CONCLUSION 287Nevertheless, the limited contribution of contemporary HRM to the more
external aspects of ethical work and employment cannot be ignored. Even if
corporations have good business reasons to look after skilled and information
service workers, the disposability of casual and lesser skilled workers and the
increasingly weak bargaining power of such employees and contractors ren-
ders them vulnerable to the unjust and arbitrary exercise of power (see Legge
Chapter 2). This is an ethically important aspect of the context in which both
the moral risks and the moral potential of HRM must come under further
scrutiny.
The key elements for establishing institutionalized ethical HRM must be
directed to ensuring not simply that HR considerations are central to the
development of business strategies and core business decisions, but that these
considerations are framed in a way that identify and promote the ethical
potential of HRM. At the very least, this is unlikely to be achieved without
the authoritative presence at senior levels of management of HR managers
with a strong professional ethos backed by an influential professional orga-
nization and appropriate legal requirements for the monitoring, reporting,
and auditing of HRM within business organizations. The subordinated role
of HRM, as illustrated by the continuous demand to prove its contribution to
competitive advantage, combined with wide variation in the expertise of HRM
specialists are unlikely drivers of change. HRM lacks promise with respect to
either improving the internal business ethics that promote the legitimate goals
of business as a whole, such as a fair and open employment market, or accom-
modating the more external demands that employment should contribute to
the fulfilment of human potential for its own sake.
The contributors to this book are divided as to whether it is possible to
turn the situation around within the context of systems of HRM. Clearly, to
do so would involve a combination of factors, including a more profound
commitment to CSR that goes far beyond the relatively superficial public
relations exercise that are not untypical manifestations of CSR and a legal
framework that gives more explicit recognition to the particular moral claims
of employees. It would include monitoring and auditing going beyond areas of
occupational health and safety and equal opportunity, and incorporate more
oversight of such matters as training, dismissals, and redundancy conditions.
Admittedly, this form of meta-regulation will not achieve very much without
the appropriate ethical commitment and effective compliance programmes
within organizations to back it up. However, it does provide a basis for accord-
ing HRM greater status. It offers HRM specialists enhanced roles as instigators
and implementers of strategies that blend the legitimate economic and human
goals that we suggest should feature centrally in CSR norms. The upshot of this
would be more powerful HR departments with more clearly defined roles, and
strong representation at board level, operationalized with some consistency
across the corporate world through various techniques of meta-regulation. In