Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Graduate employability and the principle of potentiality: an aspect of the ethics of HRM
AU - Costea, Bogdan
AU - Amiridis, Kostas
AU - Crump, Norman
PY - 2012/11
Y1 - 2012/11
N2 - The recruitment of the next generation of workers is of central concern to contemporary HRM. This paper focuses on university campuses as a major site of this process, and particularly as a new domain in which HRM‟s ethical claims are configured, in which it sets and answers a range of ethical questions as it outlines the „ethos‟ of the ideal future worker. At the heart of this ethos lies what we call the „principle of potentiality‟. This principle is explored through a sample of graduate recruitment programmes from the Times Top 100Graduate Employers, interpreted as ethical exhortations in HRM‟s attempt to shape the character of future workers. The paper brings the work of Georg Simmel to the study of HRM‟s ethics and raises the uncomfortable question that, within discourses of endless potentiality, lie ethical dangers which bespeak an unrecognised „tragedy of culture‟. We argue that HRM fashions an ethos of work which de-recognises human limits, makes a false promise of absolute freedom, and thus becomes a tragic proposition for the individual.
AB - The recruitment of the next generation of workers is of central concern to contemporary HRM. This paper focuses on university campuses as a major site of this process, and particularly as a new domain in which HRM‟s ethical claims are configured, in which it sets and answers a range of ethical questions as it outlines the „ethos‟ of the ideal future worker. At the heart of this ethos lies what we call the „principle of potentiality‟. This principle is explored through a sample of graduate recruitment programmes from the Times Top 100Graduate Employers, interpreted as ethical exhortations in HRM‟s attempt to shape the character of future workers. The paper brings the work of Georg Simmel to the study of HRM‟s ethics and raises the uncomfortable question that, within discourses of endless potentiality, lie ethical dangers which bespeak an unrecognised „tragedy of culture‟. We argue that HRM fashions an ethos of work which de-recognises human limits, makes a false promise of absolute freedom, and thus becomes a tragic proposition for the individual.
KW - recruitment
KW - university
KW - ethos
KW - morality
KW - potential
KW - Simmel
U2 - 10.1007/s10551-012-1436-x
DO - 10.1007/s10551-012-1436-x
M3 - Journal article
VL - 111
SP - 25
EP - 36
JO - Journal of Business Ethics
JF - Journal of Business Ethics
SN - 0167-4544
IS - 1
ER -