HRM AND THE ETHICS OF COMMODIFIED WORK 115the two are potentially compatible. One can treat another as a means and
as an end at the same time. Thus, it is permissible to treat another person
as a commercial means so long as one does not treat him or her as a mere
means. But the achievement of such compatibility requires vigilance on the
part of HRM practitioners to ensure that when treating their workforce as
commercial resources, they do not allow their attitudes to be corroded, such
that the workforce becomes mere commercial resources.
Similar points can be mademutatis mutandiswith respect to the second
moral hazard regarding just profits. As we noted earlier, the orientation of
HRM is towards profits. Traditional radical critiques of profit and the profit
motive would have it that the commercial ends are necessarily exploitative.
Following this line of reasoning, the aim of HRM would be condemned on the
grounds that it is exploitative. However, the view outlined here, whilst critical
of exploitation, is not unsympathetic to the pursuit of profit in general nor
to it as a fundamental aim of HRM. Thus, it is morally permissible for HRM
to be oriented towards profit so long as it does not do so ‘lucrepathically’.
Profit can be a legitimate goal of HRM, so long that it is pursued with appro-
priate moral side-constraints on such endeavours. To be sure, this requires
further elaboration to provide concrete details of the content of the side-
constraints; nonetheless it provides some general guidelines which endorse
the permissibility of a profit-orientation without making it a ‘morally free fire
zone’.
Third, with respect to meaningful work the hazards outlined previously
(the toad god work: Sen’s capabilities approach and the idea of meaningful
work) are of direct relevance to HRM. HR managers are involved in many
activities that affect the extent to which work provides for a development of
our capacities. This has not gone unnoticed. In recent years many in the HRM
have explored the notion of ‘competency’ at work as a means of improving
competitiveness (Boxall and Purcell 2003: 78–82). Such an orientation in
HRM follows directly from the RBV. For instance, Hamel and Prahalad pro-
vide a list of core competencies that are required for a firm to out compete its
rivals (Hamel and Prahalad 1994: 217–28). Here the orientation is towards the
financial advantages that might accrue from developing competencies, rather
than, as was the case in the work of Sen, the idea that the development of our
capabilities is a fundamental right. However, these different orientations need
not be at odds. What is most important is that HRM takes seriously the view
that human progress not only involves an increase in material welfare, but
also involves the flourishing of our potential for sophisticated and challenging
work or, as Sen would have it, the development of our capabilities.
These three moral hazards then provide the contours against which an
ethical HRM must align itself. In urging that HRM take these considera-
tions into account, we are providing astructuralresponse to problems that
business ethics often lays at the feet of individuals. If it is the responsibility
of HR managers to ensure that work relations are undertaken in an ethically