-
rational, cannot actually be the source of this authority. In other words,
HRM cannot legitimise its authority by imposing it onto subordinates.
Not because these are non-rational agents but because they are not in a
position of self-determination (cf. Schumann 2006:122).
470 This is important not only for internal but also external reasons because
‘corporate business had to develop a position of responsibility which
would win its acceptance as a legitimate institution’ (Selekman 1959:7).
471 Hence, HRM and HR policies represent what Plato has noted as (quoted
in: Heller 1989:67), ‘bad constitutions breed unjust citizens, and that
unjust people enact unjust laws’. For Plato, this is evil and ‘evil is the
misuse of reason’ (Heller 1989:67). HRM uses reason to create HR policies
that are unjust and thereby violate Plato’s demand for just laws and the
application of reason for that.
472 Scott (1990); Biswas & Cassell (1996); Diefenbach & Sillince (2012).
473 Beardwell & Claydon (2011:669); Gunnigle et al. (2011:185).
474 For Kant, this is expressed in recognition of an original contract. It is
Kant’s reason that forces the sovereign to ‘give his laws in such a way that
they could have arisen from the united will of a whole people and to
regard each subject, insofar as he wants to be a citizen, as if he has joined
in voting for such a will’. When HRM creates HR policies, it almost never
has this in mind.
475 Sovereignty can be seen as the right to command and correlatively the
right to be obeyed. Hobbes conceived the sovereign as being above the law.
Jean Bodin (1530–1596) was the first European philosopher to treat the
concept extensively. His souveraineté featured as a central concept in his
work De la république (1576) with its English edition published as ‘On
Sovereignty’. For him, only a supreme authority within a territory could
strengthen a fractured community. Bertrand de Jouvenel and Jacques and
Jacques Maritain also acknowledge that sovereignty is an important
attribute of modern political authority; it is needed to quell disputes
within the state and to muster cooperation in defence against outsiders.
They noted that ‘authority carries with it the obligation to command the
thing that should be commanded’ (stanford.library.usyd.edu.au/;
cf. Heller 1989:79).
476 Meanwhile for corporate CEOs, for example, things are different when ‘a
CEO admitted that: “we would not knowingly break the rules anywhere.
We always employ one set of experts to tell us what they are and another
set to tell us how to get around them…it is the job of the government to
make the rules, and ours to find the loopholes”’ (Holzer 2010:13).
477 Dworkin (2002); Kumar (2000 & 2001); Miller (2002); Norcross (2002);
O’Neill (2003); Pettit (2006); Raz (2003); Reibetanz (1998); Scanlon (1982,
1998, 2000, 2003); Timmons (2003); Watson (2002).
278 Notes
478 Laufer & Robertson (1997); Jackson et al. (2012:534); Kramar et al.
(2011:158); Beardwell & Claydon (2011:388 & 394); Macky (2009:120);
Gunnigle et al. (2011:356f.); Nel et al. (2012:41–43).
479 On this, Heller (1989:11) noted, ‘every teacher who ever failed a student,
every parent who ever punished a child, every person who ever ranked,
graded, distributed and judged (and we all have), has felt the coldness and
even the cruelty of justice’ (cf. Fromm 1949:143ff.).
480 Instead of creating Kant’s Kingdom of Ends and Hegel’s Sittlichkeit, ‘the
strong executive’, says Dalton (1959), ‘is one for whom rules are a means,
not an end…strong executives are [also] most likely to bypass rules’
(Klikauer 2012a).
481 Based on Managerialism’s prime ideology of deregulation, individuals are
made to believe that only HRM can underpin a crypto-legal framework
inside companies. ‘But in practice, even pro-market governments override
the individual (and HRM’s policies]. Governments never fully follow the
advice of economists [and Managerialism] that [HRM and] individuals are
the best judges of their own welfare. Instead, many possible choices are
declared illegal, even when there is mutual consent by those directly con-
cerned. Hence there are commonplace restrictions or prohibitions on
incest and sex with children’ for example (Hodgson 2013:22; Ambec et al.
2013).
482 Schwartz (2000); Jackson et al. (2012:22–24); Beardwell & Claydon
(2011:421); Nel et al. (2012:516); Schwind et al. (2013:28).
483 Any Google search on ‘company car policy’ delivers more than one billion
hits.
484 According to Macintyre (1983:356), ‘every action HRM takes and every
policy it implements alters the options that are available to subordinates
as well as their heirs and successors’. Fromm (1949:10) emphasised,
‘authoritarian ethics denies man’s capacity to know what is good or bad;
the norm giver is always an authority transcending the individual’.
485 DeCenzo et al. (2013:58); Stone (2013:129); Smith et al. (2013).
486 Subramony (2009); Tuytens & Devos (2012).
487 Jackson et al. (2012:90 & 549–551); Macky (2009:117 & 123); Gunnigle
et al. (2011:345–347); Nel et al. (2012:74).
488 Milgram (1974); Blass (1991, 1992, 1999, 2002); Singer’s legal, moral, and
political obligation (1973:1–6).
489 Karl Marx’s The German Ideology (1846), part I: Feuerbach – Opposition of
the Materialist and Idealist Outlook, A. Idealism and Materialism, The
Illusions of German Ideology, www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/
1845/german-ideology/ch01a.htm; Wrong (1994:218) noted, ‘Marx may
have been “the master sociologist of disorder” and Durkheim the master
sociologist of order’.
490 ‘Rigid exclusion of considerations of the individual case made things
easier for those carrying out the policy’ (Glover 2012:347).
491 Grobler et al. (2011:536); DeCenzo et al. (2013:110ff.).
492 Offe & Wiesenthal (1980); Paauwe et al. (2013).
493 Kramar et al. (2011:414, 467f.); Macky (2009:340f.); Schwind et al.
(2013:296); Grobler et al. (2011:361).
Notes 279
494 It is the panoptical version of surveillance as expressed in Foucault’s

‘Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison’ (1995); Thompson (2003);
Klikauer (2007:171f.). On this, Kohn (1999:33) noted, ‘control breeds the
need for more control, which then is used to justify the use of control’.
495 Patel & Hamlin (2012); Ardichvilia et al. (2012).
496 Gall (2009); Heery & Simms (2010); DeCenzo et al. (2013:368) has ‘tips for
success [against] the union drive [because management can] defend them-
selves against the union campaign’.
497 ‘Cascading down’ is a buzzword for transmitting information downward
and for issuing orders. It is part of directing downward and reporting
upward. Workers view ‘cascading down’ rather crudely as ‘they piss on us’
(cf. Klikauer 2007:171).
498 The Greek philosopher Thrasymachus (459–400BCE) thought that the
greater the injustice, the greater the payoff, the more power and strength it brings
(cf. Machiavelli, Hobbes, Nietzsche).
499 This is in complete contradiction to the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, everything Kant has ever written [www.un.org/en/documents/
udhr/], and evolutionary ethics: ‘the universality of social norms, and
their critical role in human evolution, is apparent’ (Tomasello 2009:42).
500 Beardwell & Claydon (2011:419); Gunnigle et al. (2011:271f.); Nel et al.
(2012:346).
501 In short, one is seated in business class while others travel in economy.
One drives a Mercedes-Benz with an assigned car park at the office while
the other drives a Honda-Civic searching for a car space every morning or
simply takes a bus.
502 Gentry et al. (2012); Kramar et al. (2011:446); Beardwell & Claydon
(2011:580); Macky (2009:12); Schwind et al. (2013:120); Nel et al.
(2012:169 & 278); Jackson et al. (2012:159).
503 Cf. American philosopher Brian Skyrms’ Evolution of the Social Contract
(1996).
504 Nelson (2012); Jackson et al. (2012:284 & 329); Schwind et al. (2013:329);
Kramar et al. (2011:54f.); Beardwell & Claydon (2011:471); Nel et al.
(2012:441f.).
505 This might be in line with what HRM calls ‘upper echelon theory’ that is
‘a firm is a reflection of its top managers’ (DeWinne & Sels 2013:182). But
it is not in line with self-respect that ‘has three components: (1) a respect-
ful attitude towards oneself; (2) conduct that expresses respect towards
oneself; and (3) an “object” of self-respect that provides the individual
with a standard of conduct against which to form a cumulative assess-
ment of her worth’ (Lippke 1995:36).
506 Weber (1904–1905); Beder (2000); Maier (2005).
507 Gladwell (2002); Gibney (2006); Elkind & McLean (2013).
508 Blau (1964); Offe & Wiesenthal (1980); Fleming & Sturdy (2009); Costas
(2012); Dale (2012); Chriss (2012).
509 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1249728/Cadbury-sacks-400-
workers-Kraft-breaks-promise-shut-factory.html
510 Hechter & Horne (2009); Roche & Teague (2012).
511 Bowles & Gintis (1972, 1975, 1976 & 2001); Hechter & Horne (2009).
280 Notes
512 Bowles & Gintis (1976); Klikauer (2007:183–204); Spagnoli & Caetano
(2012).
513 ‘Tolerance and acceptance of [HR policies] is…administered to manipulate
and indoctrinate individuals and subordinates who parrot, as their own,
the opinion and [HR policies] of their masters’ (Marcuse 1969:104).
514 Walzer (1981); MacIntyre (1989); Habermas (1996a); Freeman (2000);
Jackson (2014); MacGilvray (2014).
515 Gunnigle et al. (2011:129f.); Nel et al. (2012:207); Grobler et al.
(2011:644).
516 Francis Hutcheson (1694–1746) and Lytton Strachey (1880–1932) were
also utilitarian philosophers (Legge 1998:23; cf. plato.stanford.edu/
entries/utilitarianism-history/; www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11224); Vlastos
(1991:200ff); Velasquez (2012:76–80); cf. Nussbaum & Sen (1993);
Robinson et al. (2012).
517 Yet ‘the law provides all means necessary to guarantee and protect the
power and wealth of the ruling elites and their supporters’ (Diefenbach
2013:64).
518 It appears as if HRM’s instruments such as, for example, performance
management, are designed to ‘unfairly impede individuals in their efforts
to attain happiness, autonomy, and self-development’ (Lippke 1995:4).
519 Two of HRM’s ideologies underpinning its hyper-individualism are, for
example, ‘social contract theory and general equilibrium theory [which]
both presume structured relations between individuals rather than indi-
viduals in isolation. They also presume social institutions. For example,
property rights require some systems of enforcement’ (Hodgson 2013:38).
520 Selekman (1959:54) notes ‘recognition of unions did not come as a volun-
tary act, but rather as something imposed on a company by economic and
political power’ (cf. Stone 2014:552).
521 plato.stanford.edu/entries/consequentialism/ Arrington (1998:379ff.);
Railton (2012a).
522 This is in sharp contrast to Kant who demands that ethics be based on
one’s intentions. HRM does have moral intentions. Its exclusive inten-
tion is however not ‘saving a fellow creature’ but organisational perfor-
mance (cf. Williams 2006; Heller 1989:94; Heathwood 2010; Schumann
2006:122f.).
523 What has been essential to HRM meanwhile is an uncritical subscription
to the authoritarian and non-democratic system of managerial control
over people as enshrined in Taylorism’s ‘Manufacturing Ideology:
Scientific Management’ (Tsutsui 2001). By implication, HRM also accepts
the core ideology of Taylorism found in ‘scientific management and the
nature of man as expressed in “man in his natural state is lazy and plea-
sure-seeking [and] man achieves happiness through material consump-
tion”’ (Merkle 1980:291).
524 ROA = return on assets (Nankervis et al. 2014:474; Fulmer & Ployhart
2014).
525 Islam (2012:41) notes ‘as routinised measurements become dislocated
from the living human experience from which they are drawn, recogni-
tion theory suggests they have harmful consequences for personal
dignity’. Performance management is such a ‘routine measurement’ while
Notes 281
the moral philosophy of utilitarianism strongly advocates the ‘no harm’

