Ethical Implications of Human Resource Management
Recognition, Reification, and Practices of Forgetting: Ethical Implications of Human Resource Management
Gazi Islam
Received: 3 June 2011 / Accepted: 28 July 2012 / Published online: 17 August 2012
� Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012
Abstract This article examines the ethical framing of
employment in contemporary human resource management
(HRM). Using Axel Honneth’s theory of recognition and
classical critical notions of reification, I contrast recogni-
tion and reifying stances on labor. The recognition
approach embeds work in its emotive and social particu-
larity, positively affirming the basic dignity of social
actors. Reifying views, by contrast, exhibit a forgetfulness
of recognition, removing action from its existential and
social moorings, and imagining workers as bundles of
discrete resources or capacities. After discussing why
reification is a problem, I stress that recognition and reifi-
cation embody different ethical standpoints with regards to
organizational practices. Thus, I argue paradoxically that
many current HRM best practices can be maintained while
cultivating an attitude of recognition. If reification is a type
of forgetting, cultivating a recognition attitude involves
processes of ‘‘remembering’’ to foster work relations that
reinforce employee dignity.
Keywords Human resources � Recognition � Dignity � Frankfurt School � Critical theory � Reification
Introduction
The rapid growth of Human Resource Management (HRM)
has involved attempts to frame HRM’s role in under-
standing the human consequences of the contemporary
world of work (Heery 2008). Such attempts have generated
discussions around the ethics of HRM (Pinnington et al.
2007), varying from principled and ‘‘purist’’ perspectives
drawn from moral theory and philosophy (Rowan 2000) to
more ‘‘user-friendly’’ approaches that mix ethical-theoret-
ical foundations and formulate managerial guidelines for
practice (Winstanley and Woodall 2000; Heery 2008).
More recent approaches to HRM have begun to emerge
from critical theory, focusing on ideological and exploit-
ative aspects of HRM, and challenging mainstream
approaches to ethics by combining a practice-based
approach with a critical lens (Greenwood 2002).
The growing importance of critical ethical approaches
brings with it an increased focus on ‘‘macro’’ critiques of
HRM (Townley 1993; Islam and Zyphur 2008), calling into
question the ethical grounding of the field in general
(Greenwood 2002). While traditional views frame human
resources as costs to be minimized or resources to be
deployed strategically, critical ethical views highlight the
potentially problematic idea of ‘‘using’’ people (Green-
wood 2002), inherent in such framings. In Simon’s (1951)
seminal work, the employee is defined as one who ‘‘permits
his behavior to be guided by a decision reached by another,
irrespective of his own judgment as to the merits of that
decision’’ (p. 21), a characterization that seems to deprive
humans of basic freedoms of conscience. While such
authors do not discuss this aspect of employment relations
as inherently problematic, some ethics scholars questioned
the ethicality of contemporary workplace relationships
(Nussbaum 2006) as well as HRM (e.g., Pless and Maak
G. Islam (&) Grenoble Ecole de Management, 12 Rue Pierre Semard,
38000 Grenoble, France
e-mail: gislamster@gmail.com
G. Islam
Insper Institute for Education and Research, 300 Rua Quatá,
Vila Olimpia, São Paulo, SP 04546-042, Brazil
123
J Bus Ethics (2012) 111:37–48
DOI 10.1007/s10551-012-1433-0
2004), as reducing human beings to material or financial
resources and thus depriving them of their relational or
other essential aspects.
To be sure, HRM focuses on ‘‘human capital’’ within
organizations (Foss 2008; van Marrewijk and Timmers
2003) to enhance organizational productivity, framing
individuals as means to organizational ends. Selection
processes focus on job-specific individual and team
knowledge, skills, and abilities (grouped together in the
general ‘‘knowledge, skills, and abilities’’ or ‘‘KSAs’’;
Guion 1998), training and development practices focus on
firm-specific competencies and relational habits that are
difficult to copy (van Marrewijk and Timmers 2003), and
psychological contracts in firms tend to be increasingly
transactional, focusing on short-term market exchanges
(Rousseau 1995). That human agency is treated in an
‘‘instrumental’’ fashion by such features of HRM could
have implications for the basic dignity of workers (Sayer
2007). It would be problematic if all instrumentality con-
stituted a breach of dignity; however, because such a strict
ethical criterion might invalidate any goal-directed
behavior. We thus need to explore the conditions under
which treating work instrumentally diminishes human
dignity, and in what ways instrumentality might be con-
sistent with dignity. Ideally, such an examination would
attempt to outline how instrumental action can be best
reconciled with views that recognize the full social worth
of human beings.
