12 INTRODUCTION
profession are missing in contemporary HRM systems—mandatory training
process, self-licensing, exams/induction, monopoly control, a tradition of
practice, and an enforced code of ethics. In addition, there are a number
of other criteria which he outlines as necessary and desirable for creating
a rigorous HRM profession. These include a code of conduct specifying
altruistic duty to clients, a de-registering mechanism, mandatory continuing
education, fiduciary relationships, professional-like detachment, strong public
ethics relevance, the right to advocate within an institutionalized system, and
the expectation of potential clashes with as organizational policy.
Inevitably, such changes would require substantial change in social policy
and corporate law reform. Ardagh argues in favour of a social concessional
model of corporations and for increased corporate moral responsibility. To
educate HR professionals, he recommends an interdisciplinary social policy
and social economics curriculum, adopting an overt critical, justice-oriented
approach.
Chapter 10 by Michael Reed (Engineers of human souls, faceless tech-
nocrats or merchants of morality?) examines changing professional forms and
identities in Western countries following from more than ten years of neo-
liberal government policies. It seeks to draw attention to three possible eth-
ical futures for professionalism. The first phrase (engineers of human souls)
refers to a simplistic vision of return to the traditional professional values of
autonomy and ethical service. The second phrase (faceless technocrats) evokes
a managerialist and technological determinist future for the profession-
exhorting professionals to become thoroughly reconciled to serving the goals
of corporate capital, whereas the third (merchants of morality) is intended to
indicate an emergent role for the professions and professionals as purveyors
of trust during an age of public suspicion and corporate uncertainty.
Reed reflects on the fact that professionalization of the expert division
of labour was the dominant strategy for occupational closure over much of
the previous century. During the last three decades, however, a number of
crises have occurred within the Western traditional liberal professions and the
political economies of welfare states resulting in a somewhat more fragmented
collection of competing occupations.
Under such circumstances, he asks, ‘How is institutionalized trust, as the
structural cornerstone and cultural lodestone of professionalism, to be gen-
erated and sustained in an economic, social, and political environment dom-
inated by unregulated market competition, unrestrained consumerism, and
rampant individualism?’ His answer is a somewhat pessimistic one since he
sees little prospect of reestablishing the autonomy of professions, of their
public acceptance of skilled social engineers. Nevertheless, he sees a continuing
role for professions in providing theories, programmes, and control technolo-
gies operating simultaneously at the macro level of institutional governance
and at the micro-level of individual choice and subjectivity. In summary,