116 SITUATING HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
appropriate manner, then this means that some of the issues raised in business
ethics discussions are not just matters for the individual concerned but for the
organization as a whole. This does not eliminate the need for business ethics,
or for individual ethical action, but simply shifts the focus somewhat.
Conclusion
Milton Friedman once (in)famously suggested that the responsibility of busi-
ness is to its shareholders and thus consists of nothing more than the oblig-
ation to return a profit (Friedman 1970). But business manifestly has many
responsibilities beyond Friedman’s minimalist characterization. One of its
most important areas of responsibility is towards its employees. Conversely
(although to a lesser extent given the diminished capacity for harm), there are
responsibilities incumbent on employees themselves towards their employers.
What are these responsibilities? I have not tried to provide the precise details
in concrete form. Instead I have explored the morally salient features of work
in a market economy that give rise to what I have labelled moral hazards. On
my approach, the market is not—to avail myself of a scholastic distinction—
acauseof immorality, but may well be anoccasionof such. This allows for
an ethics of work in a market whilst not leading to laissez-faire liberalism.
Further, I have focused on the morally hazardous conditions rather than on
those circumstances where an invisible hand is in play since one typically need
not provide lists of responsibilities where self-interest will provide an agent
with sufficient motivation. Subsequently, I noted in each case where a moral
hazard arose what responsibilities were entailed by such a hazard. The three
general responsibilities outlined were as follows:
- neither employers nor employees should treat each other as mere com-
modities; - the pursuit of profit or wages should always be constrained where appro-
priate by other regarding moral considerations; - the well-being of individuals in a work environment should not be under-
stood solely in economic terms (narrowly understood).
It is around these more general responsibilities that our more concrete rights
and responsibilities will coalesce. While the list of general responsibilities
might not be an exhaustive one, certainly it captures the main candidates.
They provide the general contours for any more detailed work that attempts
to develop an ethics of the workplace in the modern market economy and it
is within these contours that HRM must confine itself if it is to be a discipline
that is oriented in an ethically appropriate manner.