This article uses a recognition-theoretic view (Honneth
1995a) to provide a conceptual undergirding for a critical
ethical examination of HRM, employing Honneth’s (2008a)
reformulation of the notion of reification to explore how
reifying views of work can undermine workers’ ability to
grasp the moral weight of their actions. Following Honneth
(2008a), reifying work is not immoral in terms of an external
moral standard, but rather as a misrecognition of those forms
of sociality that make organized work possible in the first
place. As a proponent of the fundamental value of work
within a well-lived life, Honneth provides an ideal basis for a
critical ethics perspective in HRM. Building on earlier dis-
cussions of reification (Lukacs 1971), contemporary HRM
can be critiqued, not for valuing the wrong things, but for
misrepresenting the value bases underlying work systems, a
distinction that will carry practical implications.
The remainder of this article unfolds as follows: after
briefly summarizing a recognition-theoretic view of work,
I overview the notion of reification, discussing how
employees become reified through HRM practices. I then
discuss reification as a problem of recognition, using rec-
ognition theory as a normative compass with which to
critique work practices that reflect a ‘‘forgetfulness of
recognition.’’ Next, I discuss the possibility of a non-
reifying HRM approach, engaging in instrumental action
while avoiding reification. Finally, I respond to limitations
of the recognition-theoretic view, outlining areas for future
development.
Recognition and the Ethics of Work
The recognition-theoretic perspective begins with the idea
that human self-esteem and dignity are constituted inter-
subjectively through participation in forms of social life,
including working life and political and social participation
(Honneth 1995a). Participation, in recognition theory,
always involves an implicit, basic positive or affirmative
social gesture, a standpoint of interpersonal recognition. By
recognition, Honneth (2008a; Honneth and Margalit 2001)
suggests a pre-cognitive affirmation of the social-affective
bond between members of a society. In other words, before
‘‘cognizing’’ the identities, traits and preferences of a
person, we have to ‘‘recognize’’ their status as autonomous
and agentic. Recognition, according to Honneth (2008a)
underlies all forms of sociality, even those that, as we will
see, he terms reifying. The latter, he claims, are pathologies
of misrecognition, and involve ‘‘forgotten’’ or repressed
recognition.
The notion of intersubjective recognition, key to Hon-
neth’s theory, developed from an elaboration and extension
of Hegel’s early Jena writings (Honneth 1995a, b), which
explored the philosophical roots of Hobbes’ social contract
theory. To Hegel, social relations could not be solely based
on contractual/legal forms of sociability, because the
mutual recognition of legal rights already presupposed a
more primitive form of recognition, namely, the acknowl-
edgement that others are similar to oneself in having needs
and vulnerabilities. The universalization and articulation of
this notion of the ‘‘concrete’’ individual gives rise to an
‘‘institutionalized recognition order’’ (Fraser and Honneth
2003) establishing the idea of a formalized legal person
with rights (Honneth 1995a, b). This general right-bearing
person, further, strives to become an ‘‘I’’ or subject,
standing against the community from which his/her per-
sonhood arose to critically evaluate and seek esteem as a
productive individual (Honneth 1995a, b). In a dialectic
progression between different ‘‘recognition orders,’’ the
affective concrete individual thus becomes a formal legal
entity, then attempts to express his/her individuality and
gain esteem through forms of work. Work therefore rep-
resents an advanced stage of identity consolidation that,
following upon a foundation of universal rights and inter-
subjective care, is a key aspect of an ethical (i.e., well-
lived, flourishing) life.
Without pursuing the Hegelian roots of recognition
theory further, we see that formalized contractual relations
(such as an employment contract) presume a conception of
38 G. Islam
123
individuals as worthy of concern and acknowledgment. In
turn, these relations lay the foundation for individuals’
attempts to seek esteem and merit from within a commu-
nity of civic relations. Thus, recognition takes the varied
forms of concern, rights, and esteem, with each form
tending toward the next.
For Honneth (2008a), these different forms of recogni-
tion all involve positive affirmations of one’s fellow human
beings. ‘‘Positive,’’ however, does not refer to positive
emotions toward the person or support for their behavior
(Honneth 2008a). It is rather an acknowledgment that
peoples’ agency must be reckoned with as participants in
society, that individuals be seen first and foremost as
beings with subjectivity and a point of view (for a critique,
see Butler 2008). Conversely, failing to acknowledge or
recognize individuals leads to a state of invisibility or
social alienation (Honneth and Margalit 2001). Applied to
employee relations, recognition is thus different from
attitudes like organizational identification, value alignment,
or person-organization fit, and provides for a basis of sol-
idarity while allowing for value conflicts. Rather than
identification, Honneth and Margalit (2001) describe rec-
ognition as a kind of ‘‘motivational readiness’’ to engage
others as moral actors whose states are worthy of articu-
lation, irrespective of differences in values or identities.