principle which HRM violates.
526 Stone (2013:416). HRM’s term ‘downshifter’ (Kramar et al. 2011:542)
implies a double-negativity as in down i.e. the negativity of ‘going down’
and downwards combined with ‘shift’, i.e. being shifty, suspicious,
dubious, and untrustworthy (cf. Wood & de Menezes 2010; Hobson
2013).
527 Happiness and wellbeing carry connotations of hedonism (Epicurus
341–270 BC) that Mill developed into a hedonistic theory of value. This
has been further modified into the ‘Swine Morality’ (cf. Nussbaum & Sen
1993; Brown et al. 2009; Mackay 2013); Cañibano (2013); Giacalone &
Promislo (2013).
528 HRM violates what Greek moral philosophy calls ‘Eudaemonia’. ‘Socrates’
true place in the development of Greek thought: he is the first to establish
the eudaemonist foundation of ethical theory which becomes common
ground for all the schools that spring up around him’ (Vlastos 1991:10).
Eudaemonia is a Greek word commonly translated as happiness, welfare,
and human flourishing. As such, HRM is not dedicated to human flourish-
ing but to corporate flourishing.
529 Jackson et al. (2012:188, 312, 476); Kramar et al. (2011:526); Schwind
et al. (2013:35); Macky (2009:263 & 421); Gunnigle et al. (2011:64f. &
163); Grobler et al. (2011:152).
530 Hence, no HRM textbook ever mentions what, for example Greek moral
philosophy meant by wellbeing when Aristotle says that everyone agrees
that eudaemonia (roughly wellbeing) is the highest good for human
beings.
531 In Utilitarianism (1861), Mill noted, ‘happiness intends pleasure and the
absence of pain’. HRM does not have the intention to create happiness
and its essence is not working towards ‘the absence of pain’. Accidentally,
HRM might create happiness as a by-product. If it creates pain (usually to
others) it is sometimes at pains to justify it. It is often legitimised by
catchphrases like ‘it will be hard at first, but in the long run it will pay
off’. On this Macintyre (1983:353) noted, ‘they [HR managers] are neces-
sarily going to be involved in situations where they cannot benefit
someone without harming someone else’ (cf. Fromm 1949:14 & 19; Heller
1989:96; Dine & Fagan 2006).
532 An even more obscene way of ‘dealing with’ the threats coming from a
community is simply to convert a profit-driven business entity such as a
corporation into a community when ‘corporations are viewed as com-
munities’ (Lippke 1995:22; cf. Peffer 1990).
533 Kramar et al. (2011:75 & 221–224); Schwind et al. (2013:19, 49, 98);
Beardwell & Claydon (2011:4, 58, 67); Macky (2009:150 & 166f.);
Gunnigle et al. (2011:63); Nel et al. (2012:223f.); Grobler et al. (2011:24,
267–270, 542f.); Fishman (2013).
534 The outsourcing and relocation of production has also other harmful
effects. When HRM ‘peruses activities harmful to others for personal
gains, or because of’ organisational ‘inducements’, HRM ‘avoids facing the
harm they cause, or’ HRM ‘minimises it’ (Bandura et al. 1996:365). In
other words, mistreatment of employees can be belittled or even denied
282 Notes
altogether when it occurs in distant sweatshops (HR-terminology: out-

sourcing) under the well-known motto: out of sight – out of mind! It is
also easier for HRM to ‘discredit evidence of the harm they cause’
(Bandura et al. 1996:366) when a company’s sweatshop is located far
away, for example, in Bangladesh (laborrights.org/sweatshop-fires-in-
bangladesh; www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-22306135).
535 This might even date back to Socrates’ dictum that ‘he who wrongs
another person always damages his own happiness more than his victims’
Vlastos (1991:5).
536 The anti-democratic stance of HRM occurred despite the ideological sepa-
ration of corporate citizenship from democracy (Arthur et al. 2008) and
the fact that ‘citizens have a responsibility to support the democratization
of business enterprises’ (Lippke 1995:9; cf. Douzinas 2013:86).
537 HRM specifically rejects, for example, industrial relations’ (IR) ‘relation-
ship’ approach. It seeks to replace IR’s horizontal with HRM’s vertical
structure and thereby creates asymmetrical power links (Guest 1987;
Ghosh & Ray 2012; Procter & Rowlinson 2012).
538 For HRM, this means treating equals [i.e. HRM] equal and non-equals
[non-organisational staff] unequal in relative – not– absolute terms (Heller
1989:2). For HRM, Orwell’s (1945) dictum that ‘some pigs are more equal
than others’ remains. As Rousseau (1755) said, it is ‘the creation and rein-
forcement of inequality’ (cf. Murphy 1993; Wolff & Zacharias 2013; Tinel
2013).
539 Habermas’ Theory of Communicative Action (vol. II; 1997:267–273).
540 Quoted from Driver (2007:59), cf. Layard’s ‘Happiness – Lessons from a
New Science’ (2005); Cashen (2012).
541 Kaplan & Norton (1992, 1993, 2004); Jackson et al. (2012:336); Kramar
et al. (2011:38f., 525f., 642); Beardwell & Claydon (2011:70–72 & 471);
Macky (2009:424); Schwind et al. (2013:319); Gunnigle et al. (2011:66);
Nel et al. (2012:108 & 417).
542 http://www.rightattitudes.com/2008/02/06/jack-welch-four-types-of-
managers/
543 This might even suggest the following: ‘the basic tenet of the Dilbert
Principle is that the most ineffective workers are systematically moved to
the place where they can do the least damage: management’ (Borowski
1998:162); cf. Nankervis et al. (2014:557).
544 http://www.greenamerica.org/programs/responsibleshopper/company.
cfm?id=306
545 According to Selekman (1959:21) ‘they regard labour as a cost to be
reduced as far as rapidly possible’.
546 Aubenas (2011); Pedersen & Lewis (2012); Duncana & Pettigrew (2012);
Johnstone & Wilkinson (2012); Velasquez (2012:178); Kroon & Paauwe
(2014).
547 Beardwell & Claydon (2011: 391f. & 583); Gunnigle et al. (2011:16 &
265f.).
548 On consciousness, Marx (1844) noted, ‘consciousness can never be any-
thing else than conscious existence, and the existence of man in their
actual life-process’. According to Sidgwick, consciousness can be inher-
ently good. But actual organisational processes and the ‘labour process’
Notes 283
(Ackroyd & Thompson 1999) turn humans into objects of organisational

power (Bauman 1989). The natural ‘inherently good consciousness’
(Sidgwick) is deformed by an artificial process of HRM negating moral and
ethical consciousness with organisational performance.
549 See also: moral disengagement (Bandura et al. 1996).
550 Schrijvers (2004); Gilbert (2012:159ff.); James (2013).
551 Mill’s ‘Utilitarianism’ (1861); DeColle & Werhane (2008:754); Hodgson
(2013).
552 Not surprisingly, HR governed workplaces are not places of happiness but
rather represent what Layard (2005:48) called the ‘Hedonistic Treadmill,
where you have to keep running in order that your happiness stands still’.
Instead of happiness, HRM focuses, for example, on HR planning (Jackson
et al. 2012:16; Kramar et al. 2011:220–227; Nankervis et al. 2014:
133–135).
553 Happiness is also at the core of Eudemonism (Aquinas 1250 & Aristotle
35BC). It states that ‘an action is good if it promotes or tends to promote
the fulfilment of goals constitutive of human nature and its happiness’
(Feinberg 2012).
554 More precisely, Aristotle presents various conceptions of the best life for
human beings. These are (1) a life of pleasure, (2) a life of political activity
and (3) a philosophical life. All of them are contradicted by HRM as HRM
never advocates a life of pleasure but a life under performance manage-
ment; it does not foster a life of political activity as it seeks to undermine
any political activity remotely linked to, for example, trade unionism; and
finally, it has no interest in a ‘philosophical life’ either. In short and when
measured against Aristotle, HRM represents the very opposite of what
Greek moral philosophy advocates.
555 Smith (1987:121); Gare (2006); Klikauer (2010:88–125).
556 Jackson et al. (2012:315); Kramar et al. (2011:602–608 & 611–614);
Beardwell & Claydon (2011:185); Macky (2009:340f.); Schwind et al.
(2013:175); Nel et al. (2012:255); Grobler et al. (2011:256).
557 On the unmentioned employees, Graves (1924:48) noted decades ago,
‘the organisation is a sort of hierarchy which chooses to ignore the little
fellow’; cf. Marsden & Townley (1996); Klikauer (2007:138).
558 In terms of moral philosophy, HRM violates a key demand of ethics
because ‘Kant introduces the idea of “legislating for oneself”…the concept
of legislation requires superior power in the legislator’ (Anscombe 1958:2).
Selekman (1959:26); in some cases, democracy is even reduced to a non-
democratic version of team-based participation ideologically framed as
‘involvement’ while simultaneously excluding collective participation and
representative participation in which Knudsen & Lind’s (2011:385 & 390)
‘D’ no longer stands for democracy; cf. Sitton’s ‘opinions are formed in a
process of open discussion and public debate’ (1987:84; cf. Fritzsche &
Becker’s ‘right to free speech’, 1984:167; Reed 1997).
559 Aronoff (1975); Perlmutter (1997); Harding (2003); Cameron et al. (2003);
Jobrack (2011).
560 On this, Adorno and Horkheimer (1944) noted ‘the ways in which a girl
accepts and keeps the obligatory date, the inflection on the telephone or
in the most intimate situation, the choice of words in conversations, and
284 Notes
the whole inner life as classified by the now somewhat devalued depth
psychology, bear witness to man’s attempt to make himself a proficient
apparatus. This is similar to the model served up by the cultural industry’.
561 HRM hardly ever employs philosophers just as business schools hardly
ever employ them except in cases where a bit of ‘alibi-ethics’ is required to
give the appearance of being ethical. Having a mission statement on cor-
porate social responsibility is part of ‘The Myth System’ (Fleming & Jones
2013). Watson (2003:29) illustrates this in the following way: ‘James and
J. S. Mill wrote books that changed the course of history while working for
the East Indian Company, a multinational. Today they wouldn’t. Today
they would be attending countless meetings, seminars and conferences to
update their knowledge of work-related subjects, all of them conducted in
the mind-maiming language’ of individualism. Selekman (1959:3) noted
that ‘the social responsibility of business is a favourite theme [since]
industry [is] in search of an ideology’.
562 Inside the managerial orbit, HRM is often struggling for recognition by
general management because of a general perception that HRM does not
contribute directly to ‘The Real Bottom Line’ (Magretta 2012:129–140).
This has been emphasised recently by Durie (2013:34) when noting, ‘the
HR team soon found it no longer had a seat at the table when big deci-
sions were made. And if you are not sitting at the table, there’s a good
chance it’s because you’re on the menu’.
563 Miller (1996); Gratton et al. (1999); Paauwe & Boselie (2003); Thompson
(2007); Van Buren et al. (2011); Marler (2012); Martocchio (2013).
564 The textbooks used for this analysis show that the term ‘strategy/strategic’
has been indexed well above 300 times (cf. Schwind et al. 2013:9–58;
Jackson et al. 2012:1ff.; Kramar et al. 2011:53ff., Beardwell & Claydon
2011:29ff.; Macky 2008:2ff.; Gunnigle et al. 2011:11–17, 27–78; Nel et al.
2012:7ff.; Grobler et al. 2011:9ff.).
565 Schwind et al. (2013:63); Kramar et al. (2011:101 & 152); Beardwell &
Claydon (2011:398, 413f. 421f.); Macky (2009:293f.); Gunnigle et al.
(2011:369–371); Nel et al. (2012:71f. & 224); Grobler et al. (2011:480).
566 Edwards (2012); Heery et al. (2012); Festing et al. (2012); Kristensen &
Rocha (2012).
567 Macklin (2007); Peccei et al. (2013:26–29); Boxall (2013:56ff.).
568 ‘The important thing is to have a good memory so that you don’t contra-
dict the lies you have already told’ (Macklin 2007:266).
569 Horkheimer (1937 & 1947); Horkheimer & Adorno (1947); Klikauer
(2008:62–75).
570 Even worse, ‘the joys and suffering of those whom one identifies with
[other HR-managers] are more vicariously aroused than are those of
strangers [workers dehumanised as ID-numbered tools and assets], out-
group members [white-vs.-blue collar], or those who have been divested of
human qualities [e.g. human resources]’ (Bandura et al. 1996:366).
571 Gunnigle et al. (2011:47–49); Jackson et al. (2012:537–548); Kramar et al.
(2011:480f.); Kramar et al. (2014:59); Beardwell & Claydon (2011:179f.);
Nel et al. (2012:219f. & 437); Grobler et al. (2011:258); Schwind et al.
(2013:63).
Notes 285
572 The motive of one of the foremost ethical philosophers, Jeremy Bentham,
for writing his ‘Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation’
(1789–1823) has been his resolute indignation about the fact that English
governors preferred to exploit everyone and everything for their own
benefit and advantage rather than serving the common good, and not
creating happiness but rather unhappiness. On unhappiness, Marcuse
(1969) noted ‘false [needs] are those which are superimposed upon the
individual by particular social interests in his repression: the needs which
perpetuate toil, aggressiveness, misery, and injustice…the result then is
euphoria in unhappiness’ (cf. Heller 1989; Sen 2009; Heathwood 2010).
573 DeCenzo et al. (2013:281). Stone’s textbook (2013:512) makes a somewhat
similar argument even though it might be hard to see how being poor or
being part of the working poor (Pittenger 2012) has ‘advantages’ (Stone
2013:512).
574 Cohen, G. A. 1983. The Structure of Proletarian Unfreedom, Philosophy &
Public Affairs, vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 3–33; Cohen, G. A. 1985. Are Workers
Forced to Sell Their Labor Power?, Philosophy & Public Affairs, vol. 14, no.
1, pp. 99–105. In addition, HRM focuses on internal-vs.-external labour
market to ideologically remove its hidden contradictions that result from
its false human=material/resource equation that seeks to equalise non-
equals: human beings are alive and cannot be sold while materials,
money, assets, etc. are dead and can.
575 Taylor (1911); Klikauer (2007:143–159); Boxall (2013:53ff.).
576 Crosthwaite (2013:95) has outlined ‘the economist’s view of the person,
as it now stands, is that the person is a pure stimulus-response machine.
The preferences are given; the relative prices are given. The person is com-
pletely reactive. We might say that the person’s behaviour is perfectly pre-
determined or pre-designed…homo economicus is really a robot’.
577 Kramar et al. (2011:414, 467f.); Macky (2009:340f.); Schwind et al.
(2013:296); Grobler et al. (2011:361); Nankervis et al. (2014:455).
578 Beardwell & Claydon (2011:432); Macky (2009:321); Gunnigle et al.
(2011:344); Nel et al. (2012:47–50); Grobler et al. (2011:515).
579 Sun Microsystems’ CEO put an essential part of a reputation that way.
‘Promises, he says, are still promises until somebody delivers the goods’.
Implicitly, he separated promises from delivery. The two are totally
separated.
580 But when utilitarianism uses the term ‘public’ it has in mind something
different from how HRM sees it. For HRM there is only an organisational
public and in that, the term public means, for example, ‘public obedience
with regard to the organisation’s rules and norms [that] ensure the per-
sonal legitimacy of [HRM’s superiority] and the continuation of [an HR-
manager’s] career…this is the very idea of the good subordinates [who] are
expected to follow orders from their superiors’ (Diefenbach 2013:102).
581 While the morality of ‘justice’ (Rawls 1972, 1985 & 2001) is part of
Kohlberg’s stage 5, space limitations only allow references here. For a
detailed discussion on justice and Kohlberg, see: Nagel (1973); Clark &
Gintis (1978); Erdynast (1990); Maffettone (2010); Lee & McCann (2011).
In short, while Rawls and others claim ‘that justice is immanent to man
286 Notes
and society and reducible to neither’ (Blackledge 2012:598), for HRM

