write a essay
Write an autoethnographic vignette reflecting on when you have encountered an ethical dilemma (Linehan and OBrien, 2017) at work or elsewhere if you do not have work experience (min. 300 words). What were the challenges you faced, if any, in pursuing ethical means?
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L E C T U R E S L I D E S A R E N O T N O T E S
Lecture slides are designed to be visual aids for the live presentation.
Reading them cannot substitute for attending the lecture or listening to
recordings. Sometimes concepts and ideas presented are then critiqued
and challenged during lectures.
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P R O J E C T :
F U T U R E
Dr Helena Liu
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Week 9 The Failings of HRM
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Last week in this subject, we examined the
colonial underpinnings of international
human resource management and its
prevailing tendency to essentialise
cultural/national identities.
REVIEW
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REVIEW OF WEEK 8
IHRM PROCESSES
Traditional approaches focused on training expatriates for technical
skills, ignoring the psychoemotional dimensions of international
assignments.
CROSS-CULTURAL MANAGEMENT
Typically assumes an autonomous professional from the West who
ventures into exotic cultures. These other cultures are usually treated as
fixed and homogenous.
IMPERIALIST BACKGROUND
These assumptions are shaped by the established history of imperialism
where European colonialists sought to define the Other.
DECOLONISING HRM
We need to identify and challenge the parochial nature of managerial
knowledge and practice, opening up space for alternate ways of
organising from beyond Anglo-American perspectives.
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MULTIPLE CHOICE
QUIZ REVIEW
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QUESTION 1
Melissa believes that because Asian cultures are collectivistic, Asian employees are more dependent than Australian
employees and will likely not perform well in leadership positions. What does Melissas belief best exemplify?
a. Imperialism
b. Cultural essentialism
c. Racist language
d. Organisational violence
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QUESTION 2
Julietta works for a multinational firm in Australia and accepted an opportunity to relocate to her organisations
Chinese subsidiary. She received six months of intensive language training before she left for China, which continued
after she arrived with ongoing weekly classes. What else would Boncori and Vine most critically advise Juliettas
organisation to do to support her expatriation?
a. Psychological testing to ensure Julietta has the right personality for expatriation.
b. Rigorous talent management practices to ensure Julietta is adequately rewarded for her expatriation.
c. Cultural-fit strategies to strengthen Juliettas engagement with her organisation while she works overseas.
d. Training practices that attend to Julietta emotional adjustment and ongoing wellbeing.
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QUESTION 3
Hasan has recently established a not-for-profit community organisation with a team of employees and volunteers. He
has been thinking about how they could decolonise managerial practices in their new organisation. Which of the
following practices would best exemplify decolonisation?
a. Organisational members should all be paid a fair wage.
b. The organisation should implement a zero-tolerance policy for all forms of bullying, harassment and violence.
c. Organisational members should speak openly about forms of domination perpetuated within and by the organisation and
strive to dismantle systems of power.
d. The organisation should recruit as many minorities as possible and promote them to positions of leadership.
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THE FAILINGS
OF HRM
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AGENDA
The failings of HRM
Orthodoxy of managerialism
Hyperindividualism
Anglo-American hegemony
Ethics of HR professionals
The future of HRM
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M A N A G E R I A L I S M
S E C T I O N
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To call a person a resource is
already to tread dangerously
close to placing that human
in the same category with
office furniture and
computers.
Michelle Greenwood (2002, p. 261)
The term resource is a metaphor. Seeing the strange in the familiar,
resource is only one metaphor among many that one might apply to
people working in organisations. Other metaphors include troops,
team, family, loyal company servants, and labour force, each
having quite different connotations from the others (Inkson, 2008). The
point is not trivial. The words we use substantially influence our
perceptions of the world, and our actions (Inkson, 2008). The more we are
told we are resources, the more managers the users of resources and
employees may come to accept it, and to behave accordingly (Inkson,
2008).
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Managerialism describes the ways
management theorising and practice
reflect the ideology of neoliberal capitalism.
Management knowledge is expected to
serve managers, who are generally assumed
to pursue profit and growth at all costs.
MANAGERIALISM
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MANAGERIALISM
MANAGERS ARE RATIONAL EXPERTS
Managers are constructed as rational and logical experts that make
decisions based on prescriptive and functionalist scientific research.
HUMANS ARE IRRATIONAL RESOURCES
Ignoring asymmetrical power relations, employees are treated as
needing to be managed in order to have their potential realised for
more efficient profit-driven production. Performance and talent
management treats workers as perennially needing to be retooled to
achieve more.