Honneth views recognition as basic to social organiza-
tion, as grounding personal autonomy and self-realization.
However, he resists charges of instrumentalism or ‘‘func-
tionalism,’’ arguing that, rather than a cause of healthy
social relations, recognition constitutes social relations per
se. Recognition is not desirable because of its instrumental
outcomes but because it grounds instrumental social rela-
tions themselves (Honneth 2002). This distinction is useful
because, unlike utilitarian views of ethics, it does not frame
ethics in terms of instrumental outcomes. More impor-
tantly, however, it does not preclude instrumental or
functional social behavior (which would make it difficult to
apply to most contemporary organizations), but affirms that
instrumental behavior finds its ultimate ground in the self-
realization of social actors made possible through recog-
nition. This second aspect makes it ideal for studying work
relations, by reconciling instrumentalist, interest-based and
principled justice views (e.g., Greenwood 2002).
In addition, beyond its critical potential, recognition theory
also rescues the work concept from overly cognitive con-
ceptions of social interaction (Moll 2009). For example,
Honneth’s mentor, Habermas (e.g. 1981), locates ethicality in
‘‘communicative rationality,’’ within the processes of inter-
subjective truth-finding, dissociating ethics from instrumental
conceptions of action, which are directed toward functional
aspects of society. Honneth (1995b), departing from this tra-
dition, argues that Habermas had abandoned work as an
ethical mode of being, and that instrumental action should
not be dismissed as irrelevant to the ethical sphere. Yet work,
and instrumental action generally, can also promote habits of
forgetting whereby we deny, repress, or misrecognize the
ethical basis of our work (Honneth 2008a, 1995b). Neither
‘‘unethical’’ in the sense of breaking ethical codes (Wiley
2000) nor ‘‘erroneous’’ in the sense of making category mis-
takes (Honneth 2008a), such misrecognitions involve taking
an inauthentic stance toward work, failing to understand what
it is that one is actually doing while acting. In a similar way
that for Habermas (1981), rational communication presup-
poses that one cares about, or has a stake in, the ability for
people to reach consensus, for Honneth, coordinated social
interaction presupposes that actors care about or have a stake
in mutual acknowledgement.
Despite this presupposition, however, when work
interactions are goal directed, we may neglect this under-
lying basis in interpersonal recognition, treating organiza-
tional goals as if they existed independently of human
intentions and shared projects. This does not change the
social nature of work, but may promote neglect of this
aspect. Because the immediate object of work involves a
product or service, the production of which is the explicit
goal of a work system, the underlying social bases of the
system may remain below consciousness, and risk being
forgotten altogether. Although intersubjective recognition
does not itself constitute an object of work, but rather a
‘‘grammar’’ (Honneth 1995a, b) of work, its underlying
structuration of the work sphere provides a basis for col-
laboration and instrumental labor. Reification is the term
Honneth (2008a) uses to describe the various processes that
promote a misrecognition, forgetting or neglect of this
underlying relation at work, and reification is thus a useful
concept to discuss as a basis for HRM.
Human Resources and the Problem of Reification
While labor discussions have tended to frame issues of
worker well-being in terms of economic welfare (Gill
1999), an ongoing debate within critical theory involves the
extent to which systemic critique should involve primarily
economic questions of material redistribution or symbolic
issues of identity and values (Fraser 1995; Fraser and
Honneth 2003). Honneth and coworker (2003) argues that
the history of labor conflict is marked by struggles to
defend ‘‘ways of life,’’ not simply gain material benefits
(c.f. Thompson 1924/1993), and thus understanding ethical
worker relations must involve a recognition of work as part
of an ethical human striving for a ‘‘good life.’’ Recognition
theory (Honneth 1995a, b) argues that such a good life
involves the striving of actors to achieve work-related
goals that are considered valuable in a community of
relationships.