justice is a mere add-on and something it ‘has to’ live with, commonly
divided into substantive and procedural justice with a strong emphasis on
the latter (Jackson et al. 2012:78; Kramar et al. 2011:546, 592–593) where
‘justice’ is to be understood in a ‘business sense’ (Beardwell & Claydon
2011:204–205); cf. Isles (2010); cf. Burkemper et al. (2013); Pereira (2013);
Taylor et al. (2013); Burke (2012); Aulino et al. (2013); Bowles (2012);
Williams & Arrigo (2004); Fogel (2000); Rothbard (1974).
582 Jackson et al. (2012:77f. & 559–573); Kramar et al. (2011:553); Nel et al.
(2012:99 & 514); Schwind et al. (2013:164ff.)
583 Beardwell & Claydon (2011:204f.); Burkemper et al. (2013); Pereira (2013);
Taylor (2013); Burke (2012); Aulino et al. (2013); Bowles (2012); Williams
& Arrigo (2004); Fogel (2000); Rothbard (1974).
584 See also: Thomas Pogge’s ‘maldistribution, exclusion, and disempower-
ment’ (2007; cf. Bufacchi 2012).
585 Human beings are not by nature designed to obey hierarchies and to
accept the subordinate-vs.-superior relationship. ‘For example, toddlers do
not show obedient behaviour automatically. They learn to obey, to
behave, and to fear more powerful persons during the early stages of their
primary socialisation (usually within the family). And only after countless
interventions by various superiors (e.g. parents, nannies, or other
guardians) do toddlers and young children slowly develop socio-
psychological patterns of appropriate behaviour which manifest as per-
sonality traits’ (Diefenbach 2013:28). German philosopher Immanuel
Kant described this process as ‘after the guardians have first made their
domestic cattle dumb and have made sure that these placid creatures will
not dare take a single step without the harness of the cart’ (p. 28), they are
ready for capitalist consumption. Hence, Diefenbach (2013:28) concludes
‘many contemporary employees are not much different from late-
18th-century domestic cattle. Although most employees are already subor-
dinates before they join a (new) organisation, they will still be subject to
further social conditioning and professional socialisation [in the form of ]
identity regulation’. HRM has developed a raft of ideological instruments
to assure that, ranging from induction programmes to performance man-
agement, and balanced scorecards as any HRM textbook shows (Jobrack
2011).
586 Argyris (1964); Callero (2012); Schwartz & Harris (2013).
587 This has dire consequences because ‘asymmetrical relationships such as
that of master and slave [i.e. management and worker] are unable to
provide the recognition necessary for either party to lead a full flourishing
life’ (Martineau et al. 2012:2).
588 Probably the only emotion HRM is truly capable of is ‘love oneself’
(Schwartz 1990).
589 Cf. Dickens (1853); Aubenas (2011); Miller (2013).
590 Enlightenment has been seen as the negation of feudalism overcoming
feudal limits set against science and philosophical worldviews.
Enlightenment’s rationalism replaced the irrationalism of religion. When
rationalism was elevated to the all-inclusive theme of Enlightenment,
Kant developed his ‘three critiques’ in response to that. Cutting off the
Notes 287
critical element from Kant’s ‘Critique of Pure Reason’, capitalism, factory

administration, management, and with it HRM favoured ‘pure’ reason.
HRM needs reason and instrumental rationality to operate. It does not
need critique. Nor does it need ethics. However, without Kant’s ‘Critique’
modern instrumental rationality remains handicapped and insufficient.
Nevertheless, HRM’s instrumental rationality became one of the utmost
distorted versions of the original Enlightenment project. For example, ini-
tially labour was told that technology and mechanisation will set workers
free from the bounds of feudalism but ‘mechanisation, the very means
that should liberate man from toil, makes him a slave of his labour’
(Marcuse 1941).
591 Moore (1922); Rachels (2003:105), MacKinnon (2012:31ff.)
592 Warren Buffett emphasised, somebody once said that in looking for
people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and
energy. And if they don’t have the first, the other two will kill you.
593 Furnham (2012); Gentry et al. (2012). But ‘despite [HRM’s] rhetoric of
teamwork, networks, empowerment, and even intrapreneurship, the very
logic of hierarchical order and control continues to rule our organisations’
(Diefenbach 2013:14).
594 Coats (2008). Much of HRM’s prime ideology of deregulation in favour of
self-regulation has to ‘neglect the vital role of the state in buttressing
essential institutions of the market economy, including law, property, cor-
porations and money’ (Hodgson 2013:22).
595 Kramar et al. (2011:580); Macky (2009:62); Nel et al. (2012:54); Schwind
et al. (2013:5 & 172).
596 Douzinas (2013:200).
597 Kant (1785); Rorty (1996); cf. William’s (stanford.edu/entries/kant-reason)
‘powerful attractions of Kant’s philosophising: a universalism that
transcends community boundaries’. In ‘Zizek’s Ontology’, Johnson
(2008:13) noted, ‘the prior sequence of various philosophies doesn’t
become “Philosophy” per se until the advent of the Kantian “Copernican”
revolution’. Kant’s ‘Copernican revolution’ represents morality (Moralität)
based on abstract formulas. His successor, Hegel, once called Kant’s
philosophy ‘Ursprungsphilosopie’, the original and first philosophy (Smith
1987:103; Hill 2010; MacKinnon 2013:42ff.).
598 Douzinas (2013:146); Friedman (2013); Ruggie (2013); Fagan (2009); Reidy
& Sellers (2005); Ruggie (2013). Even though there is something that
Richard Rorty has termed a ‘human rights culture’ (Buchwalter 2013:105;
Rorty 1993), HRM knows no such culture, only a corporate or organisa-
tional culture as in Stone’s (2014:729f.) ‘achieving a positive work
culture’.
599 www.legifrance.gouv.fr/Droit-francais; Eckl’s ‘liberty, property, safety, and
resistance against oppression’ (2013:386); www.un.org/en/documents;
The UDHR is a declaration adopted by the United Nations General
Assembly on 10 December 1948.
600 Stone (2013:580). On this Douzinas (2013:145) argues that ‘nations and
states give political rights and civil rights to their citizens according to
their laws and constitution. Human rights on the other hand are given to
people who don’t have the protection of state and law’. This explains why
288 Notes
HRM has an anti-human rights agenda (e.g. HRM’s violations of the

