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J Bus Ethics (2012) 111:85–96 DOI 10.1007/s10551-012-1440-1 Human Resource Management in a Compartmentalized World: Whither Moral Agency? Tracy Wilcox Received: 1 July 2011 / Accepted: 28 July 2012 / Published online: 21 August 2012 (cid:2) Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012 Abstract This article examines the potential for moral agency in human resource management practice. It draws on an ethnographic study of human resource managers in a global organization to provide a theorized account of sit- uated moral agency. This account suggests that within contemporary organizations, institutional structures—par- ticularly the structures of Anglo-American market capi- talism—threaten and constrain the capacity of HR managers to exercise moral agency and hence engage in ethical behaviour. The contextualized explanation of HR management action directly addresses the question of whether HRM is inherently unethical. The discussion draws on MacIntyre’s (Philosophy 74:311–329, 1999, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, Duckworth, 2000) conceptualization of moral agency within contemporary social structures. In practice, HR managers embody roles that may not be wholly compartmentalized. Alternative institutional structures can provide HR managers with a vocabulary of motives for people-centred HRM and widen the scope for the exercising of moral agency, when enacted within reflective relational spaces that provide milieus for critical questioning of logics and values. This article aims to contribute to and extend debate on whether HRM can ever be ethical, and provide a means of reconnecting business ethics with longstanding concerns in critical management studies. Keywords Moral agency (cid:2) Relational sociology (cid:2) Institutional theory (cid:2) Relational spaces (cid:2) Human resource management Introduction The following conversation took place between two human resource managers in a global corporation…1: Louise, HR manager: [Senior executives] still do deals and cut conditions while we do the warm and fluffies. Frank, HR manager: We’re driven by market opportun- ism, takeovers. Louise: There’s a lot of crap. On one hand we’re screwing people on the [collective agreement]. Frank: Except when the CEO turns up and says, ‘We’re gonna sack you in a month’. Then people become important. Can human resource management ever be ethical? The extent to which individual HR managers can and do engage in ethical practice within global business organizations is a question of increasing concern as these organizations expand in power and reach. Human resource management decisions have, as Margolis et al. (2007, p. 237) note, ‘‘the potential to change, shape, redirect and fundamentally alter the course of other people’s lives’’, for better or for worse. This important aspect of human resource management distinguishes it from many other areas of management practice. For this reason human resource managers have, at least ostensibly, a ‘special professional responsibility’ for the well-being of employees (Kochan 2004, p. 133). Yet, in spite of numerous calls for ‘ethical HRM’, we have seen little evidence that HR managers take this responsibility seriously, and much evidence to the contrary (Bolton and Houlihan 2007; Wilcox and Lowry 2000; Woodall and Winstanley 2000). T. Wilcox (&) School of Management, Australian School of Business, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia e-mail: [email protected] 1 Extract from field notes. 123