Recognition, Reification, and Human Resources 39
123
Because HRM specializes in the administration of
human action, motivation, and relationships at work, it
must contain an (implicit or explicit) concept of employee
agency. According to Kallinikos (2003), ‘‘The consider-
ation of the models of human agency, underlying the
constitution of the workplace during the past 100 years or
so, seems to be essential to the project of understanding
the key behavioral premises of current economic and
labor developments.’’ (p. 596). The concept of reification
(Lukacs 1971; Honneth 2008a; Berger and Pullberg 1966)
contributes to the understanding of organizational life a
particular vision of the relationship between human agents
and the products of their labor. According to Lukacs
(1971), the meaning people attribute to work depends on
the relations they take with the objects of their labor, as
well as their co-workers; these relationships shape not only
the products of labor but the worker’s ideas of themselves
as well. Lukacs’ (1971) formulation of the concept
involved the modern essentializing of work, such that the
products of contemporary labor practices appear as inde-
pendent of the social processes by which they were con-
structed (Jay 2008). Obscuring the work processes
underlying social products then made such products appear
as fact-like, deterministic constraints on agents rather than
as reflections of their own agency (Whyte 2003).
Applied to the world of employment relations, forms of
sociality thus reified begin to look like duties and obliga-
tions, rather than as freely entered forms of social inter-
action. The facticity of social relations makes social actors
appear as objects, either of duties and obligations, on the
one hand, or as objects of manipulation and profit, on the
other. Such objectification feeds back into the self-concepts
of actors (Whyte 2003), and they begin to see themselves
in fact-like terms, as bearers or owners of traits, exemplars
of categories, and holders of human ‘‘capital’’ such as
KSA’s, rather than as free agents whose self-expression is
realized in and through such traits and categories.
Following this logic, according to Honneth (2008a),
reification has three progressive aspects for the subjects of
commodity exchange. First, actors come to view their
environments as composed of ‘‘objects’’ that serve as
constraints or opportunities for commodity exchange.
Second, they learn to view their fellow human beings as
‘‘objects’’ of economic transaction. Finally, they come to
see themselves as ‘‘objects,’’ defined by what they can offer
to others in terms of commodity exchange and human
capital. Each of these forms of reification is related to the
others in that each decontextualizes its respective objects
from their origins in networks of social recognition,
viewing things, others, or themselves in isolated, disem-
bedded terms (Berger and Pullberg 1966).
How do HRM practices fit into the reification story?
Are there specific practices that are in themselves reifying,
or that force people into thing-like relations with each other?
Honneth suggests that social practices can promote, but do
not determine, reification, a point of view that attempts to
engage in social critique without presenting a deterministic
view of social circumstances. Rather, as emphasized by
practice theorists (e.g., Feldman and Orlikowsky 2011),
HRM practices can promote ways of thinking about work
and simultaneously performatively constitute ways of being
at work, by framing symbolic meanings and social relations.
Following Honneth’s direction, the proper question in this
context would be more like ‘‘how do HRM practices promote
environments in which reification appears as a normal,
business-as-usual form of social existence?’’
While an exhaustive review would be beyond this
essay’s scope, I will present three illustrative areas where
HRM practices might constitute pathways to reification of
employees. Such pathways range from more ‘‘micro’’
processes whereby employees essential features are defined
through stable individual traits, to techniques that attempt
to essentialize employees through metrics and incentives
systems, to more ‘‘macro’’ trends in the workplace that
decontextualize work from its social bases. I discuss each
of these in turn.
‘‘Human Capital’’ and the Reification of Employee
Traits
Because reification involves seeing people in ‘‘thing-like’’
terms, treating their aspects as inert properties rather than
as subjective expressions, we may point to organizational
attempts to define people in terms of such properties as
constituting a preliminary pathway to reification. Such
attempts are characteristic of recent treatments of ‘‘human
capital’’ (e.g., Foss 2008), which emphasize the organiza-
tion of employment relations according to allocations and
costs of human capital involved in production tasks. As
Foss describes such views, ‘‘there is nothing particular
about human capital; it is just a capital asset like any other
which to be more or less specialized to specific uses and/or
users’’ (Foss 2008, p. 8). Employees, as the ‘‘owners’’ of
their own human capital, hold bargaining power to the
extent that they hold specific job-related assets or capa-
bilities that are hard to imitate (van Marrewijk and Tim-
mers 2003), and the ability to act opportunistically to the
extent that their contributions are not separable from other
employees or monitorable (Williamson 1985). To this
extent, HRM systems can increase managerial power by,
on the one hand, finding ways to standardize employee
human capital, and on the other hand, increase the sepa-
rability of individual contributions through measurement
and monitoring.
HRM practices contribute to a human capital view of
work by providing the conceptual tools by which to
40 G. Islam
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