human right to organise trade unions and to engage in collective bargain-
ing) because HRM’s agenda is directed against those who do not have the
protection of states, laws, and trade unions (Moody 2013).
601 Accreditation means the certification of professional competencies
through an industry body (cf. Stone 2013:421); companies and corporate
lobbyist organisations can directly tell universities what should be in their
curricula and, perhaps more importantly, what not. This is highly dama-
ging to what was once known as ‘academic freedom’ (Schrecker 2010).
602 Darwin follows Kant in his ‘The Origins of the Moral Sense’. Darwin said
that ‘the difference between man and lower animals is a moral sense or
conscious. This is by far the most important difference’ (Loye 1994;
Borowski 1998; Glover 2012).
603 Kantian morality is based on categorical imperatives, not on hypothetical
‘if-then’ constructions. However, nearly every HRM textbook contains
sentences that use these constructions. They contravene Kant’s morality
because they violate his categorical imperatives. They are unmoral in the
Kantian meaning of morality. Kant’s categorical imperatives render claims
that ‘HRM should…’, ‘HRM needs to...’, and ‘HRM could…’ obsolete. In
Kant’s ‘categorical’ imperatives there is nothing to choose from. Either
one follows Kantian morality or one does not.
604 Hosmer (1987); Jansses & Steyaert (2012).
605 Kant (1784); Gardner (1999); MacKinnon (2013:23ff.).
606 Truss (2001); Boselie et al. (2005); Singh et al. (2012).
607 HRM has collective bargaining lowered down from the economic and
societal realm to a mere company-based issue. Here societal and universal
welfare is narrowed to company egoism where ‘management and the
union meet to negotiate labour agreements’ (Stone 2013:494 & 2014:629;
Nankervis et al. 2014:111). Simultaneously, HRM reduces universal
welfare to mere wellbeing while ‘the notion that the ruling elites are now
able to treat welfare as an instrument of social control is at very best a
quarter-truth, and a very dangerous one insofar as it distracts from con-
cerns over welfare’ (MacIntyre 1970:78).
608 Jackson et al. (2012:48); Nel et al. (2012:57); Grobler et al. (2011:609);
Schwind et al. (2013:35 & 243).
609 Kramar et al. (2011:552f. & 600); Kramar et al. (2014:537 & 589); Schwind
et al. (2013:562); Beardwell & Claydon (2011:406); Nel et al. (2012:518);
Stone (2013:20 & 127).
610 Many HRM textbooks give the impression that the most important task of
HRM is not to protect but to prevent whistle-blowing in turning whistle-
blowers into victims and relying on a ‘blame-the-victim’ approach.
‘Blaming victims for their plight arouses anger towards them [that might
be the intended goal of HRM], whereas placing the blame on situational
causes arouses pity’ (Bandura et al. 1996:372). But HRM tends not to
blame whistle blowing on ‘situational causes’ because its prime goal is
protecting the company while its secondary goal is to not ‘arouse pity’ for
what is done to whistleblowers by HRM, management in general, and
even corporate mass media that also have an interest in protecting their
corporation against whistle-blowing.
Notes 289
611 Marcuse (1941 & 1971) thought that the individual is determined not by
his particular but by his universal qualities.
612 Evolutionary science meanwhile tells us that ‘the worse the environment,
the more important it is that we have true friends’ (Shermer 2007:xvi).
This is where we meet the ‘Bankers Dilemma’ because HRM has never
been a true friend and in companies with the ‘worst environment’ it is
HRM that is – at least partly – responsible for this environment (i.e. corpo-
rate culture) and it is even less likely that HRM is a ‘true friend’.
613 DeCenzo et al. (2013:9); Pauuwe et al. (2013a:73). On business ethics anti-
unionism, see: Gilbert (2012:56, 113, 135, 179).
614 Cooke et al. (2011); Kaufman (2011); Paik & Belcher (2011); DeCenzo
et al. (2013:363–367).
615 The more problematic issue for HRM is Kant’s formula which says: act in
such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in
the person of another, always at the same time as an end and never
simply as a means. This is the most devastating categorical imperative for
HRM. The essence of HRM is that it operates through people creating per-
formance through others. This raises a number of moral dilemmas for
HRM because HRM and Kantian morality are contradictions in concept
(see also Sartre’s ‘Condemned to Be Free’ in his ‘Being and Nothingness’
1943; Nozick’s ‘Anarchy, State and Utopia’ 1974; Jones et al. 2005:45; and
for employees, see Schumann 2006:123f.).
616 There appears to be a total lack of the term ‘humanity’ in nearly all HRM
textbooks ever published (cf. Johnsen & Gudmand-Høyer 2010). The
absence of ‘humanity’ in HRM textbooks, scholarly research, and publica-
tions testifies what is perhaps one of HRM’s more serious deficiencies,
namely lack of ‘the power of humanisation to counteract human cruelty
is of considerable theoretical and social significance’ (Bandura et al.
1996:371). This is especially hypocritical since HRM carries an ‘h’
(human) in its name (cf. Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-four, 1948).
617 When HRM’s ideology seeks to eradicate Hegel’s master-slave dialectics
and Kant’s universalism it returns to a pre-modern state of immorality.
‘St Paul’s statement, that there is no Greek or Jew, man or woman (Epistle
to the Galatians 3:28) removes restrictions and introduced universalism
and equality into Western civilisation’ (Douzinas 2013:203). HRM’s rejec-
tion of equality, universalism, and universal human rights returns moral-
ity to the pre-Christianity period.
618 According to Jones (2005:5), the employment contract is treated as if it
were not of concern for business morality. This is despite (or perhaps
because of!) an existing asymmetrical relationship between HRM and
workers (Offe & Wiesenthal 1980; Klikauer 2011:33–56). It was none other
than the great Henry Ford, who claimed ‘why is it that whenever I ask for
a pair of hands a brain comes attached?’ (Hegel 1807 & 1821; Kojève
1947; Honneth 1995; Sinnerbink 2007:101–122; Klikauer 2010:88–125).
619 Biazzo & Garengo (2011); Jackson et al. (2012:336); Kramar et al.
(2011:38f., 525f., 642); Kramar et al. (2014:38, 506, 632); Beardwell &
Claydon (2011:70–72 & 471); Macky (2009:424); Schwind et al.
(2013:319); Gunnigle et al. (2011:66); Nel et al. (2012:108 & 417); Stone
(2013:685).
290 Notes
620 Instead of treating – not just respecting– human beings as ends in-
themselves, HRM moves in the opposite direction when supporting
general management in converting even consumers into pure ‘means’
under the concept of ‘consumptive labour’ (Koeber 2011). According to
Koeber et al. (2012:8), ‘consumptive Labour includes the following types
of tasks performed by consumers: (1) selecting, producing, purchasing,
or dispersing goods and services (consumer as quasi-employee); (2) mon-
itoring, policing, and evaluating workers before, during and after trans-
actions (consumer as quasi-supervisor); and marketing or advertising
brand name products or services (consumer as quasi-marketers and
advertisers)’.
621 On Kant’s concept of the human subject, Johnson (2008:13f.) noted,
‘Kant, instead of Descartes, is the true founder of the notion of the
subject…Kant’s transcendental idealism focuses on the category of the
subjective objective’ (cf. Negri 1970; Klikauer 2010:88–125).
622 Kant’s ‘Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals’ (1785); Altman
(2007:256); cf. Velleman (2012).
623 Klikauer (2012:170); Mackay (2013).
624 Kramar et al. (2011:370f.); Kramar et al. (2014:92, 130, 133–135, 535f.,
583f.); Macky (2009:150 & 158f.); Gunnigle et al. (2011:108f.); Schwind et
al. (2013:15); Stone (2013:672); Nankervis et al. (2014:524ff.); ‘psycho-
terror’ (Nankervis et al. 2014:528).
625 One of Kant’s German successors, the philosopher Fichte, noted in his
Wissenschaftslehre (1797–1800) that a clear consciousness is linked to self-
determination. For HRM, this has to be avoided because most subor-
dinates should never develop self-consciousness. Nor should they engage
in self-determination because this might lead to an awareness of the unde-
mocratic, top-down, and hierarchical order enforced by HRM.
626 On self-determination Schrijvers’s (2004) noted, ‘nothing instils greater
fear in an organisation than people doing their own thing’.
627 If HRM grants some sort of partial self-determination inside, for example,
semi-autonomous work teams, then it assures that HRM always retains the
controlling power over these so-called ‘self-managed work teams’
(Nankervis et al. 2014:205–207). Thereby it negates Kant’s morality
(Barker 2005).
628 Taylor’s tradition, enhanced by Fordism and hyped up by Neo-Fordism
(Aglietta 2000), is still operative under HRM regimes. A person still has to
be fitted to a job giving the domineering power to Mumford’s (1934 &
1944) ‘megamachine’. Today’s HRM calls this PJ-fit or ‘person-to-job fit’
(Pauuwe et al. 2013a:71).
629 Jackson et al. (2012:59 & 205); Kramar et al. (2011:34); Beardwell &
Claydon (2011:538); Nel et al. (2012:238).
630 DeCenzo et al. (2013:38ff.). But it also violates ‘Socrates’ claim that the just
man is always happier than his unjust oppressor’. As a consequence, many
of HRM’s actions carry connotations to being what Socrates calls an ‘oppres-
sor’ and furthermore, it testifies to the fact that many HRM-departments
and their managers tend not to be happy places – perhaps because of the
‘injustice’ done by HRM to other people.
631 See also: ‘The Kantian Case against Control’ (Maclagan 2007:55f.).
Notes 291
632 While ‘an increase in personal autonomy and self-control leads to greater
happiness’ (Shermer 2007:243), HRM seeks to prevent this autonomy. It
rejects self-control while fostering managerial control and is deeply
offended by the ethical notion of happiness as neither HR-happiness nor
organisational happiness is anywhere to be found in HRM textbooks.
633 HRM systematically excludes issues such as ‘liberty, happiness, com-
munity, and autonomy’ (Lippke 1995:28). This is especially the case when
‘liberty [is] understood negatively as the absence of constraints’ (Lippke
1995:31) because HRM’s prime objective is to create liberty-preventative
constraints. Lippke’s ‘The Importance of Being Autonomous’ (1995:27ff.)
defines ‘full autonomy as having developed skills of cognitive and prac-
tical rationality that enable individuals to lead critically reflective lives’
(1995:29). HRM instruments such as performance management, perfor-
mance related pay, balanced scorecards (Kaplan & Norton 1992, 1993,
2004), and key performance indicators are designed to prevent this from
occurring so that individuals can never ‘stamp their [organisational] lives
in their own imprimatur’ (Lippke 1995:30) but instead become appen-
dixes to HRM’s organisational regime.
634 Korsgaard (2012). Douzinas (2013:202) notes that ‘universal truth exists
because there is one cosmos, a common horizon encompassing local and
partial human worlds’.
635 In his ‘The Fear of Freedom’ (1960:215), the philosopher Erich Fromm
noted that truth is one of the strongest weapons of those who have no
power. This is exactly why the essence of HRM is not related to truth but
to power.
636 ‘Few [businesses] will deny that employees have the right to control
certain types of information about them’ (Lippke 1995:12).
637 Klikauer (2007:149–154); Klikauer (2008).
638 Involuntary information can be seen as information that is coerced out of
employees, for example, in job interviews where power is most asymmet-
rically distributed in favour of HRM and companies. This is the famous
‘take it or leave it’ approach.
639 Jackson et al. (2012:101); Kramar et al. (2011:256); Macky (2009:120, 130,
132–134); Nel et al. (2012:514) and ‘short listing…through social network-
ing’, Beardwell & Claydon (2011:172); Grobler et al. (2011: 29); Nel et al.
(2012:175 on facebook); HRIS (human resources information system) and
privacy and security considerations’ (Schwind et al. 2013:127).
640 Kant (1785); Bauman (1989); DeColle & Werhane (2008:753).
641 Truss et al. (1997); see also Armstrong’s HRM handbook (2012:10).
642 Cf. Kant’s ‘Trilogy of Critiques’: Critique of Pure Reason (1781), Critique
of Judgement (1790), and Critique of Practical Reason (1788); cf. Sedgwick
(2000).
643 This testifies to the fact that there is an ‘insurmountable difference
between humanity and the interest of management in organisations’
(Johnsen & Gudmand-Høyer 2010:333).
644 ‘HRM has tended to hold itself aloof from interest in business ethics’ (Dale
2012:23).
645 Gottfried (2012); cf. Dine & Fagan (2006). Following the ideology of
Managerialism closely (Klikauer 2013), HRM textbooks ‘sell’ globalisation
292 Notes
in a TINA fashion – there is no alternative (Nankervis et al. 2014:5, 46,