FOR-PROFIT IS THE NORM
The private sector organisation is presented as normative rather than a
contested site of struggle.
HRM IS OSTENSIBLY PRO-WORKER
Topics like flexible work, diversity and inclusion or work-life balance are
presented as pro-worker but typically conclude with calls to action to
increase performative efficiencies in the workplace. In other words, HRM
reflects a unitarist ideology.
(Ruggunan, 2016)
Managers often struggle with their own identity work and what it means
to be a manager (Dent and Whitehead, 2013; Sveningsson and Alvesson,
2003).
The treatment of employees as passive commodities is ultimately
dehumanising (Inkson, 2008, p. 270).
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Yet given HRM practice varies significantly, it is more useful to analyse
the organisational constraints on ethical action and ethical inaction.
(Lowry, 2006)
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H Y P E R I N D I V I D U A L I S M
S E C T I O N
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American cultural scholars first identified
the phenomenon of hyperindividualism
where one is concerned almost entirely with
the self, leading to the erosion of
community.
HYPER-
INDIVIDUALISM
There is no such thing as society, so said Margaret Thatcher in her 1996
Joseph Memorial Lecture at the Centre for Policy Studies.
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We see ourselves as consumers and entrepreneurs instead of citizens
and as self-reliant instead of interdependent.
(Giroux, 2003; McRobbie, 2008; Mohanty, 2013)
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HYPER-
INDIVIDUALISM
In the workplace, hyperindividualism is reflected in a dominant
unitarist ideology (Greenwood and Van Buren, 2017). Practices
of performance and talent management, individual
pay/rewards and individual bargaining reinforce the notion
that workers and their companies share the same interests,
values and goals.
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HYPER-
INDIVIDUALISM
Yet in this model, power structures become unspeakable and
organisational violence is left for individual employees to self-
manage (Gill, 2014; Kelan, 2014).
This individualisation is reinforced by psychologistic
interventions in HRM that promote self-confidence (Gill and
Orgad, 2015), resilience (Clay, 2019) and positivity (Collinson,
2012).
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A N G L O – A M E R I C A N
H E G E M O N Y
S E C T I O N
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ANGLO-AMERICAN
HEGEMONY
Strategic human resource management is a product of an
Anglo-American culture of business excellence emerging from
the 1980s.
Hegemonic Masculinity (Whiteness, Sexuality, Ability and Class)
The ideal worker also reflects Anglo-American cultural values.
In what hooks (2003, 2009) calls the imperialist, white supremacist,
capitalist patriarchy, the accepted way to manage is to dominate and
control. Work and organisations are recast as arenas for individual
competition.
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ESSENTIALISED,
EXOTIC OTHERS
Despite sustained critique, Anglo-American research tends to fall back on
reductionistic constructions of non-Western people as stereotypical
characters of a colonial myth: the spiritual; the childlike or the corrupt
(Tuhiwai Smith, 2012).
Xu (2008) argues that even when non-Western people are acknowledged
and valued, they can still be denied of their being; their right to self-define.
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Excluding the voices of workers as well as
those who fall outside the Western
hegemony produces a parochial
understanding of HRM theory and practices.
MARGINALISED
VOICES
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T H E E T H I C S O F
H R P R O F E S S I O N A L S
S E C T I O N
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Many high-profile corporate scandals such
as Enron could be traced back to
problematic HRM policies and practices
that pressured employees to achieve
financial goals at any cost (Deckop, 2006).
ETHICAL
SCANDALS
Performance-based pay schemes, like share options for executives, have
been argued to encourage unethical behaviours (Deckop, 2006).
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HUMAN RESOURCE
ETHICS
Human resource managers are idealised as rational, neutral
and objective.
Ethics for HRM
Ethics then flows from that as straightforward laws and regulations or a
code of conduct that governs how HR professionals ought to behave.
Yet Sociologically
Human resource professionals are embedded within social relationships
and contexts.
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HUMAN RESOURCE
ETHICS
Given the relational nature of their work, human resource
professionals have to:
1. Distance;
2. Depersonalise; and
3. Dissemble workers.
(de Gama, McKenna and Peticca-Harris, 2012)
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For Linehan and OBrien (2017), the key
question is not whether HRM is ethical or
not, but what are the processes of ethical
decision-making (including the complex
emotions) for human resource professionals.
HUMAN RESOURCE
ETHICS
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T H E F U T U R E O F H R M
S E C T I O N
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A DIFFERENT LANGUAGE
Kerr Inkson (2008) suggests changing human
resource management to human partnership
management in order to recentre the humanity of
workers.
