276 PROGRESSING HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
The efficacy of Agnes Heller’s moral theory to
HR managers
While I believe Heller provides an effective response to contemporary philo-
sophical debates I also think that in the realm of applied ethics one must go
beyond the philosophically robust to questions about the ‘defendability’ of
an approach in everyday life. So is Heller’s approach likely to be of use to
HR managers who want to be decent and who wish to defend or advocate
a moral approach? This is an important question for anyone seeking to help
HR managers because, as indicated earlier, the HR managers I interviewed
suggest that many HR managers rely on influence rather than formal authority
when trying to ensure moral decision-making by others. They must persuade,
defend, and justify rather than insist, order, and demand.
My interviews also suggest that many HR managers seek to justify good
ethics by linking it to increased economic performance. While such appeals
seem very politic, I worry about their sincerity and vulnerability. The impres-
sion I get from some HR managers is that they believe a positive link between
being decent and high performance is not provable but nevertheless use it as
an argument because they are committed to the pursuit of decency. The idea of
promoting ethics using a possibly dishonest argument is problematic. Also of
concern is the vulnerability of the argument. I can envisage a situation where
HR managers are called to account on this claim—‘You say good ethics is
good for business. Prove it!’ It may be the case that in some circumstances the
claim can be substantiated, but I would be hesitant to universalize it. I suggest
therefore that HR managers need to offer other justifications. My question is,
can Heller provide some; is her approach to grounding ethics likely to be of
use to HR managers? The answer I think is ‘yes’ for several reasons.
First, the basis on which Heller’s moral philosophy rests is not a deduction
from a posited fact of human nature, transcendental reasoning or a hypo-
thetical discussion behind a veil of ignorance, nor is it an ideal speech act.
Rather, it rests on reflections on the lives and discussions of people who live
in modern societies. That is, her moral guidelines are not derived from or
justified by abstractions distant from HR managers’ everyday lives, rather they
rest in the actions of people in their own societies. They are guidelines HR
managers can justify by simply saying, ‘This is what the decent person does
in our society today.’ They do not have to take themselves or their listener to
positions unencumbered by community in order to prove that the guidelines
are built on a solid base. The grounding is useful to HR managers because it is
one they can easily understand and to which they can readily point to.
This is a real advantage. As I describe in Macklin (1999), according to the
HR managers interviewed a real difficulty they face is getting other managers
to do the right thing. Justifying to other managers that they should follow