55f.). At the same time HRM staunchly refuses the take issues such as
global ethics on board (Pogge 1997, 2007, 2010; Pogge & Horton 2008;
Cabrera & Pogge 2012; Moellendorf & Widdows 2013).
646 Immanuel Kant (AA IV, 429 de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kategorischer_
Imperativ).
647 O’Sullivan et al. (2012).
648 Bowie (1999); Maclagan (2007:51).
649 Boatright (2009:66); Klikauer (2012:176).
650 This has been extensively discussed in Klikauer (2012).
651 Koys (1988); Bolton (2007a:9); Jackson et al. (2012:137); Schwind et al.
(2013:26).
652 Schwind et al. (2013:130); Sennet (2003:101ff.).
653 Instead of HRM’s use of respect, the moral concept of self-respect, for
example, has ‘three components: (1) a respectful attitude towards oneself;
(2) conduct that expresses respect towards oneself; and (3) an “object” of
self-respect that provides the individual with a standard of conduct
against which to form a cumulative assessment of her worth’ (Lippke
1995:36). Meanwhile HRM’s idea is that of mentally deformed, compliant,
and obedient ‘Organisation Men’ (Whyte 1961).
654 On Kant’s thing in-itself Johnson (2008:17) noted: the Ding an sich [thing
in itself] evidently involves a paradox, an unsustainable contradiction.
655 Kramar et al. (2011:553); Beardwell & Claydon (2011:154 & 379); Macky
(2009:129); Gunnigle et al. (2011:37f. & 264–354); Nel et al. (2012:36);
Stone (2013:17).
656 This, of course, also relates to Socrates’ philosophy that ‘justice pays off in
happiness for the agent’ (Vlastos 1991:6) but this is a moral philosophy
violated by HRM.
657 Marcuse (1966); Klikauer (2012:80).
658 Hosmer (1987); Klikauer (2012:173ff.).
659 Historically, Kant’s universalism was directly opposed by HRM in the
18th century version of factory overseers and administrators of mercantil-
ism’s Satanic Mills. On this, Kant noted that it is essential not to confuse
the point of moral duties with duties as such because a merchant who acts
neither from duty nor from direct inclination but only for a selfish
purpose does not act inside what Kant sees as moral duty (cf. Heller
1989:35).
660 Jackall (1988 & 2006); Diefenbach (2013a); Rayner (2013).
661 Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason (1788: Part IX): On the Wise
Adaptation of the Human Being’s Cognitive Faculties to his Practical
Vocation.
662 Perhaps all this is designed by HRM to avoid what Rousseau has outlined
as ‘how can slaves who do not even know they are slaves free themselves?’
(Marcuse 1966a:137).
663 Cf. Hegel (1807 & 1821); Kojève (1947); Adorno (1993); Sinnerbrink
(2007:101ff.).
664 HRM also seems to assume that machines and workers are alike in that
they are both normally passive agents who must be stimulated by HRM in
order to go into action. In the case of the machines, one turns on electric-
Notes 293
ity. In the case of workers money takes the place of electricity (cf. Ewen et
al. 1966; Herzberg 1966 & 2011).
665 Work and job design excludes those who have to carry out the work and
jobs designed by others ‘for’ (!) them, cf. Gunnigle et al. (2011:148–165);
Kramar et al. (2011:195); Kramar et al. (2014:192); Beardwell & Claydon
(2011:90).
666 Arnold (2005); Arnold & Randal (2010); Aamodt (2010 & 2013).
667 Gunnigle et al. (2011:128f.); Nel et al. (2012:207).
668 Macky (2009:197 & 343); Beardwell & Claydon (2011:505); Nel et al.
(2012:293–295); Schwind et al. (2013:552).
669 For two successors of Kant, German philosopher Hegel and later Marx,
alienation is linked to employment and work. On this Marx (1844) noted:
alienation shows itself not only in the result but also in the act of produc-
tion, inside productive activity itself. Therefore, he does not confirm
himself in his work, he denies himself, feels miserable instead of happy,
deploys no free physical and intellectual energy, but mortifies his body
and ruins his mind. To prevent critical, reflective, and self-knowledgeable
employees, HRM has invented a raft of measures starting with organisa-
tional behaviour to create the ‘Organisation Men’ (Whyte 1961). HRM
needs to eclipse all feelings of misery and workplace pathologies (cf. Lukes
1985).
670 Bowles & Gintis’ ‘Schooling in Capitalist America: Educational Reform
and the Contradictions of Economic Life’ (1976, 1981, 2002) delivers the
reason for the fact that ‘almost all schooling is boring’ (Albert 2006).
671 Cf. Whyte (1961); Beder (2000:193–272); Klikauer (2007:183ff.).
672 Mountford (2012). Inside corporations, HRM’s use of deception ranges
from faked promises of promotion to pay increases, workloads, etc.
Corporate and organisational deception is truthfully depicted in Michael
Moore’s first documentary ‘Roger and Me’ (Moore, M. 1989. Roger & Me
(documentary), Warner Brothers, December 20, 1989 (USA), 91 min.
English).
673 Jacoby (1977 & 1997); Bauman & Donskis (2013).
674 Nel et al. (2012:223); Grobler et al. (2011:24, 267–270, 542f.); Beardwell &
Claydon (2011:398, 413f. & 421f.); Macky (2009:293).
675 Jean-Paul Sartre noted in his ‘Being and Nothingness’ (1992) that Kant’s
‘You ought, therefore you can’ is implicitly understood. Everything that
ought to be always carries in it the seed of potentialities and of practical
transformations.
676 Singer (1994); Farmer (2003); Shafer-Landau (2007); Shafer-Landau &
Cueno (2007); Pogge & Horton (2008); Pogge (2010); Cabrera & Pogge
(2012).
677 Kjonstad & Willmott (1995:455); Panza (2010:248); Fisk (2010); Gupta
(2014); Sutherland et al. (2014).
678 One of the most prominent voices in advancing animal rights has been
the philosopher Peter Singer’s ‘Animal Liberation’ (1990), ‘Practical Ethics’
(1993), ‘Writings on an Ethical Life’ (2000); cf. Singer (2005); cf. ‘Animal
Rights & Environmental Ethics’ (in: Olen et al. 2005:452ff.). This repre-
sents the exact opposite of what Stoops (1913:462) detected, ‘it is said that
the packing houses turn to profit every part of the pig but its squeal’
294 Notes
(cf. MacIntyre 1999; Rollin 2007; Boggs 2010; Donovan 2010; Carter
2010; Theodore & Theodore 2010; MacKinnon 2013:187ff.; Armstrong
2013).
679 Merz-Perez & Heide (2003); Cochrane (2012).
680 Hart (1993:34) noted that HRM ‘promotes Managerialism and thereby
gives succour to the myth that somehow we can manage the Earth’.
681 Biocentric ethics, ecological philosophy, deep ecology, new animists, social
ecology, land ethics, the ethics of preserving and restoring nature, ecolo-
gical human rights, rights of nature, ecological intergenerational justice,
animal ethics, Kantian environmental ethics, anthropocentrism, the
morality of biotic communities, species protection, deep ecology, bio-
spheric egalitarianism, biospherical nets, new animists, bioregionalism,
sentient beings, Albert Schweitzer’s Reverence for Life, teleological-centre-
of-life moralities, responsive cohesion, ecosystems, the biophysical world,
social ecology, mutualistic interrelations, ecological interdependence, life-
centred ethics, and the ethical concept of equal consideration (cf. Olen
et al. 2005; Light & Rolston 2003; Chanter 2006; Desjardins 2006;
Brennan & Lo 2010; MacKinnon 2013:170ff.; Armstrong 2013:41ff.;
Stanwick & Stanwick 2013; Attfield 2014).
682 Giddens (2009); Oreskes & Conway (2010); Guest & Woodrow (2012);
Koch (2011); Kemper (2012); DeCenzo et al. (2013:4–6, 168, 323f.);
Hoffman & Woody (2013).
683 In historical terms, philosophy’s understanding of environment is a much
older understanding of environment (2,000 years of moral philosophy
versus fifty years of HRM).
684 Kant developed a highly influential moral theory according to which
autonomy is a necessary property to be the kind of being whose interests
are to count directly in the moral assessment of actions. Since animals are
not capable of representing themselves in this way, they cannot have
rights. One of the clearest and most forceful denials of animal conscious-
ness is developed by Rene Descartes (1596–1650) who argues that animals
are automata that might act as if they were conscious, but really are not.
This stream of moral philosophy is also represented in Rawls. If we do
extend Rawls’ conception of fairness and justice to animals, then animals
will have no direct moral standing; (cf. Keller 2010:82ff. & 257ff.; Kazez
2010; Mendieta 2010; Gerhardt 2010; Carter 2010).
685 Schlosberg (1999, 2007); Sandler (2013).
686 American moral philosopher and Kant expert Christine Korsgaard (1996,
153–154), for example, writes ‘it is a pain to be in pain. And that is not a
trivial fact. When you pity a suffering animal, it is because you are per-
ceiving a reason. An animal’s cries express pain, and they mean that there
is a reason, a reason to change its conditions. And you can no more hear
the cries of an animal as mere noise than you can the words of a person.
Another animal can obligate you in exactly the same way another person
can. So of course we have obligations to animals’ (cf. MacIntyre 1999).
687 Consider factory farming, the most common method used to convert
animal bodies into relatively inexpensive foodstuff in industrialised soci-
eties today (cf. Jensen et al. 2011). An estimated eight billion animals in
the United States alone are born, confined, biologically manipulated,
Notes 295
transported, and ultimately slaughtered each year so that humans can

consume them. The conditions in which these animals are raised and the
method of slaughter cause vast amounts of suffering (cf. Mason and
Singer 1990; Kazez 2010; Carter 2010).
688 Not surprisingly, one campaign strategy of PETA (people for the ethical
treatment of animals) is to bring the cruelty administered to animals
directly to managers, their wives, families, and children (http://www.peta.
org/).
689 Passmore, J. 1974. ‘Man’s Responsibility for Nature’, London: Duckworth;
cf. Keller (2010, part IV, p.147ff. & part V, p. 221ff.; Bell 2010).
690 Jackson et al. (2012:186, 207f.); Kramar et al. (2011:262f.); Kramar et al.
(2014:258–267); Beardwell & Claydon (2011:163f., 172f. & 617); Macky
(2009:194, 203–210 & 428); Gunnigle et al. (2011:101–132); Nel et al.
(2012:160f. & 540); Grobler et al. (2011:178); cf. Cassio & Rush (2009).
691 Indirectly, HRM – together with general management– focuses on mone-
tary outcomes, efficiency, productiveness, and shareholder-value i.e.
profit-maximisation as the ultimate goals.
692 Lipietz (2013:133); Chambers et al. (2014).
693 In his ‘Theory of Natural Man’ (‘Discourse on the Origins of Inequality’,
1755), French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote, ‘the first man
who, having fenced in a piece of land, said “This is mine,” and found
people naïve enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of
civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many
horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by
pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows:
Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget
that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody’
(cf. Soron 2010).
694 Zimbardo (2004:22); cf. White (2013); Fuller (2013); Kolbert (2014).
695 The moral values of ‘integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic com-
munity’ as expressed by Leopold (1949) are of no use (cf. Mander 1991 &
2001; Goldsmith & Mander 2001); cf. Mander’s ‘In the Absence of the
Sacred: the Failure of Technology and the Survival of the Indian Nations’
(San Francisco: Sierra Club Books). For Korten (1995:9) it is ‘making
money for the rich at the expense of the life of society and the planet’
(cf. Keller 2010:245ff.; Theodore & Theodore 2010; Benton 2010; Llorente
2010; Weisberg 2010); Larson (2012); Leech (2012); Lipietz (2013). Thiong
(1982) noted, ‘today money is the ruler of industry and commerce. Money
is field marshal of all the forces of theft and robbery on earth’.
696 Dainty & Loosemore (2012:235 & 275); Callicott (2013).
697 Rolston’s ‘Future of Environmental Ethics’ (Part XI) in Keller’s
‘Environmental Ethics’ (2010).
698 Cf. Næss (1973 & 1989); Witoszek and Brennan (1999); Keller (2010,
chapters 25–29, pp. 211–244); Jensen et al. (2011); MacKinnon
(2013:180).
699 This raises the question ‘should companies dump their waste in poor
countries?’ (Velasquez 2012:80–113).
700 Kramar et al. (2011:435–441); Kramar et al. (2014:321ff.); Beardwell &
Claydon (2011:176–179); Gunnigle et al. (2011:126); Nel et al. (2012:372).
296 Notes
701 http://www.information-management.com/news/4735-1.html; Truss

(2001); Gospel & Sako (2010); http://www.enotes.com/human-resource-
management-reference/human-resource-management-hrm
702 Jackson et al. (2012:4–11, 32); Kramar et al. (2011:547); Beardwell &
Claydon (2011:596); Macky (2009:89); Schwind et al. (2013:14 & 35);
Stone (2014:22); cf. Mariappanadar (2012).
703 Instead of ‘biospheric’ environmental ethics, HRM focuses on ‘biometrics
technologies’ (Jackson et al. 2012:344); the ‘biological approach to job
design’ (Kramar et al. 2011:199); ‘biodata questionnaires’ (Beardwell &
Claydon 2011:173); ‘five factor model biodata’ (Macky 2008:233); and
‘biographic information blanks’ (Schwind et al. 2013:229).
704 Wiersma (1992); Macky (2009:344); Rebitzer & Taylor (2011); Gkorezis &
Petridou (2012); Schwind et al. (2013:241).
705 Kramar et al. (2011:490); Kramar et al. (2014:449–522); Macky (2009:345
& 366); Nel et al. (2012:542).
706 ROI = return of investment. Regan (1985) noted, ‘…animals are treated
routinely, systematically as if their value were reducible to their usefulness
to others, they are routinely, systematically treated with a lack of respect,
and thus are their rights routinely, systematically violated. The animal
rights position is an absolutist position. Any being that is a subject of a
life has inherent worth and the rights that protect such worth, and all
subjects of a life have these rights equally. Thus any practice that fails to
respect the rights of those animals, e.g. eating animals, hunting animals,
experimenting on animals, using animals for entertainment, is wrong,
irrespective of human need, context, or culture’ (cf. Rollin 2007).
707 Marx (1890); Baudrillard et al. (1976); Itoh (1988); Baudrillard (1996);
Lindstrom (2005 & 2008); Klikauer (2012:191).
708 Kramar et al. (2011:446–448); Kramar et al. (2014:401); Beardwell &
Claydon (2011:543); Gunnigle et al. (2011:48); Schwind et al. (2013:29 &
373).
709 Boggs (2010); e.g. figure 1–15 & figure 1–16 in: Schwind et al. (2013:38).
710 http://robinson.gsu.edu/management/mba-hr-management.html
711 Weber (1924); Marcuse (1964); Horkheimer (1974); Schecter (2010);
Klikauer (2007:67); Klikauer (2012:50).
712 Bookchin (1962, 1982, 1990, 1995, 2001); Bookchin & Foreman (1991);
McKenna et al. (2008).
713 ‘Animism’ is the philosophical, religious or spiritual idea that souls or
spirits exist not only in humans but also in other animals, plants, rocks,
natural phenomena such as thunder, geographic features such as moun-
tains or rivers, or other entities of the natural environment. Animism may
further attribute souls to abstract concepts such as words, true names or
metaphors in mythology. It is particularly widely found in the religions of
indigenous peoples, although it is also found in Shinto, and some forms
of Hinduism and Neopaganism. Throughout European history, philo-
sophers such as Plato, Aristotle (Armstrong 2013:62f.), and Thomas
Aquinas, among others, contemplated the possibility that souls exist in
animals, plants and people, however the currently accepted definition of
animism was only developed in the 19th century by Sir Edward Tylor.
Notes 297
714 Athanasiou (1996); Tokar (1997); Lyon & Maxwell (2011); Marquis &
Toffel (2012); Johnson (2012).
715 Meadows et al. (1972 & 2004); Dietz & O’Neill (2013); Starke et al. (2013);
Wells (2013); Ehnert et al. (2014).
716 Ehnert (2009); Clarke (2011); Vromans et al. (2012); Thiele (2013); Lipietz
(2013:133); Chambers et al. (2014).
717 Utilitarians maintain that what is really important is the promotion of
happiness, pleasure, or the satisfaction of interests, and the avoidance of
pain, suffering, or frustration of interests. Bentham, one of the more force-
ful defenders of this ‘sentientist’ view of moral consideration, famously
wrote, ‘other animals, which, on account of their interests having been
neglected by the insensibility of the ancient jurists, stand degraded into
the class of things...The day has been, I grieve it to say in many places it is
not yet past, in which the greater part of the species, under the denomina-
tion of slaves, have been treated…upon the same footing as...animals are
still. The day may come, when the rest of the animal creation may acquire
those rights which never could have been withholden from them but by
the hand of tyranny. The French have already discovered that the black-
ness of skin is no reason why a human being should be abandoned
without redress to the caprice of a tormentor. It may come one day to be
recognised, that the number of legs, the villosity of the skin, or the ter-
mination of the “os sacrum”, are reasons equally insufficient for abandon-
ing a sensitive being to the same fate. What else is it that should trace the
insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason, or perhaps, the faculty for dis-
course?...the question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but,
Can they suffer?’ (Bentham 1781).
718 Meerkats in the Kalahari Desert are known to sacrifice their own safety by
staying with sick or injured family members so that the fatally ill will not
die alone. Darwin reported this in ‘The Descent of Man: “So intense is the
grief of female monkeys for the loss of their young, that it invariably
caused the death of certain kinds”’.
719 Skinner (1948, 1953, 1971, 1974); Chomsky (1959 & 1971); Cavalieri &
Singer (1994); Lemov (2006); Becker & Menges (2013).
720 James (2011); Krebs (2011).
721 The phrase ‘Reverence for Life’ is a translation of the German expression
‘Ehrfurcht vor dem Leben’ (more accurately translated as: ‘to be in awe of
the mystery of life’); cf. Schweitzer (1965).
722 Thiele (2013); Dauvergne & Lister (2013).
723 Katz (1997 & 2002); Katz & Light (1996).
724 Moore & Gardner (2004); www.miningoilandgasjobs.com.
725 Any irreversibility of a once destroyed ‘wild’ is excluded from organisa-
tional thinking that might turn wilderness into a ‘business park’ – which
is no more than a tautology using the positive term ‘park’ to cover up the
ugliness of such premises. A business park is a form of territorial colonisa-
tion, the proliferation of spaces which escape the control of the built
realm: voids between fragments of unconnected residential schemes, gaps
between urbanised zones, abandoned farmland, etc. While we debate on
whether the traditional city block is a naïve solution to the problem of
298 Notes
ordering immediate periphery, a new approach to spatial organisation

