170 ANALYSING HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
being the conscience of the organization in that challenging private sector, but
without any ultimate area of authority within the decision-making process.
It will be necessary to define the four HRM management roles—system
and job design and recruitment, motivation and training, performance man-
agement, and cross-level conflict avoidance and resolution—in relation to a
more ethically informed conception of the organizational or corporate pur-
pose and of corporate governance. The conscience role of the HRM in the
organization could then be more plainly tied in to that structure. The fact that
HR practitioners are de facto the most important ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’
communicators and mediators between the organizational stakeholders could
be highlighted, within the emerging concessional and constitutional theory of
corporate governance, as a vitally important condition of good governance.
This being their role would even allow for a charge of professional negligence
or malpractice to stick. Post-Enron, major changes in corporate practice, law,
or structure are actively discussed across disciplines and might be accepted as
part of the drive to develop more accountability.
This may create a new space in which it will be possible to give HR prac-
titioners more autonomous discretion even within the business sector. Even
if we agree to sequester them from responsibility for making some kinds of
ultimate business decision currently reserved for boards and the CEO, we
could hold them to account for providing professional advice grounded in
the institutional ethics of their practice. The senior HR practitioners would
contribute to conscience within the leadership ‘intellect and will’ group of
the organization. This would place them at the top of the authority structure
with a professional ethical ‘voice’ which would at least be heard even if it was
outweighed.