INTRODUCTION 11stakeholders’. The authors observe that the economic costs of this scenario
can be especially high and may not always be justified, but other approaches
present opportunity for moral hazard and expose the vulnerability of employ-
ees to unethical treatment.
Chapter 8 by Lynne Bennington (HR managers as ethics agents of the
state) focuses on the ethical duty of legal compliance in equal employment
opportunity (EEO) and affirmative action (AA). It observes that the amount
of common and statute law has increased over the last thirty years imposing
greater responsibilities and duties on employers and their respective HRM
teams. The situation is an especially challenging one for HR managers when,
at least in the USA, they have been excluded from legislated whistle-blowing
protection and are only advocates of EEO within strict boundaries. Benning-
ton argues that the state can expect little improvement in employer conduct
in areas such as EEO and AA until better protection is offered to employees
working within HRM aiming to ensure legal compliance.
With the onset of private sector styles of operation in the new public man-
agement, the public sector has lost its premier position as a role model for
sector adherence to EEO legislation. Consequently, controls over consistency,
fairness, and equity in personnel systems have become weakened. Employ-
ers adopt different perspectives ranging from hostility to support; external
recruitment consultants do not always adhere to EEO laws; and applicants
for jobs more often than not are in a weak position to identify or counteract
recruitment and selection practices that are unfairly discriminating. This has
tipped the balance towards a corporatist focus rather than, for example, an
employee-centred approach. A broad survey of legal protection of HRM man-
agers who seek to go down this path demonstrates little effective protection.
Chapter 9 by David Ardagh (The ethical basis for HRM professionalism
and codes of conduct) searches for an invigorated profession of HRM by
investigating the potential of combining Aristotelian ideas of virtue ethics with
current criteria for assessment of what constitutes an exemplary profession.
His purpose is to empower practitioners to uphold high ethical standards.
Members of an HRM profession, he argues, should be supported to the point
where they can be relied on to espouse strong moral values, possess integrity,
and demonstrate independence in the exercise of their professional responsi-
bilities and duties.
Ardagh contends that the Aristotelian idea of basing ethics on the develop-
ment of capacities and perfection through virtue continues to hold relevance
for people, including employees working in HRM. In this neo-Aristotelian
system of ethics, the ideal object is ‘well-being’, abstractly understood as living
and acting well—known as eudaimonia. Influenced by the neo-Aristotelian
conceptualization of ethics, Ardagh recommends professionalization of HRM
and granting it greater authority as steps towards forming a much stronger
corporate conscience. He discusses how a number of criteria for forming a