arises with the ease that characterises any new consumer good, an
approach which questions the conventional references of urbanism: the
so-called ‘commercial, industrial, business and theme park’.
726 Hundreds of orangutans killed in north Indonesian forest fires deliberately
started by palm oil firms (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-
2122544/Hundreds-orangutans-killed-north-Indonesian-forest-fires-delib-
erately-started-palm-oil-firms.html); published: 00:55 GMT, 30 March
2012; oilfieldextreme.com; www.saynotopalmoil.com.
727 https://www.greenpeace.org.au/secure/donate/Greenpeace_workplace_
giving.pdf
728 Macky (2009:262, 265, 271); Jackson et al. (2012:132); Kramar et al.
(2011:364–367); Schwind et al. (2013:319).
729 An adaptation of Karl Marx’s original quote (Das Kapital (1890), vol. 1,
p. 801, reprinted by Dietz-Verlag Berlin in 1961) would read: ‘with ade-
quate performance, HRM becomes bold. A certain 10 per cent will ensure
environmental destruction; 20 per cent certain will produce eagerness;
50 per cent, positive audacity; 100 per cent will make it ready to trample
on every environmental entity; 300 per cent, and there is not one envi-
ronmental crime at which people trained and performance managed by
HRM will scruple, nor a risk it will not run, even to the chance of general
managers being hanged. If devastation of nature and environmental
destruction will deliver efficiency and organisational outcomes for HRM,
it will freely execute both’.
730 Cf. Bookchin (1962, 1982, 1990, 1995, 2001); Bookchin & Foreman
(1991); Keller (2010, chapters 35–38, pp. 281–317).
731 Schrijvers (2004:17–18); Pless et al. (2012); Marens (2012); Shen & Benson
(2013). In the words of Milton Friedman, ‘there is one and only one social
responsibility of business, to use its resources and engage in activities
designed to increase its profits’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman_
doctrine); (Nankervis et al. 2014:12, 549, 577).
732 Bowles & Gintis (1975); Shaw et al. (2012); Harvey et al. (2013).
733 Kropotkin (1902); Nowak & Highfield (2011); Klikauer (2012b).
734 Newell (2012); Weston (2012); Martínez-Alier et al. (2013); Radkau (2013);
Rathzel & Uzzell (2013); Renwick et al. (2013).
735 Coffey & Thornley (2013); Crawley et al. (2013); Thomas (2014).
736 As environmental ethicist Jerry Mander (1991 & 2001) outlined, ‘the ulti-
mate goal of corporate multi-nationals was expressed in a revealing quote
by the president of Nabisco Corporation: “one world of homogeneous
consumption...[I am] looking forward to the day when Arabs and
Americans, Latinos and Scandinavians, will be munching Ritz crackers as
enthusiastically as they already drink Coke or brush their teeth with
Colgate. Corporations not only advertise products, they promote lifestyles
rooted in consumption, patterned largely after the United States.... [They]
look forward to a post-national age in which [Western] social, economic
and political values are transformed into universal values... a world
economy in which all national economies beat to the rhythm of trans-
national corporate capitalism.... The Western way is the good way;
national culture is inferior”’.
Notes 299
737 They ‘make’ something ‘up’ that is not real. These make-ups or setups
include freelancing, sub-contracting, outsourcing, supply-chain-HRM,
franchising, joint-ventures, and so on. Through these business structures,
corporations try to relieve themselves of their moral responsibility and
seek to avoid the unavoidable by creating a spatial distance between
themselves and the location of immoral acts.
738 Otto Adolf Eichmann (1906–1962) was a high-ranking Nazi and
SS-Obersturmbannführer (Lieutenant Colonel). Due to his organisational
talents and ideological reliability, he was tasked by Obergruppenführer
Reinhard Heydrich to facilitate and manage the logistics of mass deporta-
tion to ghettos and extermination camps in Nazi-occupied Eastern
Europe. He worked under Ernst Kaltenbrunner (the highest-ranking SS
leader) until the end of the war. Eichmann was captured by Israeli Mossad
agents in Argentina and indicted by Israeli courts on fifteen criminal
charges, including charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes. He
was convicted and hanged. He claimed, ‘I was never an anti-Semite. ... I
personally had nothing to do with this. My job was to observe and report
on it…whether they were bank directors or mental cases, the people who
were loaded on those trains meant nothing to me. It was really none of
my business’.
739 Hence, corporate records on environmental destructions are hidden
behind glossy corporate PR magazines (cf. Greenpeace 2010). To cover up
and masquerade the truth about corporate environmental destructions,
corporate PR managers build alibi-creating isolated environmental initia-
tives that appeal to the public.
740 Taylor (1981); Singer (1978 & 1990).
741 In life-centred morality ‘the good (well-being, welfare) of individual
organisms is considered as entity. It has inherent worth that determines
our moral relations with the Earth’s wild communities of life. From the
perspective of a life-centred theory, we have prima facie moral obligations
that are owned to wild plants and animals themselves as members of the
Earth’s biotic community’ (Taylor 2004:505; cf. Olen et al. 2005:485ff.;
Kazez 2010).
742 Wiersma (1992); Macky (2009:344); Rebitzer & Taylor (2011); Gkorezis &
Petridou (2012); Schwind et al. (2013:241).
743 For Singer (1990), the idea of equality is a moral idea, not an assertion of
fact. The principle of the equality of human beings is not a description of
an alleged actual equality among humans; it is a prescription of how we
should treat human beings (cf. Davis 2010).
744 In the spirit of George Orwell’s Animal Farm ‘some pigs are more equal
than others’. In HRM, for example, the – always as ‘necessary’ announced
– dismissals and retrenchments of workers are almost never done under
equal considerations. It is not HRM but foremost employees who are
down-sized, right-sized, and sui-sized. Similarly, when it comes to
bonuses, it is HRM who considers itself first and as the exclusive recipient.
745 Singer (1990:494–495) notes, ‘the capacity for suffering and enjoyment is
a prerequisite for having interests at all, a condition that must be satisfied
before we can speak of interests in a meaningful way. A stone does not
have interests because it cannot suffer. A mouse, for example, does have
300 Notes
an interest in not being kicked along the road, because it will suffer if it is.
If a being suffers there can be no moral justification for refusing to take
that suffering into consideration. No matter what the nature of the being,
the principle of equality requires that its suffering be counted equally
with the suffering – insofar as rough comparison can be made – of any
other being’; cf. Regan (2006).
746 Singer (1990:495) emphasises that ‘racists violate the principle of equality
by giving greater weight to the interests of members of the own race when
there is a clash between their interest and the interests of those of another
race. Sexists violate the principle of equality by favouring the interests of
their own sex. Similar, speciesists allow the interests of their own species
to override the greater interests of members of other species’.
747 This is the problem of families because there is no reason to bring up chil-
dren in a world defined by competition. Children are time-consuming,
unproductive, contribute nothing, hinder competition, and even compete
with adults for food. If competition was the basic founding bloc of a
society of rivalling individual human beings, children would have died a
rather lonely and miserable death millenniums ago. Since this was clearly
not the case, mutual aid, cooperation, coordination, and solidarity carried
the day.
748 Dickens (1853); Bond & Gillies (1981); Blewett (2006).
749 The historical continuity of Figure 8.1 applies to developed (mostly
western) European countries, plus Canada, the USA, and perhaps Japan. It
is a sequential model that applies to all countries that have developed and
continue to develop managerial structures. In all cases, HRM has or will
make the transition from punishment regimes (1) to rewarding regimes
expressed as performance HRM (2). And in all cases, it will stop there and
not develop higher forms of morality (3–7).
750 Cf. Engels (1892); Thompson (1963 & 1967); Hobsbawm (1968).
751 Dickens (1853); Jackson et al. (2012:242); Beardwell & Claydon (2011:
464).
752 http://www.cipd.co.uk/hr-resources/factsheets/history-hr-cipd.aspx
753 Jackson et al. (2012); Schwind et al. (2013); Beardwell & Claydon (2011).
754 Marketing combined with corporate mass media tells us today what to
buy, where to shop, and even how to feel during a Hollywood movie
which is usually indicated through music (Bourdieu 1998).
755 Cf. Braverman (1974); Edwards (1979); Burawoy (1979 & 1985); Gibbons
(1987); Kothari (2010).
756 Gunnigle et al. (2011:142); Nel et al. (2012:315); Beardwell & Claydon
(2011:264).
757 These HR rules and policies provide for what German philosopher
Marcuse once noted as ‘under capitalism men are dominated and
exploited not merely by external oppressors, by those who own and those
who rule, but by forms of consciousness which prevent them from liberat-
ing themselves’ (MacIntyre 1970:46).
758 Putnam (1988); for example, Greek philosopher Socrates identifies five
virtues (arete): temperance, piety, courage, justice, and wisdom. Apart from
courage, none of the other four are to be found in Human Resource
Management.
Notes 301
759 Kramar, R., Bartram, T. & De Cieri, H. 2011. Human Resource Management
in Australia – Strategy, People, Performance (4th ed.), Sydney: McGraw-Hill;
Schwind, H., Das, H. & Wagar, T. 2013. Canadian HRM – A Strategic
Approach (9th ed.), Whitby, ON: McGraw-Hill Ryerson; Beardwell, J. &
Claydon, T. 2011. Human Resource Management: A Contemporary Approach
(6th ed.), London: Financial Times Press; Gunnigle, P., Heraty N. & Morley
M. J. 2011. Human Resource Management in Ireland, Dublin: Gill &
Macmillan; Macky, K. (eds) 2009. Managing Human Resources:
Contemporary Perspectives in New Zealand, Sydney: McGraw Hill; Grobler,
P. A. et al. 2011. Human Resource Management in South Africa (4th ed.),
Andover: Cengage Learning; Jackson, S. E., Schuler, R. S. & Werner, S.
2012. Managing Human Resources (11th ed.), Mason: South Western
Cengage Learning.
760 In other words, it is imperative to all those that use a standard textbook in
Anglo-Saxon countries to ensure that HR students have a basic knowledge
of four key areas of HRM.
761 Delbridge et al. (2011); Servais (2011:45ff); Lucio (2013).
762 While textbooks contain issues such as sustainability and CSR, for
example, they do not, however, engage in a systematic discussion about
environmental ethics as a moral philosophy.
763 Dunlop (1958); Upchurch et al. (2012); Casey (2012); Hyman (2012).
764 Leitch (1919); Blumberg (1968); Poole (1986); Dennis (2010); Devinatz
(2012).
765 http://humanresources.about.com/od/discrimination/qt/prevent-
employment-discrimination.htm; http://www.strategichrlawyer.com/
weblog/new_york_law/; http://www.hcamag.com/article/the-fair-work-act-
and-personal-liability-considerations-for-hr-144297.aspx
766 McGregor (1960 & 2006); Storey (1996).
767 Grobler et al. (2011:536–544); Beardwell & Claydon (2011:411).
768 Hunt (2014); Lacey & Groves (2014); Abrahamson (1996); Gladwell
(2002).
769 http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Santayana
770 McCabe (2000); Deetz (2003); Herzog (2012).
771 Cf. Habermas (1985); d’Entrèves & Benhabib (1997). Perhaps this comes
to the discomfort of many postmodernists, but modernity remains an
unfinished project. Its completion and therefore modernity is not yet
accomplished. It is still outstanding or a work-in-progress. Hence, there
can be no post-modernism when modernism is still in the making. In
Hegelian philosophy, modernity is an issue of becoming.
772 Pogge (1997); Dussel & Vallega (2012).
773 This is not to say that moral philosophy operates separate from the sphere
of society (3–5) and HRM (1–2). On the contrary, it has been shown that
moral philosophy extends to all spheres of human society without any
exception. Moral philosophy has a lot to say about spheres 1 to 2 (HRM)
and spheres 3 to 5 (society). However, when seen from Kant’s ‘what is’-vs.-
‘what ought to be’, moral philosophy appears to focus more on ‘what
ought to be’ (stages 6–7) than simply on ‘what is’ (1–5). This may be the
case because moral philosophy is primarily engaged with questions such
as: ‘how shall we live?’ and ‘what shall I do?’.
302 Notes
774 The difference between HRM morality and moral philosophy lies in the
fact that the former seeks to establish rules for moral conduct and dis-
cusses the morality of an actor (HRM) while the latter (moral philosophy)
discusses morality from a philosophical point of view. Put simply, the
former is interested in practice, the latter in theory (Keller 2010; Shafer-
Landau 2007).
775 Kaplan & Norton (1992, 1993, 2004); Biazzo & Garengo (2011); Modell
(2012).
776 Klikauer (2007, 2008, 2012, 2013).
777 Weber (1991:308) notes that ‘organisational values appear to be associated
with a particular stage of moral reasoning’.
778 Schwind et al. (2013:361); Hayek (1944); Gunnigle et al. (2011:41);
Martínez & Stuart (2011); Tomlinson (2007); Brewster et al. (2006).
779 Milgram (cf. Alfonso 1982; Blass 1991, 1992, 2002; Milgram 1963, 1972,
1973, 1974, 1992; Werhane 2013).
780 Hegel’s ‘Phenomenology’ (1807); Kojève (1947); Taylor (1994); Honneth
(1995); Pinkard (2013).
781 In the words of Selekman (1959:21), ‘a businessman’s statements and
actions are based on economic and political views [that] sharply contra-
dict the moral philosophy they profess in speeches and articles’.
782 Marx (1844 & 1890); Karl Marx’s ‘Capital’, vol. one – chapter thirty-one:
‘Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist’ in: http://www.marxists.org/archive/
marx/works/1867-c1/ch31.htm.
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$6,000 shower curtain, 148 base salary, 70

