Why HRM Is an Absolute Violation of Kantian Ethics - Example

TREATS PEOPLE AS MEANS HRM Treats People as Means but not as ends Kantian ethics Customer Inserts His/Her Name Customer Inserts Grade Course Customer Inserts Tutor’s Name 03, 05, 2011 Human resource management is actually the effective management of people to achieve organizational goals in which the word management implies use. Therefore it is the productive use of people in achieving the organization’s strategic business objectives and the satisfaction of individual employee needs (Greenwood 2002). The first objective of human resource management is to enhance the objective of the organization by executing tasks in place so that some advance is achieved as per the objective that calls the employees action. The second objective is to enhance the dignity of those harmed by the action because the distribution of opportunities and benefits leaves out some employees or they receive fewer than others and therefore are harmed. The third and the concern of this paper is the human resource manager’s objective to sustain the moral sensibility of those executing morally ambiguous tasks like announcing poor performance appraisal, announce the layoff among others whose ambivalence reflects an underlying uneasiness about fair treatment and fair outcomes, and managers ought to remain attuned to that uneasiness (Mangolis et al. 2005, p. 240). This is actually the leading assumption of the human resource management. In other words human resource management implicitly encases the use of human beings just like it would other non human resources and this is where it opens Pandora’s box because it violates ethical proscriptions against using people as objects. Moreover to call a person a resource is already threatening to step in morass because it already legitimizes classification of human beings with other office furniture, computers or some field tractors in the farming land (Winstanley & Woodall 2000). This paper is going to examine the reasons as to why human resource management is an absolute violation of Kantian ethics that human beings should not be treated as means to an end but as end in itself (Kramar & Cieri 2011). This is because human resource management in its true definition, nature and scope implies unethical paradigm and discourse. Immanuel Kant is a well known philosopher who is responsible for his moral view of the unique capacity for rationality and held that no other animal possesses such propensity for reasoned thought and action and he posited that this ability enables man to act according to the moral law (Winstanley & Woodall 1996). In his critique of pure reason he contemplated two aspects of natural law in which he enumerated the physical law as reflected in the beauty of the skies, and the moral law that inheres in man and his actions and for this case we are concerned at the latter in trying to analyze the human resource management. This moral law is manifest in the moral beauty of an upright and virtuous life which men strive to live. In the hierarchy of human life and values the moral beauty is paramount because this is where the true worth of man lies. Therefore Immanuel Kant held that the dignity of mankind which resulted from his gift of reason and freewill and thus man is the master of his actions as well as his own life and destiny. He therefore held that man is the end to which all other things are ordered to serve and therefore man should not in any way interchange this role with the created things to act as means. This argument is based by Kant in the reasoning that men propose, pursue and promote different ends and aims in the exercise of their free choice and therefore they provide different ways and means for the attainment of such ends but in no way and by no means should a person be used or exploited against his will as a means to further the selfish ends of any other person or a group of persons (Cooper 1996). Men are gifted with the same basic rights and therefore they should embrace a lifestyle that treats each other as equals even when the society acknowledges the differences among individuals. As a matter of fact the human resource management does not treat people as equals elements as it is the case in the process of production because some people are paid more than others and others work more than others (Schneider et al. 2003). In rewarding there are classifications where some are termed winners and others are losers who are punished by being denied a chance to enjoy some privileges. Moreover, managers usually make some decisions which reward others with raised salaries, status and responsibilities and leave others to wonder about their future and potential (Kramar & Cieri 2011). Management is in its true sense the process of planning, organizing and directing as well as controlling organizational resources in order to achieve personal organizational and social goals in an effective and efficient way. This definition implies therefore use of organizational resources which includes human resource as a means to achieve some resultant end without compromising individual, organizational or social goals and there must be equilibrium among these factors. However human resource management has always encompassed and implied that the so called human resource or people can be deployed to achieve some ends. How then are people organized and what does it mean? Organization is composed of economic and social human elements and it usually operates in legal framework and in this case there is no need for human elements being compromised for the economic element in human resource management. Human management entails a process of planning, organizing, directing and controlling of procurement , which includes recruitment and selection, development