Ethnicity, Equality and Voice: The Ethics and Politics of Representation and Participation in Relation to Equality and Ethnicity

Abstract

The question of ethics and human resource management (HRM) has become the focus of much discussion (see, Pinnington et al.2007). There is a growing awareness that HRM-related topics need to be considered in terms which are not purely technical or organisational, but also ethical and political. The debate is broad and has attracted a range of views and perspectives. Early initiatives by Winstanley et al. (1996) have argued that ethical perspectives must be moved to the centre of the HRM agenda. They are vital for understanding the development of different perspectives and outcomes in relation to the way people are managed. Ethics is not solely the domain of an academic agenda attempting to impose some form of ‘good’ ethical framework from one perspective or another, but ethical issues and matters are themselves woven into the very strategic calculations and developments in the management of human resources. Ethics are of relevance to the practitioner, and they shape many discourses within HRM in terms of generic universal concerns with the notion of ‘good’ in economic terms, e.g. those emanating from religious legacies such as Catholic Papal declarations and Islamic views of the economy and regulated financial practices, as well as political concerns with the negative aspects of employment relations with capitalist contexts, and the corrosive effects of corruption on organisational commitment and conduct.A series of texts have therefore outlined a range of ethical approaches and how they explain the manner in which values and virtues are framed (Fisher and Lovell2003). Classical liberal economics, that view the importance of allowing the market to act freely so it improves the living conditions and standards of individuals, are normally contrasted with pluralist and institutionalist theories which emphasise the role of stakeholders in the firm and the importance of voice and participation. This issue of the stakeholder emerges as one of the main platforms for ensuring a more open and inclusive ethical agenda. This is mirrored in corporatist theories where the role of external agencies and the importance of regulation and long-term perspectives are privileged as corrective mechanisms for dealing with the negative features of the liberal market. In relation to HRM, Winstanley et al. (1996) have argued that ethics in the more ‘inclusive’ forms of HRM draw from—orshoulddraw from—(i) basic human, civil, and employment rights as in the case of job security and consultation, (ii) social and organisational justice approaches that stress procedural principles of distributive justice as in systems for pay setting and performance management, (iii) universalist views based on the Kantian principles that focus on treating each individual as an end in themselves and (iv) ‘community of purpose’ approaches “taking a stakeholder rather than purely a shareholder view of the firm’ as in cases of downsizing” (ibid: 5). In fact, Rawls’ (1971)Theory of Justicedraws heavily on Kantian ethics, focusing on the challenge of distributive justice as a central demand of justice as fairness.There are competing paradigms, but an emergent and dominant view has been one that focuses on the question ofstakeholdersandvoice. Within HRM, many observers remind us that voice and participation take many forms (Marchington and Wilkinson2005); yet, this diversity of approaches tends to be less salient in business ethics related discussions. “The only alternative model given any credence in the literature is the stakeholder model of the organisation. Under these circumstances, it would seem that research into HRM within a stakeholder model is a necessity” (Greenwood2002). These approaches, with their concern with the notion of the stakeholder, conform to particular visions of HRM which extol the question of voice, participation and dialogue (Kochan and Ostermann1994—see also Martinez Lucio and Connolly for a discussion in this volume). Implicitly, these views are grounded in the position of the stakeholder as a normative ethical concern in the management of organisations (Phillips and Freeman2003). That we need robust systems of regulation, welfare systems and formalized bodies of rights is central within such schools of thought, but the question of voice emerges as a dominant vector that runs through much of the more social and inclusive HRM debate on ethics (see Martinez Lucio2009).