This would recognise that employees are not just
organisational assets to be deployed by superior
agents, but are agents themselves who invest in their
own intrinsic and material profit.
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IS THERE HOPE?
Critics like Thomas Klikauer (2015) argues that
management knowledge can only exist for a
managerial class. Meanwhile, theorists and
practitioners [fail] to highlight the inherent
contradictions between human existence and
management (Klikauer, 2015, p. 212) as management
is inherently anti-democratic; hierarchy-creating and
sustaining; and based on power, domination, and
oppression.
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WEEK 10
Futurism
Radical reimaginings of our future
Read the required readings, attend the
lecture and tutorial.
NEXT WEEK
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REFERENCES
CRITICAL MANAGEMENT THEORY
Collinson, D.L. (2012), Prozac leadership and the limits of positive thinking, Leadership, 8(2), pp. 87107.
* de Gama, N., McKenna, S. and Peticca-Harris, A. (2012), Ethics and HRM: Theoretical and conceptual analysis,
Journal of Business Ethics, 111(1), pp. 97108.
Deckop, J.R. (ed.) (2006), Human Resource Management Ethics, Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.
Dent, M. and Whitehead, S. (eds.), (2013), Managing Professional Identities: Knowledge, Performativities and the
New Professional, New York: Routledge.
Fotaki, M. (2016), Management teaching promotes inequality, London School of Economics Business Review:
Greenwood, M.R. (2002), Ethics in HRM: A review and conceptual analysis, Journal of Business Ethics, 36(3), pp. 261
278.
Greenwood, M. and Van Buren, H.J. (2017), Ideology in HRM scholarship: Interrogating the ideological
performativity of new unitarism, Journal of Business Ethics, 142(4), pp. 663678.
Inkson, K. (2008), Are humans resources? Career Development International, 13(3), pp. 270279.
Kelan, E.K. (2014), From biological clocks to unspeakable inequalities: The intersectional positioning of young
professionals, British Journal of Management, 25(4), pp. 790804.
* = the required
readings of the
topic
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REFERENCES
CRITICAL MANAGEMENT THEORY
Klikauer, T. (2015), Critical management studies and critical theory: A review, Capital & Class, 39(2), pp. 197220.
* Linehan, C. and OBrien, E. (2017), From tell-tale signs to irreconcilable struggles: The value of emotion in exploring
the ethical dilemmas of HR professionals, Journal of Business Ethics, 141(4), pp. 763777.
Lowry, D. (2006), HR managers as ethical decision-makers: Mapping the terrain, Asia Pacific Journal of Human
Resources, 44(2), pp. 171183.
Ruggunan, S.D. (2016), Decolonising management studies: A love story, in Critical Management Studies in the
South African Context, Cape Town: Acta Commercii, pp. 103259. Available at:
http://www.scielo.org.za/pdf/acom/v16n2/05.pdf.
Sveningsson, S. and Alvesson, M. (2003), Managing managerial identities: Organizational fragmentation, discourse
and identity struggle, Human Relations, 56(10), pp. 11631193.
Xu, Q. (2008), A question concerning subject in The Spirit of Chinese Capitalism, Critical Perspectives on
International Business, 4(2/3), pp. 17422043.
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REFERENCES
SOCIOLOGY
Clay, K.L. (2019), Despite the odds: Unpacking the politics of Black resilience neoliberalism, American Educational
Research Journal, 56(1), pp. 75110.
Gill, R. (2014), Unspeakable inequalities: Post feminism, entrepreneurial subjectivity, and the repudiation of sexism
among cultural workers, Social Politics, 21(4), pp. 509528.
Gill, R. and Orgad, S. (2015), The confidence cult(ure), Australian Feminist Studies, 30(86), pp. 324344.
Giroux, H.A. (2003), Spectacles of race and pedagogies of denial: Anti-Black racist pedagogy under the reign of
neoliberalism, Communication Education, 52(3/4), pp. 191211.
hooks, b. (2003), We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity, Hoboken: Taylor and Francis.
hooks, b. (2009), Belonging: A Culture of Place, New York: Routledge.
McRobbie, A. (2008), The Aftermath of Feminism: Gender, Culture and Social Change, London: Sage.
Mohanty, C.T. (2013), Transnational feminist crossings: On neoliberalism and radical critique, Signs: Journal of
Women in Culture and Society, 38(4), pp. 967991.
Tuhiwai Smith, L. (2012), Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, 2nd ed., London: Zed
Books.
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