Baudrillard, 105, 109, 179, 211, 296,
absenteeism, 57, 167 306
Adam Smith, 70, 120, 242, 246, 260, Bauman, 25, 29, 33, 37, 39, 43–48,
318f. 58, 63–67, 72, 116, 121f., 126,
administrative power, 169 158, 189, 206, 235f., 239,
Adorno, 14, 17, 39, 42, 47, 48, 50, 62, 250–259, 273, 275, 283, 291, 293,
107, 111–113, 131, 180, 194, 228, 306, 307
247, 252, 254–256, 264–275, Bentham, 22, 39, 138, 141, 145, 151,
283f., 292, 303, 321, 326, 337, 154, 159, 208f., 247, 285, 297,
347 307, 318, 320
Age of Me-First, 33, 228 Beyond Good and Evil, 85, 339
agency-vs.-structure, 52 Bhopal, 140, 141
agri-culture, 185 Biblical origins, 28
Airheads, 146, 261, 321 Big Five, 93
al desko, 118 Biocentrism, 198
All-Too Human, 84 bioregionalism, 22, 196f., 209, 294
Altruism, 40, 100, 313, 330, 339, 348 biospheric egalitarianism, 22, 209
American workplace, 77 biospherical net, 193, 209
animal testing, 188 blackmail, 112
animal welfare ethics, 6 blame no one, 102
anthropocentrism, 22, 189, 209, 294 Bourdieu, 52, 300, 309
anthropology, 3, 246 bribe-taking, 23, 26
anti-discrimination laws, 27 business administrators, 211
ape-to-ape relationships, 1 business parks, 196
Aquinas, 91, 106f., 113, 237, business schools, 19, 92, 103, 171,
245–247, 270, 283, 296, 304, 315 201, 284
Aryans, 63
asbestos, 140, 253 Cain and Abel, 28
Asch, 58, 305 Camus, 39, 272, 311
assembly line, 157, 180 career opportunities, 97
Auschwitz, 33, 39, 63, 258, 270, 303, Categorical Imperative, 41, 343
307, 324, 347 CCTV, 80
Authoritarian Character, 50 CEOs, 5, 98, 135, 147, 206, 277
authoritarianism, 4, 37, 51, 55, 101, Charlie Chaplin, 180
120, 123, 131, 151, 244 checks-and-balances, 62
Avatar, 68, 259 children, 50, 144, 208, 246, 264, 268,
278, 286, 295, 300
Babylonian Law, 2 Chomsky, 46, 134, 140, 250, 252,
balance of power, 115, 130 297, 305, 312
Banality of Evil, 9, 23, 51, 253, 304, Christian, 28, 83, 85, 270
313 citizen-to-citizen, 13
bankruptcies, 80, 81 citoyen, 122
357
358 Index
civic and legal equality, 120 Dewey, 41, 336

civil society, 115, 124, 295 dignity, 48, 104, 176–178, 246f.,
climate change, 186 263f., 280
codes of conduct, 16, 109, 266 disciplinary dismissal, 129
codified company standards, 24 division of labour, 5, 24f., 180, 213,
cognitive ability, 7 256
collective bargaining, 218, 232, 288 Dog-of-War, 39
command-and-control, 50, 55, 57, 61, donkey, 146, 251
67, 142 downshifting, 12
company car, 125, 278 downsizing, 65, 86, 92, 109, 140, 159,
company newsletters, 117 264, 276
competitive advantage, 12, 33, 87, Drucker, 117, 146, 159, 251, 263, 273,
97f., 112, 175 316
complaint procedures, 127 drug testing, 45
concentration camps, 45, 249 dummies, 180
conferences, 84, 103, 154, 156, 171, Dunlop, 15, 301, 317
202, 284 Durkheim, 129f., 276, 278, 317
consequentialism, 38, 41, 139, 148,
244f., 280 early factories, 212
continuous improvement, 12 ecological limits, 196f.
corporate culture, 26, 30, 90, 119 economic processing zones, 196
corporate headquarter, 196 egalitarianism, 119, 153, 191–193,
corporate PR, 6, 201, 299 294
corporate psychopath, 50 egocentrism, 4, 10, 25, 226, 260
corporate social responsibility, 82 Egyptian ruling class, 2
corporate utility, 185 Ehrenreich, 151, 239, 318
Cost-Benefit Rationality, 32 Eichmann, 33, 206, 258, 299, 304
cost-benefit thinking, 48 emotional cruelty, 112
cost-benefit trade-off, 88 employer federation, 173
cost-cutting, 58, 64f., 80f., 87–89, 94, English marmalade, 151
100, 102, 109, 144, 159 Enlightenment, 14, 17f., 31, 37, 41,
courage, 94, 133, 183, 245f., 268, 300 122, 162, 265, 286f., 303,
cruelty towards animals, 188f. 326–328
cultural identity, 205 environmental resource, 187
Epictetus, 79, 102f.
Daimler Benz, 33 equalitarianism, 100
Death Penalty, 39, 342 Erin Brockovich, 68, 310
death-camps, 33 Ethical Respect for Nature, 207
Déclaration des Droits, 161 Europe, 227, 299, 313, 316f., 340,
Declaration of Human Rights, 4, 29, 349
161 evolutional theorists, 7
Deep Ecology, 22, 191, 209 evolutionary ethics, 8, 246, 263, 279
defamation, 102 exploitation, 100, 192, 199, 233
Dekke Eide Næss, 191 eye-for-an-eye, 2
de-layering, 60, 194
Descartes, 16, 31, 215, 245, 265, 290, Facebook, 169
294, 315, 339 factory administration, 13, 25, 44,
Detroit, 63 156, 168, 178, 206
Deutsche Bank, 33 factory overseer, 18
Index 359
family, 9, 92, 99f., 136, 164, 204, 210, Hierarchy of Needs, 47

235, 286, 297 high performance work systems, 81,
farming, 185–189, 198, 205, 294 93
Fayol, 33, 110, 230, 240, 244, 319 Himmler, 33
Fear of Freedom, 54, 291, 320 hiring-&-firing, 158
feudalist-catholic rule, 91 history, 2f., 13–16, 53, 64, 86, 132,
FFFF-dilemma, 190 157, 206, 210–213, 223, 264f.,
FIFO, 30, 111 280, 284, 296, 300
Ford, 63, 140, 157, 180, 213, 270, holistic morality, 11
289, 319 Hollywood, 54, 68, 137, 300
Fordism, 123, 213f., 290 Holocaust, 33, 39, 45, 63, 64, 258f.,
French Revolution, 4, 326, 344 306, 322, 324, 333, 355
friendship, 47, 97f., 105, 110f., 133, homo economicus, 74, 261f., 266,
157–159, 243–246 285
Fromm, 54, 121, 237, 243f., 252f., honesty is the best policy, 2
267, 273–281, 291, 320 HR manuals, 5
HR officer, 67
game-shows, 137 HR-defined work tasks, 56
gas chambers, 33, 63, 248 HR-director, 48, 257
George Orwell, 2, 60, 178, 299 HRM and Ethics, 21
Germanic race, 63 HRM by Fear, 25
Global Justice, 42, 335 HRM scenario, 88
global talent flow, 97 HRM’s authority, 36, 51, 52f., 56f.,
global warming, 186 62, 87, 121, 125, 134
globalisation, 16, 171, 186, 291 HRM-subordinate relationships, 126
God, 8, 18, 31, 162 HRM-vs.-organisation, 6
golden rule, 26 HRM-vs.-union, 111
Goldhagen, 15, 58, 66, 192, 249, 256, human capital, 86, 164, 178, 203,
259, 322 227f., 264, 267
good and bad, 23, 36, 83 Human resource development, 218
Greece, 3, 91, 113, 161, 266, 316 human rights legislation, 11
greenfield sites, 196 Human Side of Enterprise, 214, 222,
grievance procedures, 127 336
groupism, 11 human wellbeing, 139
Guantanamo, 39, 66, 318, 354 human-to-human relationships, 1f.
Hume, 40, 69, 75, 91, 103–105, 113,
Habermas, 41, 95, 125, 224f., 237, 246f., 270, 275
243, 255, 273f., 280f., 301, 307,
315, 323f., 344, 346 illegal discrimination, 126
Hammurabi, 2 I-manage-you, 141
Happiness Principle, 133, 138–142, individual bargaining, 68, 144, 163
145–147, 152, 156 individual competition, 79f., 101, 226
Hare, 41, 42, 247, 252, 305 individual morality, 3, 55, 121
Harvard Business School, 96, 240, 335 individualisation, 68, 144
heart of darkness, 17 individualism, 5, 9, 10, 16, 25, 29f.,
Hedonism, 40 39, 68, 87, 90, 97, 101, 104–112,
Herbert Spencer, 40 123–125, 136, 138, 144, 150–167,
Herzberg, 16, 17, 70, 240, 250, 260, 210, 211, 240, 260–264, 280, 284
293, 318, 325 industrial laboratories, 185
360 Index
industrial relations, 15, 121, 149, 174, loyalty, 36, 61f., 159, 246, 253
218, 282 Luther, 123
industrialism, 19 lying, 158f.
inferiority complex, 51
inner-group moralities, 39 Machiavelli, 45, 123–125, 249, 259,
International Labour Organisation, 279, 311, 314, 327, 334
218 Machiavellian personalities, 73
intuitionism, 21, 69, 75–77, 87 Machiavellianism, 72
invasion of privacy, 45 MacIntyre, 11, 124, 235, 243, 251,
Isaiah Berlin, 120 259, 261, 265, 276, 280, 288, 294,
300, 307, 334
Jack Welsh, 142 MADD, 59, 145, 182, 254
job descriptions, 103, 200, 230 managerial capitalism, 15
job design, 218, 232, 293 managerial prerogative, 231, 250
job satisfaction, 98, 140, 146 Managerialism, 5, 14–16, 29, 50,
John Austin, 127, 131, 276 85–88, 154, 180–185, 191–195,
John Wayne, 68 211, 223–229, 233, 235, 242,
Justice As Fairness, 119 261–267, 278, 291, 294, 312–318,
322, 330, 333
Kansas City policemen, 65 Marcuse, 42, 62, 115, 154, 240–256,
Kaplan & Norton, 67, 139, 165, 192, 266, 273–280, 285–289, 292, 296,
239, 241, 255, 282, 291, 302 300, 334, 335
killing is wrong, 28, 29 Marquis de Sade, 39, 40, 247
kindergartens, 154 Marx, 2, 42, 118, 121, 129, 178, 180,
kinship, 39 228, 235, 247f., 278, 282, 293,
Korsgaard, 41, 124, 164, 170, 171, 296, 298, 302, 313, 327, 329, 336,
199, 245, 291, 294, 331 346, 352
KPIs, 18, 30, 101–103, 169, 177, 185, Maslow, 47, 251, 353
190–192, 205, 208, 230, 269, 341 mass media, 53, 57, 154, 206, 211,
Kropotkin, 40, 215, 237, 245, 263, 239, 246, 288, 300
298, 331 mass-consumerism, 136, 213
mathematics, 210
lab testing, 188 Max Weber, 32, 122, 253, 335
labour laws, 11, 27, 164, 218, 221 McDonald’s, 2, 180
labour markets, 16, 196, 219 McGregor, 1, 9, 17, 44, 47, 53, 57, 71,
labourer, 178 77, 86, 191, 214, 222, 227, 237f.,
leadership, 50, 62, 72, 84–87, 158, 240, 248, 255, 259–262, 301, 318,
219, 222 336
Leopold, 190, 295, 332 medicine, 62, 210
lesbian workers, 109 memorandums, 117
Levinas, 39, 40, 107–109, 265–267, 333 Me-Myself-&-I, 101
liberal capitalism, 212, 213, 242 merit pay, 70, 269
liberal ethics, 122, 128 meta-ethics, 3
liberation, 26, 67f., 196, 202 Michel Foucault, 4, 131, 320
liberty, 81, 120–122, 141, 287, 291 migrant workers, 109
lion-dilemma, 9, 210 Milgram’s philosophy, 46
live cooperatively, 9 Mill, 22, 104–108, 138f., 145–147,
Locke, 38, 40, 88, 120–122, 128, 141, 152–159, 247, 265, 268, 275,
215, 237f., 242–247, 276, 333 281–284, 337
Index 361
minimum wage, 151, 228 old boys network, 5

