16 INTRODUCTION
dignity of those harmed by the action; and Standard # 3, sustain the moral
sensibility of those executing morally ambiguous tasks.
The three standards proposed are intended to stimulate greater awareness
of ethical challenges in HRM and present principles for guiding action. The
authors propose that structuring jobs and tasks to foster interpersonal inter-
action can have a positive impact on managers’ perceptions, feelings, and
behaviours. In addition, enabling managers to identify themselves as helpers
rather than just messengers or dispensers of tasks may facilitate prosocial
behaviour directed towards the parties affected. In essence, the aim of the
ethical standards is to promote due consideration of organizational objectives,
increase the dignity of harmed parties, and develop the managers performing
the tasks of HRM.
Chapter 15 by Ken Kamoche (Strategy, knowledge, appropriation, and
ethics in HRM) seeks to extend existing debates within HRM by engaging in a
more thorough inquiry into the management of innovation and appropriation
of value generated by HR. The chapter investigates the problematic nature of
the appropriation of knowledge by organizations and questions the adequacy
and ethicality of recent formulations of the resource-based view (RBV). The
RBV portrays HR as one of several assets contributing to the achievement of
competitive strategies. It has played its part in raising the status of the HR
function as a significant player in nurturing and delivering economic value
from HR. However, one of the limitations of the RBV is that it reaffirms
an exclusive view of labour as a factor of production at the disposal of the
organization.
Kamoche discusses the utilization and appropriation of valuable resources
explaining how they have been central questions in studies on human capital
and knowledge management. Close attention has been paid by researchers
to the difficulties surrounding tacit knowledge and some have recommended
the articulation and codification of tacit knowledge to reduce organizations’
dependency on particular individuals and select groups, although this often
creates problems arising from the involuntary transfer of knowledge. In gen-
eral, managers recognize the need to protect valuable knowledge resources and
have often sought to retain them to the primary benefit of the organization
through protective mechanisms such as patents, copyrights, secrecy, and iso-
lationism.
Kamoche proposes that while governance structures and protective mecha-
nisms can help organizations to minimize unwanted occurrences of inter-firm
transfer of knowledge, they remain insufficient for understanding the roles
individuals play in knowledge creation and diffusion, and also offer inade-
quate support for the ethical treatment of productive employees. He reflects
that appropriation regimes influence individuals in a wide variety of ways
extending beyond the significance of organization structure and hierarchy into
areas of personal identity, individual motivation, and work commitment. For