which entails training, compensation in terms of salary, maintenance, appraisal and separation of employees or human resource of any organization in order to achieve personal organizational and social goals with efficiency and effectiveness (Schneider et al. 2003). Ethics is a set of moral principles norms and standards of conduct governing an individual or a group on how to act and lead ones life. Ethical challenges are encountered in human resource management each day while managers execute and communicate human resource decisions and over all managers have the potential to change, shape, and redirect and fundamentally alter the course of other people’s lives. Deciding on the fate of others include hiring decisions that may include rewarding selected applicants with salaries, benefits, knowledge and skill and leaving out others without these benefits just the way he or she would select which computers are to be deployed in a certain exercise. Just like they would lay off machinery, mangers lay off employees with an aim of improving corporate performance and this harms the targeted individuals thus undermining commitment and energy of the survivors (Kramar & Cieri 2011). This is where human resource put the corporate interests at the fore and takes man as just a means towards accomplishing its goals. The practice ignores all human values and differences for example when managers complete performance appraisals and deliver performance feedback, they may inspire one employee and devastate another but fail to know that for each human resource practice there are losers and winners. Managers in any organization therefore engage in actions that not only harm people but undermine humanity by coercing people to perform certain tasks for an intended end and whose failure leads to a threatened welfare and dignity of the person (Margolis et al.2005, p.238). Human resource management also becomes unethical when managers are called on to inflict harm to a person without weighing out the trade off between harming one person and advancing the interests of others which separates human beings in a way that some are more human than others. All these undertakings are done in the name of organizations objectives and at this point we would be forced to conclude that although ethics establish man as the superior end, that all things should work for the good of this ultimate end, in HRM organizational objectives come at a cost to human beings because the capacity of organization to function inheres in its practices that differentiate people and harm others while rewarding some (Kramar & Cieri 2011). In doing this separation and organizing people in the goal of fulfilling organizations objectives, human being is not the priority but a means to attaining the organization’s objectives just like any other resource established by the organization such as computers, photocopying machines, furniture, vehicles et cetera. There are two models of human resource management which are mostly adopted today and these are soft and hard versions. Guest (1987) and Storey (1992) believed that the distinction between the two versions is the emphasis each has on either human or resource. The Hard approach to HRM emphasizes on an employee as a commodity or a resource -being as much a resource as is land, capital etc. randomly to be treated better incase of a short supply or incase of playing a central role in achieving the organization’s goals. Methods of implementation can vary depending on a calculative and quantitative approach in a rational manner (Ouchi 1981). Thus it is a way of regarding people as human capital whose development returns more gains and it emphasizes employee being resourceful as against being just a resource (Ouchi 1981). The soft model considers increased satisfaction as the only way to go about in the management as against the various calculated methods that can be used in the hard model. The hard version is also called theory x which is based on notions of right strategy, a classical managerial distrust approach. The approach has it that people are lazy by nature and only pursuing self interest and this means there are two opposing interests: those of its workers and those of the company (Storey 1985). They assume that just like any other resource people can not be productive until they are manipulated to do so. It therefore stresses the qualitative, calculative and business strategic aspects of managing the head count resource in as rational as any other factor of production (Storey 1992, p. 29). The focus of this strategy is in the importance of strategic fit where human resource policies and practices are closely linked to the strategic objectives of the organization in what can be classified as external fit while at the same time are coherent among themselves or internal fit (Handray and Pettigrew 1986). The ultimate aim of this management version is increased competitive advantage to the organization and not to the individual (Greenwood 2002). The control that emanates from this strategy is more concerned with performance systems performance management and tight control over individual activities with the ultimate goal of ensuring that the organization maximizes on competitive ground (Guest 1995). The management is endowed with the task of influencing appropriate behavior and conduct in the workplace to ensure that worker’s actions accomplish the company’s goals and this is done through correctives and coercions (Schneider et al. 2003). When argued from the Kantian ethics the hard version of management does not exactly reflect the human nature but the company’s nature. Theory Y is the opposite approach which instead of thinking of people as lazy machines they deal with their emotions, feelings and motivations. The approach views work