ETHICAL BASIS FOR HRM PROFESSIONALISM 159accessibility of costly professional training on a personal capacity/social
cost basis. Permission to engage in the professional practice in the
relevant system is seen as correlative to the right and duty of the public
to receive the knowledge given in 1 above by a public grant of authority.
Code:App/Monop- Practitioners retire and die, taking their knowledge to the grave. The
education and training confers thesocial giftof the systematic body
of (usually)socially conserved knowledgetargeted towards attaining the
relevant ultimate human good, one to bepassed down(Latin,traditio).
With a new science the tradition begins from scratch. One is expected
to share the gift made possible by specialization, andinter-generational
succession planning.Code:Trad - Since a profession is a vocation, involving social trust and care of needs
with moral significance, not only a wealth creation device,acodeof
ethics and conductfor all individual practitioners is promulgated by
the licensing body for members. Koehn (1994) agrees that such codes
form the basis of an informal expectation and contract, but holds that
contract is posterior to thetrustworthiness of the professional pledge of
service reflected in the code.Contracts often betoken a lack of trust. The
intent of codes is to segregate professionals from commercial induce-
ments to corrupt practice, and from conflicts of interest eroding trust,
and bydelineating accountabilityto minimize the risks to them and
the professional group arising from malpractice. The rash of lawsuits
against professionals may indicate some waning of this ideal’s promi-
nence and enforcement. Code:EthCode
9(a). Codes of conduct, suspended from the code of ethics, specify certain
role-relative privileges or duties, for example of arms-bearing (mil-
itary/police) confidentiality (lawyers/doctors), or truthful disclosure
(accountants) within a context.Informed consentis often vital. Under
their restricted role-prerogatives, expertise must be applied either
under authority in rule-bound ways under strict conditions, or even-
handedly to all members within the client base,even to unsavoury
clientsat least if accepted as clients. The need must be met in a specific,
complex way, unlike the need for food or shelter. 9(b). Professionals
must maintaindisclosure or silence to select inquirers,often listed by
an authoritative body mediating the conducting of the contract or
grant of authority from the state to the client. 9(c). The rules and
subjects of such privilege of disclosure are crafted by and within the
system relative to a social need orthe patient’s or client’s welfare, not
that of the provider. 9(d). A grant of authority to practise is often
given (see criteria 4–6) following anoath of professional altruism,to