modern society, 5 open door policy, 2
monetary gains, 10 operations management, 1, 168, 218
money and power code, 29, 53, 94, Organisation Men, 55, 57, 106, 270,
105f., 152 292, 293
monitoring, 117, 150, 290 organisational communication, 57
Moore, 2, 22, 138, 157–159, 247, 265, organisational culture, 5, 54–57, 62,
287, 293, 297, 307, 335, 338 268, 269
moral behaviour, 2, 5f., 9, 11, 40, 43, Organisational happiness, 98
49, 52, 75, 229, 235 organisational honour, 135, 137
moral codes, 1, 2, 4, 10, 40, 91, 131, organisational performance, 92f., 108,
210, 211 139–148, 151, 156f., 166, 197,
moral consciousness, 7, 8, 145, 188 202, 268, 280, 283
moral duties, 22, 41, 162, 189, 292 organisational power, 4, 122f., 141,
moral egoism, 39, 40, 43, 68–75, 90, 146, 169
222, 224 organisational privilege, 125, 250
moral hypocrisy, 87 organisational selfishness, 4
Moral Maze, 46, 106, 148, 157, 159, Orwellian Newspeak, 30, 62, 110,
170, 177 128, 205
moral rules, 6, 27, 37–41, 119, 226, overseer’s whip, 49, 212
246 overtime, 118
moral thinking, 6
moral vacuum, 23 panoptical surveillance, 25
morality of animals, 9, 208 Paris Hilton, 135
Morally Decent HR, 148, 163, 334 Pascal, 41, 247, 341
motivational purpose, 71 payoffs, 24, 25
Mumford, 66f., 258–290, 338 peasants, 3, 52, 211, 227
Mutual Aid, 40, 331 penal systems, 25
pension fund, 192
narcissism, 25, 50, 70, 134, 246 perception management, 135
Narcissistic Process, 103, 347 performance assessments, 45
Native Americans, 37 performance related pay, 9, 47, 68,
Nazi death-machinery, 33 103, 139, 214, 222, 226
Nazi Germany, 66, 265 personnel management, 13, 19, 44,
Nazi war machine, 33 132, 152, 156, 168, 178, 206,
negative liberties, 162 212–231, 264
Nestlé, 2 personnel managers, 15
networks, 58, 105, 194, 269, 287 piece-rate, 214
new animists, 22, 195, 209, 294 Pinochet, 66
NGOs, 73, 86 Pinto, 140, 141
Nietzschean, 2, 249, 259 Pittacus, 40
nihilism, 39 Plato, 40, 91, 94, 112, 241, 248,
No Harm Principle, 37, 132, 140 266–277, 296
non-intuitionist morality, 76 pluralism, 62, 122
Nozick, 41, 237, 243, 289, 340, 346 Pogge, 42, 276, 286, 292f., 301, 311, 342
Nussbaum, 41, 94, 280f., 340 policy portfolios, 5
positive reinforcement, 48
officialdom, 5, 53 positivism, 15, 21, 35, 37, 40–43, 47,
OHS-laws, 9 127, 131, 195, 273–276
362 Index
PR announcements, 164 Searle, 35, 230f., 251, 263, 347

precarious work, 15 secret pay check, 149
PR-firms, 228 self-appraisal, 133
prisoner dilemma, 32–34, 64, 75, 89, selfish cravings, 26
262 semi-starved rat, 16f., 46, 75, 250
productivity, 12, 102, 140, 186, 213, Semler, 174, 347
243 sentient beings, 22, 197f., 294
promotability, 133, 158 Seven Management Moralities, 1, 330
promotions, 10, 138, 144, 166, 192, shallow ecology, 191, 192
253 shareholder values, 73, 89, 96, 175
Protagoras, 40, 42, 101f., 189 Sidgwick, 138, 143–148, 159, 238,
psychologists, 7, 210, 214 247, 282f., 348
psychopathic monsters, 66 Simulacra and Simulation, 105, 306
Singer’s ethics, 207f.
rationality of irrationality, 33, 63 Skinner, 16, 46–49, 71, 214, 240, 250,
recruitment and selection, 1, 19, 45, 262, 297, 312, 332, 349
84, 107, 149, 222, 231, 255, 262 slave labour, 33, 48
Regan, 198, 296, 300, 305, 343 slave-morality, 39
remuneration, 1, 19, 67–72, 143–149, social ecology, 22, 201–209, 294
178, 193, 218, 222, 232, 262 Socrates, 40, 85, 91–95, 107, 112,
Retreat from Commonsense, 146, 261 145f., 236, 245f., 271, 275, 281f.,
retrenchment, 109, 140, 147 290f., 300, 353
rhetorical trickery, 173 Sophie’s Choice, 63f., 89, 351
Ricardo, 120f. Sophist philosophers, 73
Right to Manage, 81, 324 sovereignty, 123f., 277
River Rouge, 63 SS men, 65, 255
Robinson Crusoe, 8, 74, 211, 237, stakeholder concepts, 11
262, 315 status-quo, 32
ROI, 73, 192, 296 stewardship, 62
Rolston, 190f., 294f., 344 Stoic View of Life, 79
Ronald Dworkin, 122 strong-vs.-weak, 87
Rosenfeld, 135, 264, 345 sub-humans, 33
Rousseau, 37, 40, 42, 141, 238, subjectivism, 21, 25, 40, 69, 75–77,
257–260, 275f., 282, 292, 295, 87, 90
345 suffering, 18, 60f., 99, 188, 208, 230,
rule-books, 117 252, 256f., 284, 294–300
rule-creator, 116 Superman, 72
rule-obeying, 178 sustainability meetings, 12
ruler and ruled, 177 sweatshops, 16, 99, 157, 253, 282
Swine-Principle, 145
sadists, 53 system integration, 132
Salle du Manège, 44
Sand County Almanac, 190 tabloid-TV, 137
Satanic Mills, 13, 44, 86, 132, 178, take-it-or-leave-it, 78
211, 223, 292, 309 takeovers, 80
Saussure, 12 Talcott Parsons, 129
Schwarzenegger, 68 talent inventory, 97
Schweitzer, 22, 198, 209, 294, 297, Talent Myth, 135, 322
347 Talmudic-Jewish, 28
Index 363
taxi-driver, 172 trade unions, 11, 15f., 24, 51, 61, 79,
Taylor, 18, 24f., 110, 151–155, 168, 82, 85–89, 102–110, 138, 149,
180, 207, 213, 227, 240–247, 275, 155, 158, 164, 173, 175, 214,
285–290, 296, 299, 302, 343, 351 218, 221, 227, 264, 268, 269,
Taylorism, 151, 213f., 280 271, 288
tell the truth, 169–171 training videos, 117
terror, 10, 24f., 45, 78, 167 trust nobody, 80
textbook view, 21 truth-telling, 170
The Real Bottom Line, 77, 149, 175, TV-advertisements, 66
181f., 284
Theory X, 44, 47, 53, 57, 75, 77, 214, underlings, 16, 44, 48, 86, 100, 111,
222, 237f., 308 118f., 123, 127, 135, 178, 203,
theory Y, 80, 227 226, 232
three-strike-rule, 118 unfair dismissal, 27
TINA model, 89 Unilever, 2
top-down division, 25 unionism, 73, 283
top-management, 24, 27, 51, 98, 135, United Nations, 11, 287
206, 226
torture, 66, 188, 189 value for money, 100
Totally Administered Society, 131 Villa Grimaldi, 66
Townley, 19, 268, 283, 335 violence, 10, 45, 50, 77, 133, 167,
trade union, 157, 164, 170, 213f., 274 244–246, 251, 255, 272

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Seven Moralities of Human Resource Management

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1. Personnel management--Moral and ethical aspects. 2. Business ethics.

Belinda Kwomo was a child’s name that came up on http://www.

List of Figures and Tables ix

Prologue: The Seven Moralities of Human Resource Management 1

Introduction: Human Resource Management and Seven Moral 23

Chapter 2 Morality 2: Performance Management and Rewards 69

Chapter 3 Morality 3: Organisational Culture and Workplace 91

Chapter 4 Morality 4: The Legal Context, Fairness, and Equality 114

Chapter 5 Morality 5: HRM and Utilitarianism 138

Chapter 6 Morality 6: HRM and Universalism 161

Chapter 7 Morality 7: Sustainability and the Natural 185

Chapter 8 Conclusion: Seven Moralities of HRM Examining 210

P.1 From punishing HRM to holistic HRM 10

P.1 Seven stages of morality: General moral orientations 8

My thanks go to those who have, in one way or another, assisted me in

Seven Moralities of Human Resource Management moves the key contours

throughout human history and, as it still appears today, remains virtu-

Kohlberg and the seven levels of morality

The concept of morality put forward by American ethicist, philo-

ascending, all-inclusive, and irreversible. Most importantly, however,

and they do not view an organisation as a moral unit either. Instead,

2011:343). However, HRM’s move from informal to formal approaches

The ascendancy of the seven moralities of human resource

movement cannot be seen as jumping from one box to another. These

Table P.1 Seven stages of morality: General moral orientations

Stage HRM’s Basic Orientations Identiﬁer

0 Impulsive and amoral Baby & Newborn

oneself and morality, and to be able to have ethical reﬂections, indi-

spectrum, the change from punishment regimes towards individual

3 Organisational & Society

Figure P.1 From punishing HRM to holistic HRM

social-organisational settings (school and work), local cultures, local

goals. Instead, HRM’s morality is developed inside organisational set-

animal life and the natural environment in general in a morally

• ‘sustaining a competitive advantage’ (Jackson et al. 2012:11);

The linguistic and perhaps even ideologically driven misappropriation

Human resource management and seven moralities

Historically, those who engaged in a discussion on morality have posi-

participated in philosophical debates on morality (Dale 2012:23).

manage and to issue directives via HR policies (Schwind et al.

presented in standard HRM textbooks and framed as ‘high-commit-

outcome of a collaborative effort of all three actors under consultative

what a fascinating thing! Total control of a living organism… The

In HRM terms, control through semi-starved-rat-behaviourism is

In line with a denigrating ideology, HRM thinks it only needs to engineer

as moral beings in a moral community can be found in standard HRM

a) in the organisational reality of HRM in which HR ‘managers as

In this book, the purpose is that of (b) when examining HRM in

in business schools.70 Most HRM textbooks like to present a coherent

Quite commonly, HRM is often perceived as having four core areas –

Table P.2 Seven countries and seven current HRM textbooks

No. Country Textbook Chapters Pages

1 Australia Kramar, R., Bartram, T. & De Cieri, H. 18 722

This avoids a narrowing down to ‘introductory texts’ and to ‘cross-

signiﬁcant overarching commonalities are found in virtually all HRM

utilitarianism’s key dictum of ‘the happiness principle’. This chapter

Table I.1 Seven moralities and HRM’s motives

Stage Moral Motives

1 People act irrationally out of fear of being punished by HRM

no longer capable of viewing himself as acting out of his own purpose.