Human Resource Management: Ethics and Employment

154 ANALYSING HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

Table 9.1.Examples of ingredient good ends and needs-satisfiers of well-being or
eudaimonia

• Meditation/
  contemplation
  of ‘highest’
  objects of the
  highest powers


• Knowledge of
  cause(s) of
  being, truth and
  goodness
  
  
  • Love, friendship
    intimacy ‘I
    thou’
    relationships
  
  
  • Making a free
    contribution to
    a person or
    project
    
    
    • Creativity
    
    
    • Aesthetic or
      cultural activity
      (art, music,
      drama, dance,
      literature, etc.
      not driven by
      social, profit,
      commerce
      concerns)
    
    
    • Good work
      
      
      • Information
      
      
      • Learning
      
      
      • Understanding
      
      
      • Philosophy
      
      
      • Science
      
      
      • Meaning in life
      
      
      • Freedom and
        identity; service
        
        
        • Sports
        
        
        • Eating well
        
        
        • Clean habitat
        
        
        • Law and order
        
        
        • Health
        
        
        
        
      
      
      
      
    
    
    
    
  
  
  
  

may arise through privation or lack of sustenance, or some sort of involuntary
disorder or because they occupy all their time pursuing goods that do not
accord with the marks listed above. We call ingredient goods ‘needs’ in this
normative sense because they are things that we all require if our common
human capacities are to function normally. We want to remedy defects and
disorders of capacity; attain goods without which we will suffer harm, includ-
ing social and psychological deprivation; and enhance our understanding. We
have consequent needs for such complex goods as security, shelter, food, pub-
lic health (physical); basic information and education, fair treatment, social
identity and recognition, culture (social); and autonomy (personal). Examples
of needs in this sense are set out in Table 9.1.

NAVE and the socio-political remit

Each individual pursues the good within a complex matrix of social and polit-
ical arrangements, which straddle the public, professional, and private sec-
tors. In Neo-Aristotelian teleological representations of the relations between
the individual and this broader social matrix, the human good ought to
be articulated and pursued through the application of ethics by practical
moral reason in a social and political context as shown in Figure 9.1. Public,
professional, and private sectors are distinguished by the goods they focus
upon; by reference to the breadth and nobility of their ends and purposes;
the scope and target of their delivery; their funding base; and the specific
mode and degree of moral necessity of their practice. Public sector decision-
making in regimes of modern ‘State-Welfare-Capitalist’ (SWC) democracy
(Shaw and Barry 2001: 149) ideally pursues opportunities for the achievement
of the common good. This means facilitating threshold-level attainment of the
co-operatively attainable common goods by all citizens. To do so requires SWC
governments to largely set the legal and other boundaries for professions,
businesses, and NGOs to operate within.