as way of attaining people’s desire to have personal realization because people always will want things well done (Weiss 2009). That is why managers will do all what it takes to motivate employees because it is not true that people hate working and can be self responsible. Therefore the soft version of management does not employ coercion to employees. Although compensation is still essential and needed according to the soft version this is not only possible using money but implicit compensations are very importance. Under the soft approaches there is an assumption that if people are treated as required by the circumstances they will seek more responsibility instead of rejecting them and as a result the organization will have higher turn over because the resources will be productive (Guest et al. 2003). The individuals can be creative and proactive according to the soft approach and these are the values that firms or organizations must uphold to ensure human resource commitment. Theory y therefore integrates the personal objectives with the corporation’s and thus both hard and soft strategies do not by themselves reflect reality. The soft version is associated with the human relations movement, the utilization of individual’s talents concentrates on individual development as well as humanism. It has been linked to the high commitment work system (Walton 1985) whose goal is to elicit commitment so that behavior is basically self regulated rather than controlled by sanctions and pressure that come from outside the individual. The relation within the organization therefore is based on the trust build with the goals of flexibility and adaptability (Wood 1996, p. 41). There is no evidence however that committed workers are more productive than closely controlled ones. Most of the companies employ the soft approach that regards employees as a source of creative energy and participants in the workplace decision making while others go by hard version that focuses on control and emphasizes philosophy, culture and consensus (Ouchi 1981). However none of the two approaches ensure ethical behavior because while sustainable success requires a humanely treated and satisfied workforce, either of the two versions has got some instances and an end which is no the employees. Furthermore, although the rhetoric of human resource management is that they use the soft copy, the reality is that the hard strategy approach that gives priority to the interest or the organization takes the lead (Truss et al. 1997, p. 70). Most organizations deploy both the approaches with the maxim “that people are our most important assets” (Truss et al. 1997, p. 70). In the human resource management the areas of ethics covers the human rights, civil and employment rights and social and organization justice. There are terms in the human resource management like exploitation, manipulation responsibility, empowerment, job satisfaction at cetera. Immanuel Kant in his moral philosophy held that, human beings are never to be treated as means to an end but should be treated as the ends. Human resource management is aimed at managing human beings just like equipments, tools or objects. By assuming that human resource can be managed or used it means that they are being manipulated to some required end. That means that human resource management uses man as a means to an end of attaining organization’s goals. In addition ethics involve ensuring that all human being are treated and treat others as equals whereas human resource management do place people at different levels where some are termed subordinates while others are seniors and this compromises the ethics in Kantian argument. Although the human resource management operates in two distinct approaches the hard and soft ones, the rhetoric those organizations deploy soft approach, which values humanity not as resources but as superior entities, this is not always the case. With many organizations valuing their goals more than the employees, they see employees as means of production and as assets and resources which when not well managed they will compromise organization’s goals. The Kantian ethics do not at one time agree that human beings are supposed to be used as machines or equipment and this is where human resource management can be said to be unethical because it is concerned with exploiting the potentiality in men and women in the process of production. The strategy uses either the soft approach where they compel the human through appealing and posing as being humane but the end goal is to ensure that employee cooperate to be fully exploited and deployed as means of production. The hard approach on the other hard is rooted on using coercive methods and seeing employees as just objects which should be controlled, directed, supervised and coerced by legislation to do what the organization has intended them to do. Immanuel Kant was very categorical in noting that human beings are the ultimate end upon which any other created thing should serve to fulfill but organizations under human resource management have assumes the role of the person recognized by law as individuals which can direct a person to act in a certain way so as to attain the organization’s goals. References Cooper, D E 1996, World Philosophies and Historical Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Greenwood, R 2002, Ethics and HRM: A Review and Conceptual Analysis, Journal of Business Ethics, vol.36, pp.261-273. Guest, D 19987, ‘Human Resource Management and Individual Relation’ Journal of Management Studies, vol. 24, no. 5, pp.503-521. Guest, D et al. 2003, 'Human Resource Management and Corporate Performance in the UK', British Journal of Industrial Relations, vol.41, no.2: pp.291–314. 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